Many Latter-day Saints are well-acquainted with Joseph Smith's numerous run-ins with the law, most of them unjustified. But according to an adjunct professor at the BYU Law School, the numerous court mishaps also led to the martyrdom of the prophet.

"Joseph Smith and the law make many people uncomfortable," professor Joseph Bentley said during an Education Week class Thursday. "But throughout his life, [Joseph Smith] was wrongly accused by the law."

Bentley said Smith was involved in more than 200 lawsuits before his early death in 1844, and some of them came even before the publication of the Book of Mormon.

The earliest court case involving the Prophet comes from a New York case in 1826, called "The People vs. Joseph Smith." Smith was charged with fraud and disorderly conduct, and most historians believe he was acquitted of the charges. However, even that has been questioned.

"This trial is the most controversial trial in Joseph Smith's history," Bentley said.

But the trial that led to the martyrdom involved the destructor of the newspaper the Nauvoo Expositor in 1844. After only one issue that voraciously criticized the Prophet and other church leaders, the Expositor was promptly shut down because of a court order called an abatement of nuisance.

Joseph Smith and other community leaders in Nauvoo were tried as many as four times for this single event. One of those trials led Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, to Carthage, Ill., where they were shot and killed by a mob composed of many of the same militia members assigned to protect them.

In one of the final trials before Carthage, Illinois Gov. Thomas Ford convinced Smith to arrange for a new trial, away from Nauvoo, presided over by a non-Mormon judge. The complaint, arrest and trial were arranged in one day, and the presiding judge was Daniel H. Wells.

Wells may be known to members of the BYU community as a prominent Mormon, who converted to the church after the trial and became a counselor to President Brigham Young after moving to the Utah territory.

Joseph Smith's most vehement antagonists were ex-communicated church members, including three sets of brothers by the surnames Law, Higbee and Foster. William Law was Smith's second counselor while in Nauvoo, and handled many church administrative functions during his tenure there, between 1839 and 1844. "All our sorrow in this city has arisen through the influence of this one man," Bentley said, quoting Joseph Smith, referring to Law.



Copyright Brigham Young University 22 Aug 2008