The judge in the trial of Nancy Kissel gave directions to the jury that were 'wholly erroneous' and 'point-blank wrong', effectively preventing jurors from considering her key defence - of acting in self-defence - the Court of Final Appeal was told yesterday.
On the second day of Kissel's last chance to overturn her murder conviction in the city's top court, Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang indicated that, at the end of the arguments, he would like to hear submissions regarding the option of a retrial.
Kissel's counsel, Gerard McCoy SC, submitted that the trial judge gave wrong, and contradictory, directions to the jury that effectively 'sliced through the entire defence of self- defence'.
McCoy spent much of yesterday elaborating on arguments made regarding how she was cross-examined during her trial, and on statements made by third parties during bail proceedings. He also argued that the judge had given misleading directions on the law of self-defence.
Kissel, an American mother of three, was convicted of murdering her husband, Merrill Lynch banker Robert Kissel, in September 2005 after a three-month trial. The trial revealed a story of sex, love, friendship, betrayal and ultimately a fatal confrontation in their Parkview home.
Kissel admitted her affair with a television repairman in the US state of Vermont, where she took her children during the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak. On her return to Hong Kong, she drugged her husband with a milkshake laced with sedatives before bludgeoning him to death with a metal ornament.