Dr. Samuel Mudd Trial: 1865

Nine officers—Major General David Hunter, Major General Lew Wallace, Brevet Major General August Kautz, Brigadier General Alvin Howe, Brigadier General T. M. Harris, Brigadier General Robert Foster, Brevet Brigadier General James Ekin, Brevet Colonel C.H. Tompkins, and Lieutenant Colonel David Clendenim—comprised the military commission formed to try Dr. Mudd and the others. The trial began May 9, 1865, with Judge Advocate Joseph Holt as prosecutor and General Thomas Ewing as Mudd's defense counsel.

From May 9 until June 30, the military commission listened to the evidence Holt presented. Although Mudd was entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the trial was conducted under military jurisdiction, making the rules of the game favor the prosecution. Further, the public was clamoring for convictions. Nevertheless, Ewing showed with remorseless logic how the prosecution had failed to prove that Mudd was guilty of treason in tending to Booth's broken ankle:

I will show, first, that Dr. Mudd is not, and cannot possibly be, guilty of any offense known to the law.

One. Not of treason. The overt act attempted to be alleged is the murder of the President. The proof is conclusive, that at the time the tragedy was enacted Dr. Mudd was at his residence in the country, thirty miles from the place of the crime. Those who committed it are shown to have acted for themselves, not as the instruments of Dr. Mudd. He, therefore, cannot be charged, according to law, and upon the evidence, with the commission of this overt act. There are not two witnesses to prove that he did commit it, but abundant evidence to show negatively that he did not.

Ewing went on to show that, since the prosecution had not proven that Mudd was a member of Booth's conspiracy, Mudd could not be convicted of being an "accessory after the fact" in tending to Booth's ankle. Under the law, Mudd could only be convicted of being an accessory after the fact if the prosecution proved that he knew Booth was trying to escape the authorities because of Lincoln's murder:

If a man receives, harbors, or otherwise assists to elude justice, one whom he knows to be guilty of felony, he becomes thereby an accessory after the fact in the felony.… Now, let us apply the facts to the law, and see whether Dr. Mudd falls within the rule. On the morning after the assassination, about daybreak, Booth arrived at his house. He did not find the Doctor on watch for him, as a guilty accomplice, expecting his arrival, would have been, but he and all his household were in profound sleep.… The Doctor rose from his bed, assisted Booth into the house, laid him upon a sofa, took him up stairs to a bed, set the fractured bone.… But he did not know, and had no reason to suspect, that his patient was a fugitive murderer.

Despite Ewing's eloquence, the military commission focused on any circumstance that tended to implicate Mudd, including the fact that Mudd had met Booth on at least one occasion prior to Lincoln's assassination. On June 30, 1865, the commission pronounced Mudd guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Of the other defendants, Atzerodt, Herold, Payne, and Surratt were sentenced to death by hanging. Arnold and O'Loughlin were also given life sentences, and Spangler was sentenced to imprisonment for six years.