during Jomo Kenyatta's unsuccessful appeal against his conviction for membership of the rebel Mau Mau; Kenyatta was a moderate, and is now considered unlikely to have been a member of the organisation. He was imprisoned until 1959, lived under house arrest until 1961, and became the first president of the newly independent Kenya in 1964. Also in 1954 Stevenson represented the Marten family in the Crichel Down affair. The Air Ministry had compulsorily purchased land for bombing practice before the war, promising to return it after the end of hostilities. When they did not honour this promise, the Martens successfully campaigned to be allowed to buy the land back. The case led to a public enquiry, changes in the law on compulsory purchase, and the first resignation of a government minister since 1917. According to fellow judge Eustace Roskill, Stevenson's "fluent delivery, distinctive voice, remarkable sense of timing, and pungency of phrase soon marked him out as an advocate of note." One commentator described him as a "shameless performer" in court. He was probably the most successful barrister of his day. In 1955, aided by junior counsel Sebag Shaw and Peter Rawlinson, Stevenson defended Ruth Ellis against the charge of murdering her lover. Stevenson's decision to keep his cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses to a minimum, and his "near silent performance in court", have been severely criticised by Muriel Jakubait, Ellis's sister. He opened the defence by saying: "Let me make this abundantly plain: there is no question here but this woman shot this man ... You will not hear one word from me – or from the lady herself – questioning that." The jury took 23 minutes to find Ellis guilty; she was sentenced to be hanged, the last woman executed for murder in the United Kingdom. Public revulsion at the case is thought to have played a part in the abolition of capital punishment in the UK in 1969. Stevenson was a leading member of the legal team assisting Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller during the failed prosecution of Dr John Bodkin Adams in 1957. The prosecution's conduct of the trial has been heavily criticised, and its decision to drop a second murder charge via a nolle prosequi was scathingly described by the trial judge, Patrick Devlin, as "an abuse of process", saying: "The use of nolle prosequi to conceal the deficiencies of the prosection was an abuse of process,