Ruth Ellis was convicted of the murder of David Blakely, who was killed in Hampstead, London, on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955. She was 28. Her trial at the Central Criminal Court ended on June 21, 1955 with a verdict of guilty and the mandatory sentence of death. She did not appeal. The Home Secretary declined to recommend a reprieve, and she was executed in London on July 13, 1955.
The case did not close with the sentence. In 1999 an application was made to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which in 2002 referred the conviction to the Court of Appeal. In December 2003 the court held that she had been properly convicted of murder according to the law at the time of the offense. More than twenty years later her grandchildren applied for a pardon, and in July 2026 the King granted her a conditional pardon on the advice of the Justice Secretary. The pardon replaced the death sentence with a sentence of life imprisonment. It did not overturn the conviction, and the government stated that it did not claim she was innocent of killing the man she was convicted of killing.
The offense took place in Hampstead on April 10, 1955. She was charged with murder and tried at the Central Criminal Court in London.
Murder carried a single sentence in England and Wales in 1955. Under the law as it then stood, a person convicted of murder was sentenced to death, and the only way the sentence could be set aside before it was carried out was a decision by the Home Secretary to recommend a reprieve.
The trial was held at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, in London, and lasted two days. It ended on June 21, 1955. She pleaded not guilty to murder and gave evidence in her own defense. Her counsel did not dispute that she had intended the killing. The defense sought a verdict of manslaughter instead, on the ground that she had been provoked.
The question of provocation was decided by the trial judge before the closing speeches. He ruled that there was no sufficient material to support it, "even on a view of the evidence most favourable to the accused." In his summing-up he told the jury that the evidence did not support a verdict of manslaughter on the ground of provocation, and that it was therefore not open to them to return one. Diminished responsibility, which would later become a partial defense to murder, did not exist in English law in June 1955.
The jury convicted her of murder in under a quarter of an hour after the summing-up. The sentence was death.
Ruth Ellis did not appeal against her conviction. The Court of Appeal observed in 2003 that she had consciously and deliberately chosen not to appeal at the time, and in 1999 the Home Secretary of that year told Parliament that no appeal had been lodged. In 1955 the Home Secretary of the day concluded that there were insufficient grounds to prevent the sentence from being carried out, and a reprieve was refused.
Ruth Ellis was executed in London on July 13, 1955, twenty-two days after the verdict.
The power of the Home Secretary to refer alleged miscarriages of justice to the Court of Appeal was replaced in 1997 by the powers of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. In a written answer to Parliament on December 6, 1999, the Home Secretary said that he understood an application in the case of Ruth Ellis had recently been submitted to the Commission, and that it would be for the Commission to decide in due course whether the case should be referred to the Court of Appeal. The Commission received the application in August 1999.
The Commission considered whether she could benefit from later developments in the law of provocation, and whether the statutory defense of diminished responsibility, introduced by the Homicide Act 1957, could be applied to her case. On February 21, 2002 it decided that there was a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would not uphold the conviction, and referred it. It concluded that provocation had been wrongly withdrawn from the consideration of the jury. On the question of diminished responsibility the Commission was plain that there was "simply no basis to import the defence (which came into being in 1957) backwards in time."
The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, heard the reference on September 16 and 17, 2003. Three judges sat, and the appeal was brought by Ruth Ellis, as appellant, against the Crown. The judgment was handed down on December 8, 2003, under the reference R v Ellis [2003] EWCA Crim 3556.
The appeal rested on four grounds. The first was that the trial judge had wrongly withdrawn provocation from the jury under the law as it stood in 1955, and that his ruling rested on a mistaken view held by the Crown that an intentional killing could never be reduced to manslaughter. The second was that later developments in the law of provocation, including the idea of a "slow burn" and the relevance of the accused's personal characteristics, should be applied. The third was that the conviction was unsafe because the defense of diminished responsibility, created in 1957, would be available today. The fourth was an application to admit new evidence: psychiatric evidence for the defense, and evidence the Crown wished to put forward on premeditation.
