SPRINGFIELD, ILL.-- The infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre, inscrutable enough just on the basis of the known facts, has been clouded over the past century and a half by myths and misconceptions.

Some such myths surround the 1875 and 1876 trials of John D. Lee, the only man ever tried and convicted for his role in the 1857 mass murder of Arkansas emigrants near Cedar City, Utah, by Mormon militia men.

In a May 22 session at the 44th annual Mormon History Association Conference meeting this year in Springfield, Robert H. Briggs, an attorney from Fullerton, Calif., and an author of articles on the massacre, appraised Lee's first trial.

The trials, the first of which ended in a hung jury, "presented a legal proceeding with implications far beyond the guilt or innocence of the individual defendant, a case in which the fate of the accused was threatened with being overwhelmed by larger issues and conflicts."

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This story provided by The LDS Church News, an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is produced weekly by The Deseret News.