My Journey on Lincoln's Assassination

[mikegriffith1]

Weichmann’s lies regarding Mary Surratt were not his only lies at the military trial. Dr. Samuel Mudd’s defense team, led by Thomas Ewing, found numerous witnesses who debunked Weichmann’s claims about Mudd’s “meeting” with Booth at the National Hotel. Weichmann said the “meeting” occurred on January 15, 1865, but the defense produced five witnesses who confirmed that Mudd did not leave the vicinity of his house from December 24 until late March 1865.

Realizing that Weichmann’s story had been badly damaged by those five witnesses, the prosecution magically found a witness who gave a genuinely silly account that put Dr. Mudd in Washington on March 3, which was designed to refute the five witnesses who said that Mudd was not in Washington from December 24 to late March. The witness, Marcus Norton, said that while he was preparing his legal papers to argue a case before the Supreme Court on the morning of March 3, Dr. Mudd, whom he had never seen before, suddenly entered his room, said he was looking for “Mr. Booth’s room,” and then left! Really?! Anyway, this move ended up royally back-firing on the prosecution, because the defense produced eight witnesses who contradicted Morton's belated tale. Ewing said the following about this farce:

After the evidence for the defense above referred to had been introduced, refuting and completely overwhelming Weichmann's testimony and all inferences as to Dr. Mudd's complicity with Booth, which might be drawn from it, a new accuser was introduced against him on the same point, in the person of Marcus P. Norton, who said that at half-past 10 o'clock on the morning of the 3rd of March, as he was preparing his papers to go to the Supreme Court to argue a motion in a patent case there pending (which motion the record of the Court shows he did argue on that day), a stranger abruptly entered his room and as abruptly retired, saying he was looking for Mr. Booth's room; and though witness never saw Dr. Mudd before or since, until the day of his testifying, he says that stranger is the prisoner at the bar. He could not tell any article of the stranger's clothing except a black flat. . . .

Fortunately for the accused, the 1st day of March was Ash Wednesday--the first day of Lent--a religious holiday of note and observance in the community of Catholics among whom he lived. Fortunately for him, too, his sister Mary was taken ill on that day, and required his medical attendance (at her father's house, on the farm adjoining his own, thirty miles from Washington) each day, from the 2d to the 7th of March, inclusive.

By the aid of these two circumstances we have been able to show, by Thomas Davis, that the accused was at home at work on the 28th of February the day before Ash Wednesday; by Dr. Blanford, Frank Washington and Betty Washington, that he was there at work at home on the 1st of March; by Mary, Fanny, Emily and Henry L. Mudd, Betty and Frank Washington and Thomas Davis, that he was there on the 2d, 3d, 4th and 5th of March, at various hours of each day. At or within two hours of the time when Norton says he saw the accused enter the room at the National (half past 10 A. M., 3d of March), Mary, Emily; Fanny and Henry L. Mudd, Frank and Betty Washington, Thomas and John Davis, all testify most emphatically to having seen him at his house, on his farm, or at his father's house adjacent to his own--six hours' ride from Washington!

We have shown, too, by Mary Mudd, that the accused has always worn a lead-colored hit whenever she has seen him this year, and that she has seen him almost daily; and by Henry Mudd, Dr. Blanford and Mary Mudd, that neither he nor his father owns a rockaway.

Now, Norton either saw the accused enter his room on the morning of the 3d of March, or not at all, for his evidence, clinched as to the date by the record of the Supreme Court, excludes the supposition that he could have been mistaken as to the day. Nor can these eight witnesses for the defense be mistaken as to the day, for the incidents by which they recollect Mudd's presence fix the time in their memories exactly. With all this evidence before the Court, it cannot hesitate to hold the alibi established beyond all cavil. (“Argument on the Law and Evidence in the Case of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, Part 2: Mudd’s Alleged Connections with the Booth Conspiracy Before the Assassination,” http://miketgriffith.com/files/mudd_defense_2.htm


Perhaps because Ewing did such a good job of destroying the case against Dr. Mudd, even the military tribunal’s corrupt “judges” could not bring themselves to sentence Dr. Mudd to death. But, rather than doing the right thing and issuing a verdict of not guilty, they found him guilty but sentenced him to life in prison instead of death. How nice of them. This is another good example of just what a farce and mockery of justice the military trial was.