Dr. Samuel Mudd was a physician who was imprisoned for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. After fatally shooting Lincoln on April 14, 1865, Booth escaped to Mudd’s home for surgery on his fractured leg. A military commission found Dr. Mudd guilty of aiding and conspiring in the murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment, escaping the death penalty by a single vote. Mudd was pardoned from prison in 1869. His conviction has never been overturned. Samuel Mudd is often given as the origin of the phrase “Your name is mud.”
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