Someone had to stay behind to ensure the others got out safe. It had been Hannibal's bad luck that he had drawn the short straw instead of Murdock. While the team, including Murdock who had been left severely rattled by the war and was only half sane at this point, made their way to Los Angeles, Hannibal's defense attorney came up with the only defense he could think of to get him off.
The thing was, considering the Colonel's somewhat erratic and often manic behavior, the defense was quite plausible.
While the rest of the team ran from the law, using the plan they'd been given before they broke out, Colonel Smith was being sent to a little white room in the VA. A room in which he stayed for the most part for the next ten years, as the team's man on the inside, the team's secret weapon who could get away because he wasn't wanted by the law. And, if he was caught, the military would just return him to the hospital rather than send him to prison, and therefore he could be sprung again and again as necessary.
Had it not been for the team who came to him for plans amongst other things such as his ability to disguise himself and blend in just about anywhere, he would have most likely gone completely stir crazy and done something stupid, something stupid that would have most likely gotten him killed. As it was, on the days he was forced to stay in the hospital, he spent almost the entire time he wasn't being forced to speak with the psychiatrists pacing. When he could cheek the meds that made him fuzzy as if there was a wool blanket wrapped around his brain that was.
