Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain,...

Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, is expected to have her conviction reduced to manslaughter.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission referred her case to the Court of Appeal following a 46-year campaign by her family. Relatives of Ellis, who was 28 when she was hanged in 1955, claim she was provoked into shooting her lover, David Blakely. The commission decided that it had sufficient evidence that the murder conviction was unsafe for the Court of Appeal to quash the murder conviction. If the appeal is successful Ellis could receive a pardon and her relatives compensation.
The appeal will be based on psychiatric evidence that Ellis was suffering from depression following a miscarriage ten days earlier. It is believed to have been caused by Blakely punching her. It will also be argued that Ellis was provoked by another lover, who provided the gun and drove her to the pub in Hampstead where the shooting took place.