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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...

CLEVELAND (AP) - The New York Times and a state Supreme Court justice went to court Monday over an article involving a lawsuit filed by the son of Dr. Sam Sheppard. In opening statements in U.S. District Court, lawyer Don C. Iler said Times reporter Fox Butterfield wrote things about Justice Francis E. Sweeney that he knew were untrue and damaged the judge's reputation. But newspaper attorney James Wooley said any errors were unintentional and without malice. Sweeney's lawsuit alleges the April 13, 2000, Times story defamed him by falsely saying he used his influence in a case he had...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court suspended defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey from practice before the high court on Monday, following Bailey's disbarment in his home state of Florida.<!ENDSUMM!> The nation's highest court gave Bailey 40 days to say why he should not be permanently barred from practicing law there. The Supreme Court automatically begins disbarment proceedings against members of its bar who have been disbarred in their homes states. The Florida Supreme Court disbarred Bailey in November for mishandling $6 million worth of stock for a client now serving a life sentence for drug smuggling. Membership in the Supreme...

the county coroner, Dr. Samuel Gerber... stated, "It's obvious that the doctor did it." He told detectives to go to the hospital where Sheppard had been taken and get a confession... Gerber finally held an inquest in a school gymnasium. More than two hundred spectators, mostly housewives, filled the seats. They laughed and hooted at testimony and cheered when Gerber had Sheppard's lawyer removed for trying to have the outbursts noted in the record. Gerber questioned Dr. Sam for five hours with no legal counsel present.... Even that was not the end. In the 1990s Sheppard's son, Samuel Reese Sheppard,...

<p>CLEVELAND, May 23 -- A federal jury ruled today that the New York Times and one of its reporters libeled an Ohio Supreme Court justice in an article about a lawsuit filed by the son of Sam Sheppard. But the jury said it was done without malicious intent and refused to award damages.</p>