麻豆约拍

In 2010, the 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 and left a note that said 'I love you'. She was later arrested at the notorious suicide spot of Beachy Head. No one at her trial, including her close family and friends, was 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.

In the months leading up to the appeal, filmmakers Rowan Deacon and Lizzie Kempton were granted access to Sally, as well as the couple’s closest family and friends, most of whom have not spoken publicly before. The film combines their frank testimony with exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of the legal teams on both sides of appeal, to tell the story of this complex, timely and captivating case in full for the first time.

As the appeal date grows closer, Sally’s youngest son David juggles his grief for his father with a compulsion to do everything he can to rebuild what’s left of his family and get his mum out of prison. Meanwhile, the legal teams try to untangle urgent legal dilemmas: is Sally’s confession that she brought the hammer to the scene of the crime fatal to her defence? Was Richard’s behaviour provocation for the killing and what effect did it have on Sally’s mental health? With only one side of the marriage left to tell the story, can the law ever get to the truth?

In the build up to the appeal the odds are stacked against Sally: less than 10 percent of applications for appeal against conviction are successful. The cameras follow the action inside Royal Courts of Justice, where three of the most powerful judges in the country wrestle with the evidence and come to a final decision.

Publicity contact: AW2/MF2