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Thanks, Mark. The 'hanged on a comma' line is of course a reference to the doomed attempt by Casement's defence to show that the 1351 statute didn't apply outside the realm. The argument failed (likewise for Lord Haw Haw in 1945).

Raynor, I wonder if the term homophobic isn't anachronistic in the context of 1916? Casement's private diaries (allegedly forged) were certainly used after the sentencing in an attempt to discredit him in the US and among Catholic sympathisers at home, but also to investigate the possibility of commuting the death sentence on the grounds of insanity. One (sympathetic) biographer, Roy Jenkins, suggests this would have been Asquith's preferred way out.
Of course if the authorities had failed to secure a conviction for treason or some provision of the Defence of the Realm Act they could have presumably have shut Casement up for a couple of years under the Criminal Law Amendment Act (as per Wilde), but of course the occasion didn't arise.