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<\/p>\nThe last woman executed in the United Kingdom will receive a posthumous conditional pardon due to a “profound injustice”, the country’s deputy prime minister has confirmed.<\/p>\n
Ruth Ellis, a 28-year-old nightclub hostess, was hanged in July 1955 for shooting dead her racing driver lover David Blakely as he left a London pub.<\/p>\n
Ms Ellis was a mother of two children who were aged three and 10 at the time.<\/p>\n
Her execution provoked a public outcry and helped swing public opinion against the death penalty.<\/p>\n
The case gripped Britain and was turned into the 1985 film Dance with a Stranger, starring Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett.<\/p>\n
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The family of Ruth Ellis have long campaigned for her to be pardoned for murder. (AP Photo)<\/p>\n
For decades, Ms Ellis’s family has argued that she was a victim of abuse and that if the case were tried today it would likely have resulted in a charge of manslaughter not murder.<\/p>\n
“I have the honour to say that his majesty the king has accepted our advice to grant Ruth Ellis a conditional pardon,” UK Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy told parliament.<\/p>\n
“While the pardon does not claim she was innocent of killing David Blakely, it replaces the death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment to recognise a profound injustice in this exceptional case.”Ellis’ family spent decades seeking justice<\/p>\n
Four of Ms Ellis’ grandchildren made an application to Mr Lammy last year, highlighting the “repeated and long-standing sexual, emotional and physical abuse Ellis suffered” at the hands of Mr Blakely.<\/p>\n
Granddaughter Laura Enston said justice had “finally been done”.<\/p>\n
“Ruth was a victim of sustained and brutal abuse. Her children — our mother and uncle — never recovered. The shadow of Ruth’s execution has fallen across two generations,” she said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“This pardon does not undo what happened 71 years ago. It does not restore the lives that were broken \u2014 the children left behind, the years lost.<\/p>\n
“But it says, formally and finally, that Ruth should not have been executed; that the justice system failed her.”<\/p>\n
Ellis’ case triggered law change<\/p>\n
The single mother from a modest background showed no emotion during her trial which the jury took just 14 minutes to find her guilty.<\/p>\n