Clearing Dr. Mudd

At 4 a.m. on April 15, 1865, just six hours after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth and an accomplice rode up to the Maryland farmhouse of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd. Booth needed treatment for the broken leg he had sustained in his leap from Lincoln's box to the stage of Ford's Theater, and, as the familiar story goes, he gave Mudd a fictitious name and kept his face hidden behind a muffler and false beard. Still, Mudd was convicted as a conspirator in the assassination plot and sentenced to life imprisonment. Though he was pardoned in 1869 by President Andrew Johnson, the record of his conviction remained on the books at the time of his death in 1883. It still does.

His tenacious descendants have pleaded -- and pleaded -- with the Government to expunge his conviction from the record. Grandson Dr. Richard Mudd, 73, of Michigan, determinedly carries on the family obsession. In 1971 Mudd presented Michigan's Senator Philip Hart with a 50-page petition documenting his grandfather's innocence, and Hart has promised to present the petition to President Nixon for review. Only complete exoneration will satisfy Grandson Mudd and the dozens of other Mudd descendants. "I'm determined to get this reversed," vows he. "All of us are positive he had no connection with Lincoln's death."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.