The nine jurors found unanimously that the 46-year-old had planned the Nov. 2, 2003, killing of Robert Kissel, when she gave him a milkshake containing sleeping pills and bashed his head with a lead ornament while he was unconscious.
The Michigan-born mother of three faces a mandatory life sentence for a second time. Hong Kong’s highest court last year overturned a 2005 conviction, ruling the original proceedings had been tainted by evidence prejudicial to her and ordered a retrial. Kissel can apply to serve out her term in the U.S. under a treaty between the two governments.
Prosecution lawyer David Perry argued during the 47-day trial the late investment banker was a victim of a “highly organized” wife who fell out of love and was having an affair with an electrical technician in Vermont.
Evidence found on Nancy Kissel’s computer showed she had searched the Internet for heart-attack inducing drugs and sleeping pills, prosecutors said.
She used four types of sleeping pills to spike her husband’s milkshake, the prosecutors said. When Robert Kissel passed out in his bed, she delivered five blows to the right side of his head with the lead ornament, according to the prosecution.
The jurors, who deliberated for more than 10 hours, rejected defense lawyer Edward Fitzgerald’s argument that Robert Kissel may have provoked his wife into her “frenzied attack” by saying she was mentally ill, that he had filed for divorce and that he’d take custody of their children.
The case is HKSAR v. Nancy Ann Kissel, HCCC55/2010 in the Hong Kong Court of First Instance.
--Editors: Joe Schneider, Douglas Wong
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