 On 1 April , Bury 's solicitor , David Tweedie , petitioned the Secretary of State for Scotland , Lord Lothian , for clemency . Tweedie argued that the sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds of the conflicting medical evidence and the jury 's initial reservations . Tweedie further argued that Bury could have inherited insanity from his mother , who had died in a lunatic asylum . A clergyman whom Bury had befriended , Edward John Gough , minister of St Paul 's Episcopalian Church in Dundee , also wrote to Lothian asking for a reprieve . The Secretary of State refused to intervene in the normal course of the law , and Bury was hanged on 24 April by executioner James Berry . The following day , The Dundee Courier printed an editorial lambasting capital punishment : 
