OF JOHN H. SURRATT IN THE CRIMINAL COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Hon. GEORGE P. FISHER Presiding. VOLUME I. WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 1867. TRIAL. JUNE 10, 1867. The court was opened at 10 o'clock. Present the district attorney, E. C. Carrington, esq., his assistant, N. Wilson, esq., and associate counsel, Messrs. Edwards Pierrepont and A. G. Riddle, for the United States, and the prisoner and his counsel, Messrs. Joseph H. Bradley, R. T. Merrick, and Joseph H. Bradley, junior. The COURT said: Gentlemen, this is the day assigned for the trial of John H. Surratt, indicted for the murder of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United States. Are you ready to proceed? Mr. BRADLEY. The prisoner is ready, sir, and has been from the first. The DISTRICT ATTORNEY. If your honor please, I am happy to be able to announce that the government is ready to proceed with the trial. Before we proceed, however, sir, to empanel a jury, we desire to submit a motion to the court, which motion we have reduced to writing. With the permission of the court I will now proceed to read it to your honor. It is as follows: In the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. United States vs. John H. Surratt. Indictment, murder. And now, at this day, to wit, on the 10th day of June, A. D. 1867, come the United States and the said John H. Surratt, by their respective attorneys; and the jurors of the jury empanelled and summoned also come; and hereupon the said United States, by their attorney, challenge the array of the said panel, because he saith that the said jurors comprising said panel were not drawn according to law, and that the names from which said jurors were drawn were not selected according to law; wherefore he prays judgment, and that the said panel may be quashed. The DISTRICT ATTORNEY. This motion, if your honor please, is sustained by an affidavit which I hold in my hand, and which, with the permission of your honor, I will now proceed to read. We think that it will be found unnecessary, after this affidavit has been read, to introduce any oral testimony. The affidavit was then read as follows: DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, County of Washington, to wit: Be it remembered that on this seventh day of June, A. D. 1867, before the subscriber, a justice of the peace in and for the county aforesaid, in the District aforesaid, personally appeared Samuel Douglass, who, being first duly sworn, deposes and says, that in the months of January and February, A. D. 1867, he was register of Washington city, in the District aforesaid; that about the first of February in said year, this affiant deposited in the box required to be kept in the office of the clerk of the supreme court of the District of Columbia, four hundred names, (each name being written on a separate piece of paper, and each paper being carefully rolled and tied,) as a part of the names from which jurors were to be selected under the provisions of the act of Congress of June 16, 1862; that at the same time the clerk of the levy court deposited forty names, and the clerk of Georgetown deposited eighty names in said jury box; that the names deposited by this official were selected by him partly from the poll lists of Washington city and partly from the names of citizens who he thought well qualified to serve as jurymen; that the names of the persons so selected by this affiant as register were not communicated by him to the clerk of Georgetown or |