The retrial of Nancy Kissel featured a whole new set of defences which made the second court case a far more complicated affair than her original trial, a police officer who handled the court case said.
Chief Inspector Lawrence Ng Yeung-yin spoke out after a jury found the mother-of-three guilty of murder for a second time in the Court of First Instance yesterday.
In the original trial, Kissel pleaded not guilty to murder. This time she pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The prosecution stuck by its charge of murder.
'Last time, the grounds were self-defence. This time, it was diminished responsibility and provocation, so it was more complicated and involved a lot of expert evidence,' Ng said.
Six years had lapsed since the first trial in 2005, Ng said, and many of the witnesses who had been called by prosecutors in the first trial did not want to testify again in the retrial.
Ng said the case relied on a substantial amount of computer evidence as well as testimony from experts, such as toxicologists and government chemists.