Between 1826 and 1844, JS participated in
approximately thirty-eight criminal prosecutions in , , , and . His roles in these cases varied. In thirteen
cases, he was the complainant. He was named as a defendant in
twenty-one cases, in two he served as a witness, and in two others
he was involved as an interested third party. Most of JS’s criminal
cases resulted from conflicts that resulted from his religious
position and influence. Even as disestablishment inaugurated
religious liberty in , it
also created a hostile environment for churches—such as the Catholic
Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—that did
not conform to prevailing assumptions governing proper religious
belief, behavior, and structure. American Protestants sought to
circumscribe the power of the clergy, locating authority instead in
the laity. They were suspicious of the concentration of power in
religious leaders and ecclesiastical direction of economic and
political behavior. As the number of Latter-day Saints grew, JS’s
direction of the church’s finances, political activity, and
centralized settlement practices resulted in increasing legal and
extralegal conflict with antagonists.
JS’s criminal cases were heard in
multiple courts. Most cases were initiated before who were
authorized to conduct preliminary examinations to determine whether
there was sufficient evidence against the accused to send the case
to trial before the county-level court; depending on the state, this
court was known as either the court of common pleas or the circuit
court. Under the act incorporating the city of , Illinois,
commonly known as the , the
mayor and acted as justices of the peace
within the city, with authority under state law to hold preliminary
examinations for alleged violations of state statutes. In addition,
the mayor and aldermen—either sitting alone in their individual
courts or together as the Nauvoo Municipal Court—were authorized to
hear complaints that city ordinances had allegedly been violated.
Individuals convicted of breaching ordinances before the mayor’s or
aldermen’s courts could appeal their convictions, first to the
municipal court and from there to the circuit court.
The majority of JS’s criminal cases,
both those he initiated as a complainant and those in which he was a
defendant, resulted from conflicts with his antagonists. On three
occasions in , in 1826 and twice in 1830, he was
charged with being a disorderly person for his use of while in the employ of in 1825–1826. The latter two cases were
brought by Protestant ministers and others who were opposed to the
church. In 1834, JS accused former
Latter-day Saint of
threatening his life. Another antagonist, , brought an charge against
JS in 1835 before a justice of the peace following an altercation
between JS and his brother-in-law .
Two years later, Newell alleged that JS had hired two men to
assassinate him. , Ohio, justices of
the peace held preliminary examinations to evaluate these
allegations and in each case sent them to the Geauga County Court of
Common Pleas for trial.
Legal tension with antagonists continued after JS relocated to in the late 1830s. Following violent clashes
between church members and their opponents in Missouri in summer and
fall 1838, Missouri governor
ordered the expulsion of the Latter-day Saints from the state and
the imprisonment of JS and a few others during winter 1838–1839 on
charges stemming from the conflict. In April 1839, grand juries in
, , and counties indicted JS and
dozens of other Latter-day Saints on charges of and several other crimes. However, JS and other
indicted church members escaped, evidently with the acquiescence of
Missouri officials, before these cases advanced to trial in the
respective circuit courts.
After JS and the Saints established
themselves in , Illinois,
officials made three attempts to have him
apprehended and to answer charges related to
the earlier conflict. JS was arrested in June 1841, but after
appearing on a writ of before
judge in the
Warren County, Illinois, circuit court,
JS was discharged on the grounds that the warrant was invalid. The
following year, Missouri officials again sought JS’s extradition,
this time for allegedly being an to the May 1842 shooting of former governor . After going into hiding to
avoid arrest in late summer and fall, JS appeared before the United
States Circuit Court for the District of Illinois in January 1843 on
a writ of habeas corpus. Judge
discharged JS on the grounds that the evidence supplied by the
Missouri government was insufficient to justify the extradition.
Finally, in June 1843 Missouri officials again sought JS’s
extradition to answer an indictment charging him with committing
treason in 1838. On 1 July 1843, the Nauvoo Municipal Court
discharged JS on a writ of habeas corpus “on the merits of the
case.”
JS was also involved in criminal
proceedings stemming from events that occurred in . He filed complaints in courts
accusing multiple individuals of violating city ordinances by
threatening or otherwise harming him. At the May 1844 term of the
, Illinois,
circuit court, a approved two indictments against
JS—for adultery and fornication and for —based on testimony from former Latter-day Saints
and other opponents. The following month, on 10 June, the Nauvoo
City Council, which included JS as mayor, declared the Nauvoo
Expositor, a newspaper operated by his antagonists, a
nuisance and ordered its destruction. One of the
Expositor’s proprietors, , filed a
complaint before a Hancock County justice of the peace accusing JS
and other Latter-day Saints of committing riot. When vigilantes
threatened to attack Nauvoo, JS called out the and declared martial law in the city.
Evidently based on this action, ,
one of JS’s critics, filed a complaint before a justice of the peace
alleging that he had committed treason, a nonbailable offense that
confined him to the Hancock County jail at the time of his
murder.
JS’s criminal cases had mixed
outcomes. Six of the thirteen cases he initiated with a complaint
resulted in a court ruling supporting his claims, although four of
those decisions were subsequently reversed on appeal or
dismissed. The remaining seven cases
initiated by JS either were dismissed for lack of evidence or did
not progress to trial. Most of the twenty-one
criminal cases brought against JS resulted in a discharge for lack
of evidence or dismissal before trial. The Court of Common
Pleas acquitted JS in the two cases brought against him by in the 1830s. JS
was unambiguously convicted in only one of the twenty-one cases in
which he was a defendant, when he insisted in 1843 that a justice of
the peace fine him for assaulting the tax
collector. The outcome
of the 1826 disorderly person trial before a justice of the peace is uncertain due to the lack of
contemporaneous documentation and conflicting later accounts. In all, JS’s thirty-eight
criminal cases made up approximately 20 percent of the total number
of cases he was involved in.