Samuel Alexander Mudd Sr. (December 20, 1833 â January 10, 1883) was an American physician who was imprisoned for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
Booth fatally shot Lincoln on April 14, 1865, but was injured during his escape from the scene. He subsequently rode with conspirator David Herold to Mudd’s home in the early hours of April 15 for surgery on his fractured leg before he crossed into Virginia. Sometime that day, Mudd must have learned of the assassination but did not report Booth’s visit to the authorities for another 24 hours. This fact appeared to link him to the crime, as did his various changes of story under interrogation. A military commission found Mudd guilty of aiding and conspiring in a murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment, escaping the death penalty by a single vote. He was imprisoned at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, about 70 miles west of Key West.
Mudd was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released from prison in 1869. Despite repeated attempts by family members and others to have it expunged, his conviction has not been overturned.
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