Guilty or Not Guilty?
Round table speaker was among those
voting to reverse decision for Dr. Mudd

By DOUG LIPPMAN
Bugle Staff Writer

Civil War Round Table meetings usually are interesting to those fascinated by history. But occasionally, a presentation is so compelling everyone is reluctant to depart. Such was the case with the January meeting of the Madison County CWRT.

The subject for the evening was familiar to most. Dr. Samuel Mudd was the physician who set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg six hours after Booth had assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. The nation’s immediate reaction to the assassination was shock, but it soon turned to a thirst for revenge. When those rounded up were tried, the defendants were found guilty by a military court. This included Dr. Samuel Mudd, who received a life sentence to be served at the federal prison in the Dry Tortugas.

During the 20th century, Dr. Richard Mudd, the grandson of Dr. Samuel Mudd, petitioned the Army repeatedly for a panel hearing to study and possibly overturn his grandfather’s conviction. Each time his petition was rejected, until 1992. In that year, Dr. Richard Mudd’s petition was finally accepted, and a panel was formed to review his grandfather’s case. The decision would not be binding, and would require action by the administration of the Army.

Jim Lucas, the speaker that January night, was one of five panelists selected for the review.

According to Lucas, a Berea resident, archival evidence was disturbing as it became obvious that Booth, who had met Dr. Samuel Mudd briefly on three separate occasions, came to the doctor’s house in disguise.

Would the doctor recognize his patient?

That question proved irrelevant, Lucas said, as Dr. Samuel Mudd had no previous knowledge of any plans to assassinate the president, nor was he aware that the assassination had taken place. He only discovered this several days after Booth’s departure.

Nevertheless, in the superheated atmosphere of Washington City, Samuel Mudd stood convicted and was sent to Florida to serve a life sentence. The following year (1866), the United States Supreme Court, in Ex Parte Milligan, ruled that no civilian could be tried in a military court unless the war was being fought in the state where the crime allegedly had taken place. As Samuel Mudd was a citizen of Maryland, and no war was being fought in Maryland at the time when Booth’s leg was set, the validity of the verdict was now in question.

In 1867, the year after the Supreme Court ruling, Samuel Mudd’s case was appealed in both Washington and in Florida. Both appeals were denied. So the initial decision stood, regardless of the high court ruling. Dr. Mudd was eventually pardoned, but Dr. Richard Mudd subsequently wanted an acquittal.

Based on the evidence they were given, the panel of five, who were advised by legal and military experts, ruled 5-0 in favor of reversing the initial decision. They now waited for the Army administration to confirm or reject their recommendation. Meanwhile, several of the nation’s leading law schools set up mock trials using the same evidence, and each arrived at the same verdict as the Army panel.

In 1996, the Mudd family took the case to an appeals court to ask for a reversal of the initial verdict. The appeals court ruled that the Army must take action to resolve the controversy, one way or the other. Twenty years later, the Army is yet to act. Dr. Richard Mudd died in 2002 at the age of 102, a frustrated man.