More than 70 years after her hanging, Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom, is to be posthumously pardoned. Justice Secretary David Lammy informed the House of Commons that King Charles has accepted the government’s recommendation to grant a conditional pardon, acknowledging a profound injustice in this exceptional case.
This decision does not call into question Ellis’s guilt in the murder of her lover, David Blakely, but retroactively commutes the death penalty to life imprisonment.
Ellis, who worked as a hostess at a nightclub, was executed on July 13, 1955, for shooting and killing Blakely outside a London pub. Ellis and Blakely had a tumultuous relationship marked by infidelity, violence, and a beating that caused her to miscarry.
At her trial, the judge had instructed the jurors to disregard the abuse as a defense, and that was enough for them to return a guilty verdict and sentence her to death in just 20 minutes.
Her grandchildren, who fought for years to clear her name, emphasized that the pardon does not undo the past or erase the trauma that scarred two generations, but it is an official acknowledgment that the judicial system failed.
“We carried a shame that was never ours”
Laura Easton, Ellis’s granddaughter, stated, according to Daily Mail: “This pardon does not undo what happened 71 years ago. It does not restore the lives that were destroyed, the children who were left behind, the years that were lost. But it does say, officially and definitively, that Ruth should not have been executed, that the justice system failed. This acknowledgment has profound significance for our family. Ruth was the victim of constant and brutal abuse. Her children—our mother and our uncle—never recovered. My uncle committed suicide. My mother’s trauma left her unable to be the parent we needed. The shadow of Ruth’s execution fell across two generations. We carried a shame that was never ours to bear.
The evidence that would mitigate the charge today
The grandchildren had filed a petition last year with the Minister of Justice, Mr. Lami, requesting a conditional pardon, on the grounds that she herself had been a victim of domestic abuse.
The Ministry of Justice noted that Ellis’s behavior was shaped by this pattern of domestic abuse as well as by coercive and controlling behavior, which are now viewed differently. Under current law, Ellis could have invoked loss of control or diminished responsibility, factors that would have reduced the charge to manslaughter, thereby preventing her execution.
“Her responsibility was shaped to a large extent by domestic abuse, the trauma, and the circumstances that were never properly acknowledged during her trial,” a source at the Ministry stated.
Unlike judicial appeals, pardons can take into account broader factors, such as social developments, which may render a conviction or the resulting sentence inappropriate or unjust.
A profound injustice is acknowledged
Today, Mr. Lami stated in Parliament: “I have the honor to announce that His Majesty the King has accepted our recommendation to grant a conditional pardon to Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom. Although the pardon does not claim that she was innocent of the murder of David Blakely, it commutes the death penalty to life imprisonment, in order to acknowledge a profound injustice in this exceptional case.”
She admitted she wanted to kill him
Ruth Ellis, who worked as a hostess at a nightclub, was executed on July 13, 1955, after being convicted of the murder of her lover, David Blakely.
Ellis shot and killed Blakely outside The Magdala pub in Hampstead, London, following a tumultuous relationship that involved infidelity on both sides, a termination of pregnancy, and violence, including a punch to the stomach during a fight that led to a miscarriage.
Even back then, British public opinion was already questioning whether the death penalty had a place in 20th-century society, and Ellis’s case became politicized in the debate surrounding the death penalty as a method of punishment in modern Britain.
The trial judge instructed the jury to disregard as a defense the fact that the 26-year-old mother of two had suffered “abuse at the hands of her lover.”
During cross-examination, Ellis admitted that she intended to kill Blakely, and it took the jury just 20 minutes to find her guilty of murder—a charge that carried a mandatory death sentence.
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