Another Ordeal

ENDURE AND CONQUER by Dr. Sam Sheppard. 329 pages. World. $5.95.

It is already a matter of legal record that Dr. Sam Sheppard is entitled to a massive grievance against the press. After serving nearly ten years of a life sentence for the 1954 bludgeon-murder of his wife, the Ohio osteopath won a second trial on the ground that newspaper stories had made him the victim of "inherently prejudicial publicity" -- and subsequent acquittal.

This hastily published, obviously much-ghosted "personal" account of I Sheppard's twelve-year fight for vindication suggests that he has the right to another complaint against newspapers: they left him nothing new to say. Except for a few personal letters to members of his family and a number of commonplace recollections of prison life, he seems unable to dredge up anything about his case that will any longer interest the reader.

Nowhere in his book, in fact, does Sheppard disclose -- as he did recently on TV -- that he had carried a concealed revolver into the courtroom when the jury's verdict was ready last Nov. 16; he had planned to draw it if he was again found guilty, so that guards would shoot and kill him. Instead of the deep bitterness that he might be expected to feel, Sheppard most often seems to be expressing a carping irritability; instead of suggesting that he ever despaired, he consistently paints himself as a stoic -- and a man who would never consider killing as a solution to his problems.

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