nostrils, was fashioned. Powell and all the other prisoners aboard the monitors were forced to wear them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to prevent any further suicide attempts. Only Mary Surratt and Mudd were not required to wear the hoods. Powell cried when the hood was placed on him. The hoods were hot, claustrophobic, and uncomfortable, and in the humid confines of the monitors in the steaming Washington summer, the prisoners suffered immensely. On June 6, Hartranft ordered them removed except for Powell's. The apparent suicide attempt worried prison officials for another reason. Powell allegedly could not remember what state or country he had been born in or his age. Military personnel became concerned that he was insane or was being driven mad by his confinement. Three physicians were called in to determine his sanity, and on June 17, he was interviewed for three hours and 40 minutes by Major Thomas Akaryote and John T. Gray. The military tribunal later ruled him sane. With Booth dead and John Surratt still at large, Powell was the individual who knew most about the conspiracy, and government officials pressed him for information. Major Thomas T. Eckert spent hours with Powell over the weeks until his execution, trying to get him to talk. Trial The trial of the alleged conspirators began on May 9. A military tribunal, rather than a civilian court, was chosen as the prosecutorial venue because government officials thought that its more lenient rules of evidence would enable the court to get to the bottom of what was then perceived by the public as a vast conspiracy. A military tribunal also avoided the possibility of jury nullification since federal officials worried that a jury drawn from the pro-Southern populace of the District of Columbia might free the prisoners. All eight alleged conspirators were tried simultaneously. The prosecution was led by Judge Advocate General Brigadier General Joseph Holt, assisted by Assistant Judge Advocate General Colonel Henry Lawrence Burnett, and Judge Advocate Major John Bingham. A panel of nine judges, all military officers, sat in judgment over the accused. Conviction required a simple majority of judges, while imposition of the death sentence required a two-thirds majority. The only appeal was directly to the President of the United States. A room on the northeast corner of the third floor of the Arsenal was used as a courtroom. The prisoners sat together