The Case Of Sally Challen

In 2010 in Surrey, mother-of-two Sally Challen bludgeoned her husband Richard to death as he sat eating lunch at the kitchen table. She covered his body in a pair of old curtains, a note that said 'I love you', and was later arrested at the notorious suicide spot of Beachy Head. No-one at her trial, including her close family and friends, were surprised when the jury found her unanimously guilty of murder. This year, Sally's widely reported appeal against her conviction gripped the newspapers and the nation. Sally's new defence lawyers argued that she was the victim of Richard's 'coercive control', a newly understood type of psychological abuse, and that she should be in prison for manslaughter, not murder. It is the first time that coercive control has been presented to the courts as a partial defence to murder