Jurors consider manslaughter or murder in retrial of Nancy Kissel

A jury is expected to continue deliberating today on whether American expatriate Nancy Kissel is guilty of murdering her Merrill Lynch investment banker husband.

By 8.30pm last night, more than five hours after the jury retired, a panel of nine had not finished deliberating in the Court of First Instance.

Mr Justice Andrew Macrae released the jurors to appointed quarters to spend the night and instructed them not to discuss the case until this morning.

The judge is expected to send them back to the jury room to continue their deliberations today.

Nancy Kissel pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility and provocation, which the prosecution does not except.

She is accused of murdering Robert Kissel, 40, on or about November 2, 2003. The American mother of three, 46, faced a retrial after the Court of Final Appeal ruled that her first trial was flawed and unfair, and ordered a new trial.

Prosecutors say Robert Kissel drank a drug-laced milkshake, and that his wife then bludgeoned him to death with a heavy lead ornament before wrapping his body in a sleeping bag and carpet. It was alleged she had workmen remove it to a storeroom in Parkview, where the Kissel family lived.