Ex parte Milligan
Circuit Court petition

On May 16, three days before their scheduled execution, Horsey's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and the executions of Milligan and Bowles were postponed to June 2. President Johnson approved commutation of the sentences for Milligan and Bowles to life imprisonment on May 30, 1865. In the interim, Justice David Davis, an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and a judge of the federal circuit that included Indiana, and Judge Thomas Drummond, another federal circuit court judge, reviewed Milligan's circuit court petition. The two judges disagreed about whether the U.S. Constitution prohibited civilians from being tried by a military commission and passed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
oulipo:avoid_letter[e], length_constraints:number_sentences[8]