The Cold-Blooded Murder of Joseph Smith

People will always wonder, how could Joseph Smith have been loved by so many but hated by others? How could some see him as a paragon of American values, while others would accuse him of seeing himself as being above the law and a law unto himself? How could he have seemed to have been so incredibly fortunate and successful in so many ways, and yet so catastrophically unfortunate to have faced one set back after another? Perhaps none of this fate came as a surprise to him, for he was told by the angel Moroni at the outset of his mission in September 1823 that his name “should be both good and evil spoken of among all people” (JS—History 1:33; Joseph Smith Papers, Histories 1:222). And what should people today make of all this, particularly from a legal perspective?

For over seven years, the legal team of the Joseph Smith Papers Project has worked on placing Joseph Smith’s legal encounters in their historical legal contexts. Consequently, a series of important articles about Joseph Smith and the law has appeared in BYU Studies Quarterly, in the Journal of Mormon History, and elsewhere. Several of these articles have dealt with the martyrdom itself, the forensic evidence left by the bullet holes and the walls and windows of the Carthage Jail, and a newly deciphered explanation from 1854 by eyewitness John Taylor of what happened there in Carthage, and many other such studies.