page_title: John Surratt
section_title: Trial
hierarchical_section_title: John Surratt / Trial
caption_attribution_description: John Surratt, son of Mary Surratt, in Zouave uniform. Surratt conspired with John Wilkes Booth to kidnap Lincoln in 1865.
context_page_description: John Harrison Surratt Jr. was accused of plotting with John Wilkes Booth to kidnap U.S. President Abraham Lincoln; he was also suspected of involvement in the Abraham Lincoln assassination. His mother, Mary Surratt, was convicted of conspiracy and hanged by the U.S. government; she owned the boarding house that the conspirators used as a safe house and to plot the scheme.
  He avoided arrest immediately after the assassination by fleeing to Canada and then to Europe. He thus avoided the fate of the other conspirators, who were hanged. He served briefly as a Pontifical Zouave but was recognized and arrested. He escaped to Egypt but was eventually arrested and extradited. By the time of his trial, the statute of limitations had expired on most of the potential charges which meant that he was never convicted of anything.
context_section_description: Eighteen months after his mother was hanged, Surratt was tried in a Maryland civilian court. It was not before a military commission, unlike the trials of his mother and the others, as a US Supreme Court decision, Ex parte Milligan, had declared the trial of civilians before military tribunals to be unconstitutional if civilian courts were still open.
  Judge David Carter presided over Surratt's trial, and Edwards Pierrepont conducted the federal government's case against him. Surratt's lead attorney, Joseph Habersham Bradley, admitted Surratt's part in plotting to kidnap Lincoln but denied any involvement in the murder plot. After two months of testimony, Surratt was released after a mistrial; eight jurors had voted not guilty, four voted guilty.
  The statute of limitations on charges other than murder had run out, and Surratt was released on bail.
caption: John Harrison Surratt Jr. in Papal Zouave uniform, c. 1867
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