On 6 May 1916 Markievicz was sentenced to death for her role in the Easter Rising; the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment because she was a woman.
Following the collapse of the Easter Rising, Constance Markievicz surrendered to British forces and was court-martialled. On 6 May 1916, she was found guilty of participation in the armed rebellion and sentenced to death by firing squad, the same fate that befell fifteen of the Rising's male leaders, including James Connolly and Patrick Pearse.
However, the presiding authorities controversially commuted her sentence to penal servitude for life, with the court explicitly citing her sex as the reason for clemency — a decision Markievicz herself reportedly resented, stating she wished she could have shared her comrades' fate. This commutation, while sparing her life, was emblematic of the era's paternalistic attitudes toward women, even those who had taken up arms.
The episode intensified her status as a martyr-in-waiting and revolutionary icon among Irish nationalists. Her imprisonment, first in Kilmainham Gaol and later in England, transformed her into a potent symbol of resistance and sacrifice. The public reaction to the executions of her male comrades, combined with the sparing of her life, complicated public discourse around gender, punishment, and political violence in revolutionary Ireland, and fuelled growing sympathy for the independence cause.