BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd
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For more than a century, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd's name has been linked with one of America's darkest moments.
Dr. Mudd was convicted after treating the broken leg of President Abraham Lincoln's killer, John Wilkes Booth, while the assassin was on the lam.
But to the delight of his great-great-granddaughter, Kathleen Shearer of Butler County's Union Township, his name has been cleared.
A U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday threw out the doctor's 1865 conviction of being an accessory.
Judge Paul Friedman upheld a military board's 1992 ruling that said the 1865 military court had no constitutional right to hear a case involving a civilian. An Army official erred when he overturned the board's ruling, he said.
"I'm thrilled," Ms. Shearer said. "My grandfather (Dr. Richard D. Mudd, 97, of Saginaw, Mich.) spent so many years trying to get his grandfather exonerated."
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, sentenced to life, was pardoned in 1869 after saving many prisoners and guards during a yellow fever epidemic.
Her father, John McHale of Suitland, Md., who wrote a biography of Dr. Mudd, said the doctor didn't realize Mr. Booth had shot President Lincoln until eight hours after the killer had left his house.
