Mormon legal battle coming to Chicago
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Tickets available for dramatization of 1840s extradition hearings of Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith
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The University of Chicago is one of the sites for the dramatization of the extradition hearings of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church.
Tickets are now available for the Oct. 14 Chicago presentation of Smith’s habeas corpus trials and panel discussion on this seminal event that originally took place in Illinois in the early 1840s. The event will be held at 6 p.m. at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, 915 E 60th St.
Tickets for the Chicago reenactment and discussion are $15 and are available at www.josephsmithcaptured.com.Â
This is the final event of the programs sponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, a division of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency; the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission; and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. A group of attorneys and judges, including Illinois Supreme Court Justices Rita B. Garman and Anne M. Burke have been heading up months of work to present this event to the public.
The Chicago event will be a two-hour presentation of the three habeas corpus hearings involving Smith, the Mormon Prophet, followed by a panel discussion of the use of habeas corpus from Joseph Smith to Abraham Lincoln to Guantanamo Bay.Â
David A Strauss, the Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, will moderate the panel discussion featuring the Hon. Sue E. Myerscough, Judge for the U.S. District Court, Central District of Illinois; Michael A. Scodro, Illinois Solicitor General; Jeffrey D. Colman, Jenner & Block; and Jeffrey N. Walker, Joseph Smith Papers Project.
Another performance of the hearings will be held in Springfield at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum on Sept. 24. In historic Nauvoo, Illinois, one of the key settlements in the early years of the Mormon faith, tours will be conducted on Sept. 23 along with a presentation by The Church of Latter-day Saints’ Elder Dallin H. Oaks.
For further information, contact John Lupton, Executive Director of the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission in Springfield at 217-670-0890, ext. 1. John.lupton@illinoiscourthistory.org
