Posted on 12/23/2001 5:37:04 AM PST by shuckmaster
In the annals of history, the Mudd name has been inexorably linked with the infamous John Wilkes Booth - and the 1865 plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington.
One hundred and thirty-six years have passed since a military tribunal sentenced Samuel Mudd to life in prison for his part in the conspiracy; 132 years have passed since the sentence was commuted.
Now, the doctor will have his day in a civilian court, after descendants - seeking to clear Mudd's name - won a legal victory this month.
A federal appeals court rejected the Army's request to throw out the case for Mudd's exoneration - and agreed to hear oral arguments.
"I am so happy," said Mudd's grandson, Richard D. Mudd, a 100-year-old Saginaw, Mich., physician who has led the battle to clear his ancestor's name. "I have been fighting for justice for 84 years."
Richard Mudd's son, Thomas B. Mudd, 61, a retired teacher who lives with his father, said the case "should open the eyes of anybody who is interested in the constitutionality of military tribunals. Maybe the federal Court of Appeals will take a harder look at it."
A trial by a civilian court in 1865 might not have yielded a different outcome, said George McNamara, 56, a Holmesburg resident and amateur historian who helped take the Mudd cause to members of Congress in an effort to reopen the case.
"This was the first time a president was assassinated," said McNamara. "But he deserved a trial by his peers."
The Mudd case comes at a time when the Bush administration has been criticized by members of Congress, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other groups for its proposed use of military tribunals to try noncitizens accused of playing a role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Mudd attorney Philip A. Gagner has argued that Mudd - as an American citizen - was protected by the Constitution and should have been tried by a civilian court, if tried at all. He said that civilian courts were open, and that Mudd was not an enemy alien or an unlawful belligerent subject to military justice. Mudd had never served in the Confederate army, and he lived in the Union state of Maryland.
"He was tried by a military commission solely because that commission had the military force to seize and try him," said Gagner in an interview. "The problem with military tribunals, like the Mudd tribunal, apart from their unconstitutionality, is that they are expedient. That expediency can result in swift justice, but it also results in history arguing over the outcome."
The Army has said that the then-attorney general of the United States considered the conspirators in the assassination to be subject to the military commission. It also has contended that Mudd knew Booth, knew of the conspiracy, and harbored the assassin and an associate.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has now granted a hearing, as yet unscheduled, and Gagner will have an opportunity to again recount the crucial hours on the morning of April 15, 1865, at Mudd's Bryantown, Md., farmhouse.
Gagner has said a disguised Booth and David E. Herold arrived at 4:30 a.m., seeking medical attention for Booth's broken leg, then left that afternoon. Booth broke the leg when he jumped from Lincoln's box to the Ford Theater stage after shooting the President the night before.
Booth was shot and killed at a farm in Virginia on April 26, 1865. Four defendants in the conspiracy were hanged in July 1865. Four others, including Mudd, were sentenced to prison. Mudd's sentence was commuted by President Andrew Johnson in 1869.
Richard Mudd said he now hopes that a civilian court will correct the wrong done to his grandfather by a military tribunal.
The conviction has been an embarrassment and shame for the family for too long, said Thomas Mudd.
Samuel Mudd "was really in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said. "We're searching for justice. [Samuel] Mudd never got his day in court."
I thought Lincoln was a Republican from before he became President until his death. Can you inform me differently and a source to research?
Whatever the Army was pre-war, it swelled enormously with anti-slavery Republicans during the Civil War. All the post Civil War presidents who had served in the War ran as Republicans. I'm agnostic about the guilt of Mudd and Mary Surratt, though the actions of both certainly invite suspicion. BTW, wasn't network newman Roger Mudd a descendant as well.
Dr. Mudd was tried for complicity in an act of war during a time when the Civil War was not finished. Confederate forces west and south of Lee had yet to surrender. Much of the Rebel government had yet to be accounted for by the Union. Military tribunals were quite appropriate, just as they are now.
And the O.J. Trial is a classic example of the folly that comes from civilian trials.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of real-world cases that can't get a hearing so why is our court system wasting its time on a case where all the witnesses are dead and the remaining "evidence" is suspect?
America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)
Little mentioned by the media in the Mudd saga is the fact that Mudd and Booth had at least four meetings prior to the night Booth showed up at Mudd's home for medical attention. It was therefore not a spontaneous, coincidental event -- Mudd likely was part of the genuine conspiracy among Booth et al. to decapitate the U.S. Government by attacks upon the President, Vice-President, and Secretary of State.
I guess they don't want their name to be 'MUDD" anymore. (Sorry, I just couldn't help myself, and besides, no one ELSE had said it!)
The Washington D. C. Police Department, when asked to comment on this story said, "Lincoln was shot?"
The "Union Party" was the Republican Party.
The Party temporarily changed it's name for the election.
My conclusion is that Lincoln ran under a name created by Republican leaders and that he was still a Republican.
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