Our thanks to Nick for this. An extract:

Her solicitor, Harriet Wistrich, thinks the new law should be accepted as “new evidence” in the case.

She believes this is the first time coercive control has been used as a defence in a murder appeal.

Ideally, Ms Wistrich wants the conviction reduced to manslaughter. But she anticipates facing an argument that evidence of Richard’s controlling behaviour had been available at the original trial.

The fact that the family want to see her freed and none of Richard’s friends or relatives has come forward to say otherwise, is significant, she believes. But she fears the fact Sally brought the hammer with her “with a conditional intent to use it”, suggests some premeditation. This could mean the murder conviction will stand, says Ms Wistrich.

Both grown-up sons back the legal challenge, with David clear that his father’s treatment of his mother is a textbook example of coercive control.

“It was tick, tick, tick – everything: financial abuse, psychological manipulation, controlling her freedom of movement, just controlling every facet of her mind… It was almost like she was a robot and he punched in the commands of what she had to do.”

Ms Wistrich’s Wikipedia page is here. The start of the page:

Harriet K. Wistrich (born 1960) is an English solicitor and radical feminist who specialises in human-rights cases, particularly cases involving women who have been sexually assaulted or who have killed their violent partners. She works for Birnberg Pierce & Partners in London. She was Liberty’s Human Rights Lawyer of the Year in 2014.

Wistrich is co-founder of Justice for Women, the feminist law-reform group, and founding director of the Centre for Women’s Justice. She has written for The Guardian and is the editor, with her partner Julie Bindel, of The Map of My Life: The Story of Emma Humphreys (2003).

Nick writes:

Mike, it looks like this will become the “get out of jail free” card for every woman who kills her partner.

Indeed. A feminist dream come true – the right to kill male partners, and suffer no punishment in consequence.

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