On the first ground the court accepted that the Crown's view of the law had been wrong. An intention to kill did not by itself make a killing murder at common law, and the court said that the Crown's view did not represent a correct interpretation of the law, although it had been widely accepted at the time. But it found that the trial judge had not ruled on that basis. He had not decided that because Ruth Ellis admitted an intentional killing her guilt must follow. His ruling rested on whether the evidence could support provocation, and on that point the court held that he was entirely right on the law as it stood before the statutory changes.
The court examined what could have amounted to provocation. It held that the events of the weekend before the killing were omissions and not provocative acts, and that "we find it wholly impossible to see that any of the events of the relevant weekend" could furnish a sufficient basis for the defense under the common law. Citing the decisions in R v Stingel and R v Smith (Morgan), it said that jealousy and possessiveness were not enough, and that there was no proper basis for distinguishing between male and female behavior on that point. It added that a loss of self-control could not be described as a sudden and temporary response to violence suffered about two weeks before the killing.
On the second ground the court held that the later developments in the law flowed from the Homicide Act 1957 and were not part of the common law of 1955, and that even on the modern approach a triggering event would still be required. On the third, it held itself clearly bound by its earlier decision in R v Bentley (2001), under which the substantive law as it stood at the time of trial applied. Diminished responsibility was a creature of statute that could not be applied to a killing in 1955. The court added that, were the offense committed today, the issue would be likely to arise.
The court declined to admit the new evidence, because neither the psychiatric evidence nor the Crown's evidence could affect the outcome under the law of 1955. It heard no fresh evidence. Its conclusion was that "Mrs Ellis was properly convicted of murder according to the law at the time when she committed her offence," and that the appeal was "without merit."
In its closing paragraphs the court said it was no part of its function to enter into the debate whether she should have been spared execution. It also questioned whether considering an appeal so long after the event was a sensible use of the limited resources of the Court of Appeal, and suggested that Parliament might wish to consider whether the Commission should have an express power to take the public interest into account before making such a reference.
In October 2025 four of her grandchildren, represented by a law firm acting without charge, submitted an application to the Justice Secretary for a posthumous conditional pardon. They argued that evidence of abuse she had suffered was not properly considered at her trial, and that the law of 1955 had barred a jury from considering it.
On July 8, 2026 the Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary announced in the House of Commons that the King had granted Ruth Ellis a conditional pardon on his advice. The Ministry of Justice stated that the pardon does not overturn the conviction and that it replaces the death sentence with life imprisonment. It cited evidence of domestic abuse and coercive and controlling behavior, said that under modern law the partial defenses of loss of control or diminished responsibility might have been open to her and might have reduced the charge to manslaughter, and described the case as exceptional because of the historic injustice of the death penalty in it. The Justice Secretary described the pardon as an act of mercy.
The central point of legal dispute was whether provocation should have been left to the jury. The Commission concluded in 2002 that it had been wrongly withdrawn. The Court of Appeal held in 2003 that the trial judge's ruling was correct on the common law as it stood, even though the Crown's own reading of that law had been mistaken.
Whether a jury trying the case under modern law would have reached a different verdict has not been tested. The Ministry of Justice said in 2026 that the partial defenses of loss of control or diminished responsibility might have reduced the charge to manslaughter, and the Court of Appeal in 2003 said only that a question of diminished responsibility was likely to arise if the offense were committed today. The 2026 pardon makes no finding that she was innocent.
April 10, 1955: the victim is killed in Hampstead, London; Ruth Ellis is later charged with murder.
June 20 to 21, 1955: Trial at the Central Criminal Court. She pleads not guilty; the judge rules that provocation cannot be left to the jury; the jury convicts her of murder in under a quarter of an hour; sentence of death.
July 1955: The Home Secretary refuses a reprieve.
July 13, 1955: Ruth Ellis is executed in London.
December 6, 1999: A written parliamentary answer records that an application in her case has been submitted to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
February 21, 2002: The Commission refers the conviction to the Court of Appeal.
September 16 to 17, 2003: The Court of Appeal hears the reference.
December 8, 2003: The Court of Appeal finds that she was properly convicted of murder according to the law at the time, and that the appeal is without merit.
October 2025: Her grandchildren submit an application for a posthumous conditional pardon.
July 8, 2026: The King grants a conditional pardon; the death sentence is replaced with life imprisonment; the conviction stands.