Sweeney (l), Butterfield (r)
Posted on 05/22/2003 5:04:47 PM PDT by martin_fierro
CLEVELAND (AP) -- The New York Times and one of its reporters "stained" an Ohio Supreme Court justice by wrongly linking him to the prosecution of Dr. Sam Sheppard, a lawyer told jurors Thursday in a defamation lawsuit.
Justice Francis E. Sweeney accused the newspaper and reporter Fox Butterfield of defaming him in an article published April 13, 2000.
Sweeney said the article incorrectly connected him to the prosecution of the case and also accused him of pressuring prosecutors to oppose a civil action led by Sheppard's son, who was trying to have his father declared innocent.
The justice says he was an assistant prosecutor in Cuyahoga County in the 1960s assigned to juvenile cases and had no role in the retrial of Dr. Sheppard.
Newspaper attorney James Wooley has said any errors were unintentional and without malice. The Times ran a correction.
To win the lawsuit, Sweeney's lawyer, Don Iler, must prove that Butterfield's article involved malice.
"Actual malice seems like a very difficult burden, but in this case it was not," Iler told the jury Thursday. "He (Butterfield) and The New York Times besmirched Justice Sweeney and stained him for the rest of his life. No one ever said Justice Sweeney put pressure on anyone, no one except Sam Reese Sheppard on the day he lost his case."
The lawsuit, which was filed in October 2000, seeks unspecified damages. The defense was to give final arguments Thursday afternoon.
"If it comes from Fox Butterfield, it's got to be right. So, let it go. That's what The New York Times decided," Iler said Thursday.
"You can't make mistakes about people and get away with it," he said. "This man (Butterfield) was not a cub reporter for some high school newspaper."
The Times article primarily involved a Cuyahoga County jury's ruling against Sam Reese Sheppard's lawsuit to have his father formally declared innocent, a requirement for a claim against Ohio for wrongful imprisonment.
Dr. Sheppard was convicted in the July 4, 1954, beating death of his wife, Marilyn. His conviction was overturned on appeal, and he was acquitted at a retrial in 1966. He died four years later.
Sheppard always maintained his innocence, and his story helped inspire the movie and television series "The Fugitive."
Butterfield testified that he wrote his article based on information he believed to be correct. He identified his key sources as Sam Reese Sheppard and his lawyer, Terry Gilbert.
"I regret the mistake. We made the mistake about what his exact role was in the prosecutor's office, and I'm very sorry about that," Butterfield testified during the trial.
Sweeney (l), Butterfield (r)
Ohio Justice Sues N.Y. Times Over Story (Timesman wrote untruths about Justice Sweeney)
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 Schadenfreude  |
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