Why was Joseph Smith in jail when he was shot and killed?
By the beginning of June 1844 (the month that Joseph Smith Jr. was murdered), the “anti-Mormon” sentiment that had followed the Latter-day Saints since the first days of the Restoration had come to a boil. A handful of former members of the Church that had apostatized over one reason or another (most due to their disagreement with some action by Joseph Smith Jr.) were now attacking him quite vehemently and, under the direction of Joseph’s former counselor William Law, set up a new Church (which they called “the True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”) and began publishing an “anti-Mormon” newspaper known as the *Nauvoo Expositor.* The *Nauvoo Expositor* laid many claims to Joseph Smith’s charge, mostly dealing with Smith’s supposed desire to unite Church and state and his private practice of plural marriage, a principle that Joseph had been *very* reluctant to practice (having known about it for five years before finally taking his first plural wife) and even more reluctant t
