Patrick J. Whelan - Trial and Execution

Trial and Execution

Whelan found himself in a "bizarre" 8-day trial. The Prime Minister, a personal friend of Mcgee's, had received permission to sit beside judge William Buell Richards while hearing evidence. Ironically, Whelan was defended by Protestant Orangeman John Hillyard Cameron, while the prosecutor was Irish-Catholic James O'Reilly. The jurors at the trial were William Purdy, Matthew Heron, William Morgan, William Gamble, Thomas Weatherley, John Fecles, Benjamin Hodgins, John Wilson, Samuell Conn, Robert McDaniel, Robert W. Brown and George Cavanagh.

On his first day of trial, Whelan was noted as wearing an "irreproachable" black silk hat, black frock coat, white vest with narrow gold chain and back pants, and exhibiting a "jaunty" demeanor. He sat with folded arms, listening intently to the trial proceedings and eating apples. He was entranced by the flies walking on the ceiling of the courthouse, and laughed audibly when a constable lost his footing and slipped while trying to bring him out of the defendant's box. Agnes Macdonald wrote in her journal that he was a "small, mean-looking" man, who stroked his mustache nervously.

Eliza Tierney, a 14-year old servant at Starr's tavern, was called as a witness and testified that she had known Whelan for six weeks as a boarder who lived in a room on the first floor of the tavern, and that he had owned a pistol for as long as she had known him. However, she discredited the police evidence suggesting that a shot had been recently fired from Whelan's gun, by offering that one of the other servant girls had handled the pistol clumsily only a week before and shot herself in the arm. This was also confirmed by bookkeeper William Goulden in his testimony, who added that Whelan had offered to sell his pistol just six weeks before McGee was killed. Other evidence suggested that Whelan owned the pistol as he was fond of sport shooting.

The prosecutor called Joseph Faulkner, a tailor who knew Whelan in Montreal, hoping that he would testify about Whelan's Fenian connections; while he said he recollected Whelan being angered by McGee during the election season, which was contradicted by other witnesses who claimed Whelan showed no interest in politics, he said there was no known Fenian connection. Another witness identified as Turner testified that he had heard a Member of Parliament mention that the government had offered Doyle $16,000 and passage to anywhere in the world to restart his life, if he would make a sworn statement against Whelan. However Susan Wheatley later testified that she had heard Turner say he would swear his grandfather's life away for $10,000 or $20,000 and no mention was made of Doyle. Later witnesses were actually directly asked to swear whether they had received any money for their testimony.

There was much laughter in the courtroom when Cameron began questioning a witness demanding to know why "John Downey" had just answered that he had never known Whelan, nor lived in Montreal as it was widely known was true. The witness whispered to the judge, who informed counsel that the man called to the witness stand was named John O'Donnell, causing Cameron to mutter "Oh...then you may go down" and excusing him from the court while the actual John Downey was found and sworn in.

In his closing address, which lasted nearly three hours, Cameron noted that he did not believe any man had ever before been given a trial "under circumstances so unfairly arrayed in prejudice against him", and gave the example of several prominent legal cases where the defendant had been found guilty and executed, only to be exonerated later when the real culprit was found. When he resumed his seat, there was applause in the courtroom. When O'Reilly gave his closing address, he ended advising the jury "don't stretch your imaginations...don't trifle with your concsciences or seek for doubts where there are none. Society looks to you for justice."