A 40-YEAR campaign to quash the conviction of North Wales-born Ruth Ellis - the last woman in Britain to be hanged - finally reaches court tomorrow. Pensioner Muriel Jakubait has never given up hope of the case against her sister Ruth being reopened. The story was turned into a film, Dance With a Stranger, with Miranda Richardson starring as the ill-fated nightclub hostess. Ellis, who was born in Rhyl, was executed on July 13, 1955. A jury had taken only 23 minutes to find her guilty of the murder of her lover, racing driver David Blakely. Blakely, 26, was shot outside the Magdale pub in Hampstead. Ellis herself admitted she "in-tended to kill", and no substantial defence case was made out. But Mrs Jakubait, who lives in Woking, has consistently argued that there were considerable grounds for the charge being reduced to manslaughter. Ellis, a mother of two young children, had been on tranquillisers for four years and only 10 days before the shooting had suffered a miscarriage when Blakely punched her in the stomach. The jury was not given that information. Mrs Jakubait, 83, says her sister had been involved in several violent relationships and there was a strong case to be made for provocation. More than 50,000 people signed a petition calling for a reprieve, and even though, on the morning before her execution, Ellis made a statement implicating her other lover, Desmond Cussen, the then Home Secretary, Gwilym Lloyd George, refused to halt the execution. Tomorrow, in the Appeal Court, Mrs Jakubait's solicitor, Cardiff-based Bernard de Maid, will argue that Ellis was ill at the time, suffering from post-traumatic stress dis-order, but the Crown is expected to contest the appeal. Mrs Jakubait, who lights a candle each day beside her sister's photograph, says she thinks about her morning, noon and night. She said: "I'm a bit anxious about what I might hear, but I am hoping for justice. I want to hear them say that the conviction has been quashed." Ruth Ellis was born in 1926 in West Parade, Rhyl. Her father Arthur was a musician. When she was a baby the family moved to Basingstoke, Hampshire. | 
