§ MR. EDWARD MITCHELL (Fermanagh, N.)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he is aware that a man named Owen Cleary was convicted at the summer assizes, held in Enniskillen on July 8th, 1904, and sentenced to three years penal servitude, that subsequently the statements made at the trial were found to be untrue, that a memorial was afterwards presented to the Lord-Lieutenant narrating all the facts as to Cleary's innocence, that the prayer of the memorial was refused, that after the 483 publication of the Beck case Cleary was requested by the Governor of Maryborough Prison to send forward another memorial, dated January 12th, 1905, and that his sentence was commuted by the Lord-Lieutenant on February 1st; and whether, seeing that a miscarriage of justice has occurred, he will say what steps the Government propose to take by way of compensating Cleary for the injury he has sustained.
§ MR. WALTER LONGThis man was, in the opinion of the learned Judge who tried the case, properly convicted of rape. The only new information subsequently obtained was that the woman had not given her true name, and that there was some suspicion that her character was not so good as she had represented it to be; but nothing transpired to show that the accused was not guilty. The Judge, however, informed the Lord-Lieutenant that had he been aware that the woman's character was not as represented at the trial, he would probably have passed a less severe sentence. The memorials only prayed for a reduction of the sentence, and His Excellency, taking into consideration the matters I have mentioned, ultimately ordered the release of the accused on January 28th last. No miscarriage of justice, as is referred to, occurred in the case. The Governor of the prison made no request or suggestion to the prisoner.