YVONNE Sleightholme - the jilted bride jailed for life for shooting dead her love rival in a North Yorkshire farmyard - has failed in her latest attempt to prove her innocence.

The independent Criminal Cases Review Commission has rejected her application for the case to be referred to the Court of Appeal.

But two campaigners who have battled for years to get the case re-opened today revealed they will now take the Commission's decision to a judicial review.

Margaret Leonard and David Hamilton believe important evidence, which they say throws doubt on Sleightholme's guilt, should be considered by judges at the Court of Appeal.

Sleightholme, who went hysterically blind following her arrest, was convicted in 1991 of killing Jayne Smith at Broats Farm, Salton, near Malton, in 1988.

A jury decided she shot Mrs Smith after she married Sleightholme's former fiance, William Smith. The jury rejected defence arguments that the shooting was carried out by three hitmen hired by Mr Smith.

Sleightholme's appeal against conviction was rejected in 1993 and the Home Secretary ruled out a fresh hearing in 1997. But the case was re-opened in 1998 by the independent Review Commission, which was set up in 1997 to decide whether cases should be sent to the Court of Appeal in alleged miscarriages of justice.

Margaret Leonard said she hoped the judicial review - for which Sleightholme would be legally aided - would decide that the Commission acted outside its powers and that it must reconsider the matter.

She claimed that Sleightholme, who is in Styal Jail in Cheshire and is still blind, would by now be either free or at an open prison such as Askham Grange near York, had she not continued to protest her innocence.

She said she wanted the Court of Appeal to consider a whole range of evidence not heard by the jury at the original court hearing, which supported Sleightholme's case that others were present in the farmyard on the night of the killing.

One issue concerned a number of footprints found at the scene of the murder in the farmyard.

She said the Commission had decided that concerns over the prints should have been raised by the defence at the original trial. But she felt they were an issue which should be examined by appeal court judges.