The Treasonous Comma: Roger Casement and the 1351 Act

Roger Casement was convicted of treason based on a single comma in a thirteen fifty-one statute.

The court debated whether treasonous acts committed outside British soil were punishable by death.

Original medieval laws used hand-inked slashes called virgules instead of modern punctuation marks.

Nineteenth-century legal drafters avoided all punctuation to prevent printer errors from changing the law.

Judges prioritized the original Parliament Roll over printed versions to verify the statute's true meaning.

The defense argued that a comma incorrectly expanded the definition of a capital crime.