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| Sally Challen: No fresh trial over husband murder | Sally Challen: No fresh trial over husband murder |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| An abused woman will not face a retrial for murdering her husband with a hammer after prosecutors accepted her manslaughter plea. | An abused woman will not face a retrial for murdering her husband with a hammer after prosecutors accepted her manslaughter plea. |
| Sally Challen, 65, was found guilty of murdering 61-year-old Richard in Surrey and jailed for life in 2011. | Sally Challen, 65, was found guilty of murdering 61-year-old Richard in Surrey and jailed for life in 2011. |
| Her conviction was quashed in February and she was due to face a retrial for his murder next month. | Her conviction was quashed in February and she was due to face a retrial for his murder next month. |
| However, prosecutors at the Old Bailey accepted the lesser charge on the grounds of diminished responsibility. | |
| Caroline Carberry QC said the guilty manslaughter plea was accepted following a psychiatric report that concluded Mrs Challen was suffering an "adjustment disorder". | |
| Mrs Challen, from Claygate, who never denied killing her husband, said she had suffered decades of emotional abuse from her former car dealer husband. | |
| Her conviction for his murder was overturned by the Court of Appeal, following a campaign led by her sons. | |
| Mrs Challen, who was released on bail in April, had walked into court this morning, flanked by her sons David and James. | |
| During the two-day appeal hearing in February, the court heard evidence relating to Mrs Challen's state of mind at the time of the killing and the issue of "coercive control". | |
| Coercive control describes a pattern of behaviour by an abuser to harm, punish or frighten their victim and became a criminal offence in England and Wales in December 2015. | |
| The couple, who separated in 2009, were attempting to reconcile in August 2010 when Mrs Challen attacked her husband as he ate lunch at the kitchen table in their former marital home in Claygate, her original trial heard. | |
| After attacking him, she drove 70 miles to Beachy Head in East Sussex, where she admitted to chaplains trying to coax her away from the cliff edge that she had killed her husband of 31 years. |