Lisa Ellwood is serving a life sentence for murder – after a life marked by abuse, severe mental ill-health, and a trial in which the jury were denied the benefit of psychological opinion evidence. Her appeal will be heard on 26 June 2026.
The conviction
On 12 March 2024, Lisa Ellwood was convicted of the murder of her husband, Ryan Ellwood, on 12 March 2024. She was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 16 years.
Ryan died from a single stab wound at the family home on the night of 29 August 2023. Lisa Ellwood was very heavily intoxicated and has no memory of the events that led to his death.
Lisa’s 16-year-old daughter was present in the home. She gave contradictory accounts to the police. Initially, she said she had not witnessed the stabbing but on her third statement, several months later, she changed her account to say she had witnessed her mother stabbing the deceased.
Childhood
Lisa was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her mother was just 14 years old when she became pregnant. Lisa’s father died when she was 7 years old leaving her mother to raise her two children alone. Lisa’s childhood was marked by severe physical and emotional abuse from her mother, alongside neglect.
From the age of 12, Lisa suffered with profoundly low self-esteem and made repeated attempts to end her own life. She comfort-ate to cope with overwhelming self-hatred and became over-weight.
At age 15, Lisa was raped by her first boyfriend. Instead of supporting her, her mother used the rape as a weapon – repeatedly throwing it back at her in all verbal attacks.
An abusive marriage
Lisa met Ryan Ellwood in Liverpool in 2004. They became friends and she later moved to Wakefield to house-share with him. Although she returned home to Ireland in 2007, they remained friends.
Lisa had two children. Both of their biological fathers were abusive, and those relationships ended because of their violence.
In 2018 Lisa and Ryan began a relationship, with Lisa returning to Wakefield with her children to start a new life with Ryan the following year. They married in 2020.
Ryan repeatedly assaulted Lisa. He threw her down the stairs, punched her and strangled her. On one occasion he knocked her unconscious in the street and left her there. Lisa didn’t report his violence to the police as she was terrified that social services would become involved and her children would be removed.
A neighbour witnessed Ryan attacking Lisa on multiple occasions - hitting her in the face and strangling her until she passed out. The neighbour, who gave evidence at trial, described that Lisa never once fought back. Instead, she froze, crying out for help while being assaulted.
Ryan’s abuse was not only physical. He relentlessly criticised Lisa’s weight. In an effort to be accepted, Lisa lost over seven stone in the first year of their relationship.
When her weight later increased in 2021, Ryan verbally abused her, accusing her of deceiving him into marriage.
Desperate to please him, Lisa borrowed money to undergo gastric band surgery. Unable to now use food as a coping mechanism, as she had done since childhood, Lisa substituted food for alcohol and quickly became very dependant.
As the relationship deteriorated, Lisa’s depression and anxiety deepened. She drank heavily. Her relationship with her 16 year old daughter also suffered, because of Ryan’s behaviour.
The night Ryan died
On the day of the homicide, Lisa and Ryan had been getting on well. They went out together and drank heavily. At some point in the evening they separated and made their way home separately.
Lisa had no memory of getting home, although CCTV footage showed her walking and falling over.
She has no memory of what happened next.
Ryan returned home around 20 minutes before Lisa. Lisa’s daughter was watching television at the time. When police and paramedics arrived, the daughter said she had not been present when the stabbing occurred, but had entered the room after hearing her mother scream and found Ryan collapsed on the floor. She repeated this account in two police interviews.
Several months later, during a third interview, she said she had “recovered her memory” and now recalled witnessing her mother stabbing Ryan. This was the account she provided at trial.
The trial
At trial, the judge refused to allow the jury to consider self-defence. The reason given was that Lisa had no memory of the events just prior to the stabbing, meaning – in the judge’s view – there was insufficient evidence to support self-defence.
This left the jury with only one option: the partial defence of diminished responsibility,
That defence was supported by expert psychiatric evidence that Lisa had a diagnosis of depression and complex post-traumatic stress disorder, stemming from lifelong abuse and domestic violence. This was rejected by the jury, and Lisa was convicted of murder.
The judge imposed a life sentence with a minimum term of 16 years. He said he would have fixed it at19 years but, despite the prosecution claiming that she had blamed her daughter for the stabbing, the judge recognised that this was not the case. Other mitigating factors included no intention to kill, her previous good character, and her mental health conditions.
The appeal
The Court of Appeal has granted permission to appeal on the basis that the judge had refused to allow an expert psychologist, who had extensive experience of working with survivors of domestic abuse, to give his opinion on whether Lisa was impacted by her mental health conditions at the time of the offence and whether this condition taking into account the background circumstances to the killing, substantially reduced her responsibility.
Further grounds on which permission is sought relate to the interaction of intoxication with the Lisa’s mental health condition. In essence, it will be argued that the judge misrepresented the psychiatric evidence in his summing up, by emphasising that the intoxication played a role in her lack of ability to form a rational judgement. However, the defence psychiatrist and psychologist were both clear that her underlying mental health diagnosis also had a substantial impact and were a significant cause of her actions on the night. The evidence of the psychologist, for example, was that “individuals with C-PTSD find it especially difficult to deal with conflict and are at increased risk of acting impulsively …[it] affects their ability to form a rational judgment when they feel threatened or aroused…”
The appeal will be heard at the Court of Appeal on 26th June 2026.
Why Justice for Women are supporting this case
Lisa Ellwood clearly suffered a very difficult childhood and was subjected to violence as an adult including in the relationship with Ryan Ellwood. There is no evidence to suggest this was a case where she was coercively controlling towards the deceased or had any plan or motive to kill him. A primary reason for her conviction for murder is that she has no memory, due to extreme intoxication, of the events that led to the stabbing. However, the underlying evidence points strongly to circumstances in which she had become mentally impaired due to the history of abuse she had suffered and her maladaptive use of alcohol to cope.
This case exposes how women who survive abuse can be punished not only for the violence inflicted on them, but for how they learned to cope with it. Her genuine loss of memory should not be a reason to convict her of murder, rather than manslaughter.
Justice for Women supports Lisa’s appeal because her conviction reflects a system failure — one where women are tried in circumstances where the full context of a history of domestic abuse and the impact of trauma is not adequately explored and taken into account.
Please join us in standing with Lisa. Attend the demonstration outside the Court of Appeal (Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London WC2A 2LL) on 26 June from 9:00–9:45am, and then show your support in the public gallery.
If you are unable to attend in person, please send messages of support for Lisa email to justiceforwomencampaigns@gmail.com or by post to Justice for Women, C/O Centre for Women’s Justice, Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, E2 6HG by 24 June to help us show the strength of support behind her.
Centre for Women’s Justice
Lisa is one of over 30 women who have approached us in the last six years who have been convicted of the murder of men who were violent and controlling of them. CWJ are assisting such women, often with the help of other lawyers to explore grounds of appeal. We are also examining the patterns of systemic discrimination against women that arise in such cases in order to push for reforms. For more information, please watch our film ‘Fightback’ or see our policy page for recent submissions.