Nancy Kissel, dubbed the "milkshake" murderess, was unanimously found guilty by a seven-person jury after a three-month trial in 2005.
HONG KONG (Reuters) - An American housewife, jailed for life in Hong Kong for drugging her banker husband with a milkshake and bludgeoning him to death, appealed against her murder conviction on Monday after nearly three years in jail.
Nancy Kissel, dubbed the "milkshake" murderess, was unanimously found guilty by a seven-person jury after a three-month trial in 2005.
She drugged her husband, Robert Kissel, a top Merril Lynch investment banker, with the sedative-laced drink then cracked his skull five times with a metal ornament.
One of her lawyers, Gerard McCoy, told a panel of three western judges in Hong Kong's High Court on Monday that the appeal was launched on two main grounds -- that Kissel had been provoked into the killing and had acted out of self-defense.
!ADVERTISEMENT!McCoy said the trial judge had "misdirected" the jury while presenting his case summary before the verdict.
"Despite his best endeavors, there has been unfairness" that had jeopardized the verdict, McCoy said.
The bespectacled Kissel, dressed in black during the hearing, appeared emotionless but was seen taking extensive notes.
The appeal rehashed some of the gritty elements of the trial which had engrossed the city, including Robert Kissell's alleged cocaine-fuelled abusive behavior.
McCoy recounted how he had threatened his wife with a baseball bat and tried to force her into a bout of anal sex as she crawled from him on the ground.
Kissel admitted killing her husband on November 2, 2003, but pleaded not guilty to murder, a charge which requires premeditation.
She had tried to dispose of his body by rolling it in a carpet and putting it into storage, but the stench soon gave her away.
The sensational case inspired a crime book by Joe McGinniss, "Never Enough," which painted an unflattering portrait of Kissel as a cold blooded killer, who wanted to grab her husband's money and flee to the United States to be with her TV repairman lover.
The Kissel family suffered a fresh tragedy in 2006 when Robert's brother, Andrew, a property mogul charged with fraud, was found stabbed to death in his Connecticut home.
(Reporting by James Pomfret; Editing by Nick Macfie)
