Death Penalty News

A Dead Woman’s Sentence Is Commuted to Life in Prison. Justice or Farce? On July 8, England’s Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, David Lammy, informed his colleagues in the House of Commons that King Charles had granted a conditional pardon to a woman who was executed on July 13, 1955. The beneficiary of the King’s posthumous mercy was Ruth Ellis, who, as a report in the Guardian notes , “was the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom.”

Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the UK, has been granted a posthumous conditional pardon. Ellis was hanged at London's Holloway Prison in 1955 after being convicted of murdering her lover David Blakely. Her family have campaigned for her murder conviction to be overturned, arguing she was a victim of domestic abuse and was physically and emotionally abused by Blakely before shooting him. Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy told MPs the King had granted the pardon, saying that the death penalty had been replaced with a sentence of life imprisonment.