A jury in Cleveland has found that the New York Times and reporter Fox Butterfield libeled Francis Sweeney, currently a member of the Ohio Supreme Court, in connection with the Sam Sheppard murder case. The Sheppard case is the case that will not die, even though everyone involved with it (except F. Lee Bailey) has. Despite the finding, the jury refused to award damages, finding that the false statement was made without malicious intent.
The essence of the claim was that the article had stated (truthfully) that Sweeney was "a county prosecutor" when Sheppard was retried and acquitted in 1966, but had (falsely) intimated that he had been involved in the Sheppard case at that time and then had refused to disqualify himself when a related lawsuit by Sheppard's son was heard by his court in the late 1990s.
The family's lawsuit, it is reported, requested a judicial finding that Sheppard was innocent, in order to permit his family to pursue a lawsuit for damages against the State of Ohio. Why that was necessary, given the fact that the last resolution in the case of People v. Sheppard was an acquittal, is not explained. It took some digging in several sources to uncover the fact that the New York Times article had also accused Sweeney of pressuring prosecutors to oppose the civil case filed by Shepard's son.
There are some inconsistencies in the published reports. One says that Sweeney refused to withdraw from the Sheppard case, but the same report also notes that Sweeney said that he was not aware that anyone had requested his withdrawal.
Justice Sweeney had asked for $15 million in damages, according to the Plain Dealer. The Cincinnati.com site reports that that figure represented $2 million for actual injury to reputation, $1 million for emotional distress, and $12 million for punitive damages.
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