Black & Shameful Page

When the bullet-riddled body of Philadelphia Policeman James T. Morrow was found in an empty lot back in 1936, his fellow officers set out to show the world that cop-killing never pays. First they exacted a confession from a suspect named Joseph Broderick. On second thought, they let him go and got another from a feebleminded 19-year-old named George Bilger. The obliging Bilger (who happily confessed a lot of other crimes, too) was promptly sent off to the penitentiary. But after three years, the cops had a new thought: the murder had been committed by a gunman named Jack Howard.

This was handy, since Howard had just been killed by a detective and was in no shape to protest. But it was also difficult to prove. When the cops discovered that Howard's girl friend, a Mrs. Mary Morgan, was in a hospital, they hopefully put a watch outside her room. Her brother--a 23-year-old, $8-a-week hamburger-stand counterman named Rudolph Sheeler--went to Philadelphia from New York City on his day off to visit her. They grabbed him there.

No Proof. Sheeler vanished into the recesses of City Hall. A week later, he signed a confession: Gunman Howard had shot the policeman and he, Sheeler, had been a witness and accessory to the crime. He was sent to the penitentiary for life by the late Philadelphia Judge Harry S. McDevitt, who neatly disposed of the feebleminded Bilger by getting him transferred to a mental institution from which he conveniently escaped.

Sheeler was a philosophical sort. He had grown up in an orphan asylum, had become a depression road-kid, and--before he found a job--a petty criminal. He served his time quietly, although his wife had obtained records which proved he had been at work in New York on the night the policeman was shot in Philadelphia. But after seven years, when the cops failed to keep what he regarded as a solemn promise--to get him out after a short term--he began to fight.

He told the prison chaplain a chilling story: he had confessed only after being half-starved and beaten brutally. "Somebody in back of me kept hitting me in the back of the head so that my head would nod forward and somebody else would say, 'Well, he admits that.'" The chaplain went to Judge McDevitt, who wasn't interested. Said the judge: "He confessed." Sheeler stayed in prison. But finally a University of Pennsylvania criminal-law professor named Louis B. Schwartz entered the case. Last week, largely because of his intervention, Sheeler got a new trial. This time the state asked--and instantly got--a directed verdict of not guilty.

No Revenge. Said Judge James Gay Gordon Jr.: "This is a black and shameful page in the history of the Philadelphia police department . . . and ... an ominous counterpart of what occurs daily behind the Iron Curtain. The police had not one scintilla of evidence . . ." Less than an hour later, six Philadelphia policemen, whom Sheeler accused, were suspended from the force, among them an assistant superintendent of police and the head of the homicide squad.

Sheeler, whose wife had died during his twelve years in prison, was now 35. He had spent much of the time behind bars trying to educate himself; he betrayed no bitterness. Sobs shook his slim body when he was freed. But afterwards, he said, quoting a Chinese proverb: "He who seeks revenge digs two graves."

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