Emma Humphreys

Emma Clare Humphreys (30 October 1967 – 11 July 1998) was a Welsh woman who was imprisoned in England in December 1985 at Her Majesty's pleasure, after being convicted of the murder of her violent 33-year-old boyfriend and pimp, Trevor Armitage.

According to her diary, which was found in her biological father's attic three years after her death, she was admitted in March 1983 to the Westfield Diagnostic and Treatment Centre in Edmonton, then transferred to a local psychiatric ward when she cut her wrists.

In December 1983 she returned to Nottingham, England, to live with her biological father and his second wife, and later with her grandmother.

On 30 August 1984, when she was 16, she moved out of her grandmother's home and began working as a street prostitute.

Humphreys was soon approached by 33-year-old Trevor Armitage, a drug addict with convictions for violence.

The Court of Appeal heard that Armitage "had a predilection for girls much younger than himself" and was known by the vice squad to drive around the red-light district most evenings.

Humphreys moved into his house in Turnbury Road, Bulwell.

She continued working as a prostitute and gave Armitage part of her earnings.

She said that he began hitting her.

In January 1985, Humphreys was arrested and kept on remand at HM Prison Risley for two incidents, one of which involved assaulting a hotel manager.

She was conditionally discharged on 21 February 1985.

While she was on remand, according to the Court of Appeal, Armitage allowed a second young girl to live at his home.

On 24 February 1985, a Mrs Whitehead saw Humphreys in a bar; according to the Court of Appeal, she told the original trial that Humphreys had seemed "very lonely, depressed and desolate".

Humphreys, Armitage and several others had spent the evening of 25 February 1985 in a pub.

On the way out of the pub—accompanied by his 16-year-old son, Humphreys, and two of his friends—Armitage allegedly said: "We'll be all right for a gang bang tonight."

The group went to another pub, then back to Armitage's house.

While Armitage was driving his son home, Humphreys retrieved two knives from the kitchen and cut both her wrists, then went to sit on the landing.

When Armitage returned to the house, he went into the bedroom and removed his clothes, except for his shirt, then sat on the landing next to Humphreys.

She told the court that she believed his removal of clothing meant that he wanted sex from her, something she did not want.

At this point, Humphreys said Armitage taunted her about the cuts on her wrists, saying she had not done a very good job.

She responded by stabbing him with one of the knives, piercing his heart and liver.

He died of his injuries.

Humphreys was remanded in custody and tried in December 1985 at Nottingham Crown Court, before Kenneth Jones J and a jury.

During a medical examination just after the killing, a doctor had found "three recent cuts to her right wrist, fifteen well-healed scars to her right forearm, nine recent cuts running across her left wrist with fresh, dry blood over them, and seven well-healed vertical scars running up her left forearm".

A psychiatrist told the court that Humphreys was "of abnormal mentality, with immature, explosive and attention-seeking traits, the last trait referring to her tendency to slash her wrists", according to the Court of Appeal.

The judge directed the jury to, in effect, ignore the psychiatric report.

In considering how a reasonable woman would respond to the situation in which Humphreys had found herself, the jury should not attribute to the reasonable woman the "abnormal characteristics" the psychiatrist had described; that is, those characteristics were not "eligible for attribution to the reasonable woman".

Instead, he told the jury to consider only the events immediately before the killing, and the effect Armitage's taunting would have had on a woman who "did not have a distorted and explosive personality".

He told the jury:

"It is for you to decide, taking into account all the evidence, as to what effect that jeering at her over not having made a good job of cutting her wrists might have had on a young woman who had got herself into that situation but did not have a distorted and explosive personality."

On 4 December 1985 Humphreys was convicted of murder and sentenced to be detained at her Majesty's pleasure.

Humphreys was assisted in her defence by Justice for Women, a feminist law-reform group founded in 1991 by Julie Bindel and Harriet Wistrich.

Three years after her release, Humphreys died, aged 30, of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs at her flat in Holloway, North London.

Humphreys was raised with her two sisters, mother and father in Dolgellau, Merionethshire, north-west Wales.

Her home life appears to have been chaotic.

Her parents separated when she was five and her mother, an alcoholic, remarried; the second husband was reported to have been an alcoholic too.

The mother, second husband and Humphreys relocated to Edmonton, Canada, where Humphreys began drinking, taking drugs, and having sex with men.

Aged 17 when convicted, Humphreys spent a decade in prison before winning an appeal against the conviction, on 7 July 1995, on the grounds of long-term provocation.

The Court of Appeal reduced the conviction to manslaughter, and she was released immediately.

The success of the appeal was significant because it supported the argument that courts should take long-term issues such as "battered woman syndrome" into account when considering a defence of provocation.