Joseph Smith and legal trials

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This page is a summary or index page. More detailed information on this topic is available on the sub-pages below.
This page is based on an answer to a question submitted to the FAIR web site, or a frequently asked question.

Contents 1 Question 2 Response 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Ohio 2.3 Missouri 2.4 Illinois 3 Conclusion 4 Endnotes 5 Further reading 5.1 FAIR wiki articles 5.2 FAIR web site 5.3 Video 5.4 External links 5.5 Printed material

Question

What can you tell me about Joseph Smith's problems with the law?

Response

Entire books have been written on the legal history of the Church in its early days. (See Further Reading below.) Some specific legal issues are considered in separate wiki articles:

Joseph Smith and legal issues wiki articles

• D&C 98 teaches Saints to disobey secular law?
• Joseph Smith and legal trials
  • 1826 trial
• Kirtland Safety Society
  • False charges against Warren Parrish?
  • Money boxes filled with sand?
  • Notes from KSS to be "as good as gold"?
• Nauvoo city charter
  • Habeas corpus
  • Usurpation of power?
• Nauvoo Expositor
  • Nauvoo Expositor Full Text

Introduction

Wrote a leading scholar of Joseph's legal history:

Joseph Smith believed that his enemies perverted legal processes, using them as tools of religious persecution against him, as they had been used against many of Christ's apostles and other past martyrs. Although he often gained quick acquittals, numerous "vexatious and wicked" lawsuits consumed his time and assets, leading to several incarcerations and ultimately to his martyrdom. Beginning soon after his ministry began and continuing throughout his life, Joseph Smith was subjected to approximately thirty criminal actions and at least that many civil suits related to debt collection or failed financial ventures.^[1]

Ohio

After the Church moved to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1831, several religious-based charges were prosecuted against Smith and other LDS leaders, but were dismissed on the grounds listed following each charge: assault and battery (self-defense), performing marriages without a valid license (one was procured), attempted murder or conspiracy (lack of evidence), and involuntary servitude without compensation during the Zion's Camp military crusade to Missouri (won on appeal). In turn, Church leaders successfully instituted charges and recovered damages for assaults occurring while they were acting in a religious capacity. However, the financial Panic of 1837 swamped the Prophet and others with civil debt-collection litigation. Worse still were suits for violating Ohio banking laws when the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company (see Kirtland Economy) failed soon after it was organized in 1836 without a state charter. Charges of fraud and self-enrichment were raised but not proven; a jury conviction was appealed, but Joseph Smith left Ohio for Missouri before it was heard.^[2]

Missouri

In Missouri, most actions against the Latter-day Saints were extralegal, brought by non-Mormon vigilantes prejudiced against the Saints' opposition to slavery, their collective influx, and Smith's religious teachings concerning modern revelation and the territorial establishment of Zion in Jackson County. Civil magistrates routinely refused to issue peace warrants for Mormons or to redress their personal injuries or property damage. For example, despite being beaten and tarred and feathered and having the printing office destroyed, the LDS printer was awarded less than his legal fees and the Presiding Bishop received "one penny and a peppercorn." All three branches of state government seemed paralyzed or supportive of mob action, as the Saints were repeatedly dispossessed and expelled from county to county.^[3]

Illinois

In 1838-1839 the Saints settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, after their wrongful expulsion from Missouri. To avoid the "legal" persecutions suffered in earlier states, they obtained a liberal Nauvoo city charter for Nauvoo, which granted broad habeas corpus powers to local courts. These helped to free Joseph Smith and other Latter-day Saints when they were sought on writs by arresting officers from outside of Nauvoo. In 1841 state judge Stephen A. Douglas set aside a Missouri writ to extradite Joseph for charges still pending there, and in 1843 a federal judge did the same for a similar requisition after the alleged shooting of then ex-governor Boggs. However, the increasing use of the writ of habeas corpus by Nauvoo magistrates, preempting even state and federal authority, escalated distrust among non-Mormons who felt that Joseph Smith considered himself above the law.^[4]

Conclusion

Concluded one author at a FAIR conference:

