Fight to clear Mudd's name may affect terror war Military trial key issue in assassin doctor's legal case WASHINGTON -- After 137 years, the effort to clear Dr. Samuel Mudd's name finally has made it to the federal court of appeals. As it turns out, the case hardly could be more timely. Mudd was the Maryland doctor who treated the broken leg of President Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, just hours after Booth fatally shot the president at Ford's Theatre here in April 1865. A military commission later convicted Mudd of aiding the escape of Booth, who was killed after...