The following are remarks made by Sam Reese Sheppard at the press
conference at the National Press Club on September 17, and at
the U.S. Supreme Court on September 18, at the start the Walk for
Justice.
"My name is Sam Reese Sheppard. We are here to
announce the commencement of The Walk For Justice. This
Walk for Justice is to commemorate my mother, Marilyn Reese
Sheppard, and her unborn son, my mother and my unborn
brother whose murders in 1954 have never been solved. We will
start at the steps of the United States Supreme Court, where in
1966, the court threw out the wrongful conviction of my father
for these murders in an unfair trial that sought his execution.
"When a mistake of this magnitude is made we not only destroy
innocent people, but we let the guilty go free among
us.
"For ten years I have tried to work *with* the state
of Ohio to solve this case. In 1989 I asked Governor
Celeste to assist in solving my mother's murder. He politely
replied that this was not in his jurisdiction, but must
be investigated by the county prosecutors office.
"For ten years and three prosecutors I have been "dogged
around" by Cuyahoga County. Four or five years ago our
investigating agency, AMSEC, in Winchester, Virginia, provided
voluminous reports of their findings so that local authorities
could request an investigation of this case by the FBI
Serial Crimes Unit. The local request was never made as a
man sat in an Ohio prison who had even confessed
to the crime!
"Ten years and three prosecutors - and now all of
a sudden the Cuyahoga Prosecutor's office has become
interested in the case, but not in an impartial way. They
still accuse my father, who was found "not guilty"
of the crime by a jury in 1966. Soon they will exhume the
remains of my mother and take DNA samples from the remains of my
unborn brother in what appears to be an exercise in futility -
in a gesture of desecration.
"Where can murder victim's families turn when the
very authorities charged to solve the murder of their loved ones
refuse to do so? Where can murder victim's families turn when
the local political situation blocks the reasonable
investigation of the murder of their loved one's? Murder
has no statute of limitations.
"I am a man who wants to study peace and reconciliation
in the face of 45 years of insult by the State of Ohio in
the history of the Sheppard murder case.
"I am a man who wants to study peace and reconciliation
in preparation for the painful event of the exhumation of my
mother and the DNA testing of my brother.
"I will walk.
"I will depart from the steps of the Supreme Court of
the United States tomorrow at 10am and walk to the city
of Cleveland, Ohio. I plan to arrive in Cleveland on October
17th, the eve of the recent trial date now postponed until
February, 2000. October 17th is the eve of the 45th
anniversary of the unfair trial of my father in 1954. I will
ask the State of Ohio - Why? - Why after 45 years can we not
resolve this historic travesty of justice in an honorable way?
"I dedicate the exhumation of my mother's and my
brother's remains to the numerous murder victim's families whose
cases have never been resolved. I dedicate these exhumations
to the hundreds of people in this country and around the world
who suffer imprisonment for a crime that they did not commit.
"I will walk and meditate for peace and reconciliation
in a world with little compassion for the hurt and hurting among
us.
"Thank you to my friends who are helping me with
the walk, a walk that will enable me to have privacy in the
midst of the publicity.
"I would like to close with a quote from my father's
prison journal:
'In recording for my boy what I have been subjected to,
it will be necessary to make known American injustice
perpetrated not by the laws of our land, but by those who
have sworn themselves to uphold those laws... A frightening
breach of American rights has taken place, and the important
point is that the breach has happened here in America, not
who it has happened to.'
-1955, Dr. Sam Sheppard"
