https://deathpenaltyproject.org/ruth-ellis-the-last-woman-to-be-executed...
The application, brought by Ruth Ellis’s grandchildren, Laura Enston, James Enston, Stephen Beard and Chloe Beard, with assistance from Mishcon de Reya LLP, sought recognition that serious mitigating circumstances were never properly considered in her case. In recognition of this, the pardon commutes Ruth’s sentence from execution to life imprisonment and delivers long-awaited justice for her family.
Given our organisational expertise on the death penalty, as well as our experience directly litigating in cases involving violent crime committed in the context of trauma, abuse and complex post-traumatic stress disorder, The Death Penalty Project was invited by Ruth’s family and her legal representatives in May 2026 to make a written submission in support of their application to the Secretary of State for Justice, David Lammy MP.
We highlighted that evidence Ruth had been subjected to sustained physical and emotional abuse at the hands of Blakely was not adequately considered at trial. The extent of her culpability was never properly assessed by a court because, at the time of her sentencing, the death penalty was the automatic punishment for murder, leaving no scope for a judge to consider individual circumstances at sentencing. The result was an irreversible and inhuman punishment that was wholly disproportionate to the crime.
Ruth Ellis’s execution became a defining moment in the history of capital punishment in the United Kingdom. Alongside other controversial executions of the 1950s, her death sparked public protests and campaigns calling for abolition and led to a marked shift in public opinion.
Just four months after she was put to death, a Private Member’s Bill to abolish the death penalty was introduced in Parliament. The bill led to new legislation under the 1957 Homicide Act which restricted the application of capital punishment, introduced the partial defence of diminished responsibility and ultimately paved the way for full abolition in the UK in 1965. Had those legal reforms been in place two years earlier, Ruth could have relied upon the defence of diminished responsibility and avoided execution.
We welcome this long-overdue recognition of the injustice suffered by Ruth Ellis and her family. While no pardon can undo what happened, the decision acknowledges that her case was shaped by circumstances that were not properly understood or weighed by the justice system at the time.
Throughout the campaign, a common refrain has been that what happened to Ruth Ellis would not happen in Britain in 2026: not only because the death penalty has been abolished, but because there is now a far greater understanding of domestic abuse, coercive control, trauma and violence against women and girls.
But in many of the jurisdictions and cases in which The Death Penalty Project works, the issues raised by Ruth’s case remain urgently relevant today. In many states where capital punishment is still used, women continue to be at risk of execution despite acting in the context of prolonged abuse and gender-based violence.
Some are prosecuted in legal systems that fail to recognise the impact of trauma or coercion. Others are still subjected to mandatory death penalty laws that prevent courts from considering individual circumstances at all. For these women, the injustices highlighted by Ruth’s case are not historical – they are immediate and ongoing. We work every day to protect women across the world at risk of the same failures of justice.
Above all, Ruth Ellis’s pardon underscores a simple truth: whilst it recognises that she should not have been executed, it cannot return the life that was taken. The surest safeguard against such irreversible injustices is the abolition of the death penalty itself. Until the punishment has been universally outlawed, there will always be the risk that women whose experiences of abuse, trauma and violence have been misunderstood, ignored or discounted will be condemned first, and only recognised as victims when it is too late.
