Overview
- The conditional posthumous pardon was announced on Wednesday and was formally linked to actions by the King and Labour MP David Lammy.
- Ruth Ellis’s granddaughter, Laura Enston, appeared on BBC Breakfast to thank supporters and said the case has affected more people than just the family.
- Actor Nigel Havers, whose grandfather Judge Cecil Havers presided over the 1955 trial and whom he later portrayed, said he burst into tears on hearing the pardon and publicly thanked the King and David Lammy.
- Viewers quickly diverted attention from the interview’s substance to Nigel Havers’s visible home during the live link, with many comments on X highlighting the backdrop rather than the pardon itself.
- Ellis was executed in 1955 for killing her partner David Blakely and her case has long shaped debate over domestic abuse, culpability and capital punishment so the pardon is largely symbolic recognition of historical wrongs rather than a legal reversal.