Appeals court reviews case of last woman executed in Britain

LONDON -- The case had all the ingredients to make it one of the country's most memorable: A beautiful blonde nightclub hostess, her dashing race car driver lover and a so-called crime of passion that led Ruth Ellis to become the last woman executed in Britain.

On Tuesday, lawyers delved into transcripts from the decades-old trial to argue that Ellis was severely provoked into killing lover David Blakely as he left a London pub in 1955, and that her murder conviction should be overturned.

Michael Mansfield, a lawyer acting for Ellis' surviving family, told three senior judges in the Court of Appeal in London that there was a miscarriage of justice at Ellis' original trial because the judge rejected a defense of provocation.

Mansfield used testimony from Ellis and others at that trial to paint a picture of the hanged woman as someone who was emotionally and physically abused by her lover. He argued Ellis suffered from what is now characterized as "battered woman syndrome."

"Were this trial to be allowed to occur today, the course of the trial would be entirely different," Mansfield said as he sought to have Ellis' conviction changed to the lesser verdict of manslaughter on the grounds of provocation or diminished responsibility.

"The jury should have been given the opportunity to decide what was provocation and was reasonable in the circumstances," he added.

Ellis' 1955 trial lasted just over a day and the jury took less than a half-hour to reach its verdict.

Ellis, 28, never appealed the sentence, and three weeks later she was hanged at Holloway Prison in north London while around 1,000 people held a silent vigil outside.

The death penalty in Britain was suspended in 1965 and permanently removed in 1970.

The Ellis case remains one of Britain's most famous. It has inspired several books and a film, "Dance with a Stranger," starring Miranda Richardson as Ellis.

Mansfield said Ellis and Blakely had a tempestuous relationship, with Blakely alternating affection with abuse. Ten days before she shot him six times outside the Magdala pub in northwest London, Ellis suffered a miscarriage after Blakely, the baby's father, punched her in the stomach.

"This wasn't one or two incidents. This is plainly a pattern of violence," Mansfield said.

He contended that Ellis "snapped" after a weekend during which Blakely deserted her.