Joseph Smith was persecuted in courts of law as much as anyone I know. But he was never found guilty of any crime, and his name cannot be tarnished in that way.^[5]

Endnotes

1. [back] Joseph I. Bentley, "Legal Trials of Joseph Smith," Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols., edited by Daniel H. Ludlow, (New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1992), 3:1346–1347. ISBN 002904040X. off-site off-site off-site
2. [back] Joseph I. Bentley, "Legal Trials of Joseph Smith," Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols., edited by Daniel H. Ludlow, (New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1992), 3:1346–1347. ISBN 002904040X. off-site off-site off-site
3. [back] Joseph I. Bentley, "Legal Trials of Joseph Smith," Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols., edited by Daniel H. Ludlow, (New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1992), 3:1346–1347. ISBN 002904040X. off-site off-site off-site
4. [back] Joseph I. Bentley, "Legal Trials of Joseph Smith," Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols., edited by Daniel H. Ludlow, (New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1992), 3:1346–1347. ISBN 002904040X. off-site off-site off-site
5. [back]  Joseph I. Bentley, "Legal Trials of the Prophet: Joseph Smith's Life in Court" (2006 FAIR Conference presentation) FAIR link (Key source)

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

Joseph Smith and legal issues wiki articles

• D&C 98 teaches Saints to disobey secular law?
• Joseph Smith and legal trials
  • 1826 trial
• Kirtland Safety Society
  • False charges against Warren Parrish?
  • Money boxes filled with sand?
  • Notes from KSS to be "as good as gold"?
• Nauvoo city charter
  • Habeas corpus
  • Usurpation of power?
• Nauvoo Expositor
  • Nauvoo Expositor Full Text

FAIR web site

Joseph Smith and legal issues FAIR articles

• Joseph I. Bentley, "Legal Trials of the Prophet: Joseph Smith's Life in Court" (2006 FAIR Conference presentation) FAIR link (Key source)

Video

Legal Trials of the Prophet: Joseph Smith's Life in Court, Joseph Bentley, 2006 FAIR Conference

• Part 1:Trials of the Prophet: Joseph Smith's Life in Court
• Part 2:Trials of the Prophet: Joseph Smith's Life in Court
• Part 3:Trials of the Prophet: Joseph Smith's Life in Court
• Part 4:Trials of the Prophet: Joseph Smith's Life in Court
• Part 5:Trials of the Prophet: Joseph Smith's Life in Court

External links

Joseph Smith and legal issues on-line articles

• Joseph I. Bentley, "Legal Trials of Joseph Smith," Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols., edited by Daniel H. Ludlow, (New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1992), 3:1346–1347. ISBN 002904040X. off-site off-site off-site
• Stephen R. Gibson, "Why Was Joseph Smith Jailed?," One-Minute Answers to Anti-Mormon Questions (Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers, 2005) ISBN 0882907840. off-site
• Dallin H. Oaks and Joseph I. Bentley, "Joseph Smith and Legal Process: In the Wake of the Steamboat Nauvoo," Brigham Young University Studies 19:2 (Winter 1979): 167–199. off-site; reprinted from BYU Law Review 3 (1976):735–782.

Printed material

Joseph Smith and legal issues printed materials

• Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts : a Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 1. ISBN 0252069803.
• Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 1:88–96, 377, 390–493. GospeLink
• Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 2:85–450. GospeLink
• Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 3:55–465. GospeLink
• Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 4:40–430. GospeLink
• Dallin H. Oaks, "The Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor," Utah Law Review 9 (Winter 1965):862–903.
• Dallin H. Oaks and Joseph I. Bentley, "Joseph Smith and Legal Process: In the Wake of the Steamboat Nauvoo," BYU Law Review 3 (1976):735-782; reprinted in BYU Studies 19 (Winter 1979):167.
• Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy, the Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 1. ISBN 025200762X.
• Morris A. Thurston, "The Boggs Shooting and Attempted Extradition: Joseph Smith's Most Famous Trial," Brigham Young University Studies 48:1 (2009): 5-56.