§ MR. C. DIAMOND (Monaghan, N.)I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether he has had before him the papers in connection with the case of a young man 1603 named Coughlin, who was killed on the 17th March last at Hamilton, Lanarkshire; whether he is aware that it was shown during the Inquiry that certain Orangemen in the locality, who were apprehended for the outrage, had previously threatened the young man and his friends; whether any prosecution is contemplated, seeing that other outrages of a similar character have taken place, and that in no case has anyone been punished; and whether any special steps will be taken to detect the authors of these crimes?
§ *THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. B. BALFOUR,) Clackmannan and KinrossI have received communications from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lanark and others, in regard to this very painful case, and I have now the Papers before I me. Seven men, including two uncles of the deceased, were arrested, the case was duly investigated by the Procurator Fiscal, very full precognitions having been taken. Crown Counsel, after considering these, called in the assistance of an eminent medical expert. The deceased had walked home and gone to bed, after the last of two, and, according to some witnesses, three separate affrays in which he had been involved that evening. The medical evidence was to the effect that death was caused by a small punctured wound on the left side of the head, which could not have been caused by a kick, but must have required a sharp pointed instrument. No evidence could be obtained that any of the accused had used, or possessed, any weapon such as could have produced the wound in question, and in these circumstances it was felt that there was no chance of obtaining a conviction. I am informed that no other outrages of a similar character have taken place in this district. There was no evidence of previous threats, except the statement that one of the men arrested had, in a quarrel with the deceased some time before, used some threatening language of a vague character, to which no importance appears to have been attached by anyone at the time. None of the men arrested were Orangemen, or connected in any way with an Orange Association. Nothing has been discovered, either in the course of the investigation, or since, to indicate that the occurrence was due to political or party feeling.