HONG KONG: HK Expat Makes Final Appeal

JANUARY 21, 2010

American Convicted in Hong Kong Killing Seeks a Reversal

By JONATHAN CHENG

HONG KONG—A lawyer for Nancy Kissel, an American expatriate sentenced to life in prison for murdering her investment banker husband, made a final appeal for her freedom Thursday in a Hong Kong courtroom.

A decision is expected in a few weeks. In the event that her conviction is overturned, the prosecution said it would seek a retrial.

Ms. Kissel, a Michigan native, gained international notoriety after admitting to killing her husband, a senior banker with Merrill Lynch, in 2003. She has been in jail since her conviction in September 2005 after a widely publicized three-month trial that dominated conversation in Hong Kong's expatriate circles.

Prosecutors say Ms. Kissel served her husband, Robert Kissel, a drug-laced strawberry milkshake on the night of Nov. 2, 2003, before bludgeoning him to death with a statuette and rolling him up in a carpet. Ms. Kissel, now 45 years old, says she can't remember what happened—only that she may have killed her husband to protect herself after he came at her with a baseball bat during a domestic dispute.

Days after the murder, Hong Kong police found Mr. Kissel wrapped in the carpet and kept in a storeroom at the Kissels' luxury apartment complex.

During the original trial, Ms. Kissel's lawyers pushed for an acquittal, arguing that she acted in self-defense. Ms. Kissel described her husband as a violent cocaine user who forced her to perform abusive sexual acts that took a heavy toll on her psychological health.

The prosecution said Mr. Kissel was furious that his wife had an affair with a repairman who lived near the couple's vacation home in Vermont.

An earlier appeal by Ms. Kissel was rejected in October 2008. The current appeal is her last legal recourse.

Ms. Kissel's lawyer, Gerard McCoy, spent much of his time during the seven-day hearing in Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal arguing that prosecutors improperly used "impugned evidence" and that the judge in the original trial misdirected the jury on several key points.

Mr. McCoy argued that prosecutors relied on hearsay evidence to suggest that Mr. Kissel suspected his wife had been trying to kill him for some time—evidence that Mr. McCoy argues shouldn't have been allowed during the proceedings.

Public prosecutor Kevin Zervos, arguing the appeal in court Thursday, called Ms. Kissel's depiction of her husband "character assassination," and said Ms. Kissel "sought refuge in a claim of memory loss" about the events on the fateful night.

Ms. Kissel, her hair tied back, was brought to the court in a wheelchair because of an apparent problem with her leg. She appeared to follow the proceedings closely, and at one point greeted her family members—some who had flown in from the U.S.—with winks and smiles. Some of her friends also attended, as well as the Catholic priest who played a role in her jailhouse conversion.

Speaking outside the courthouse Thursday, Ms. Kissel's mother, Jean McGlothlin, said she had hoped for a final resolution that day but remained optimistic.

"I don't think the verdict will be upheld, I'm very confident about that," Mrs. McGlothlin said. "What they do next, though, I can't say."

Hong Kong chief justice Andrew Li is leading a bench of five judges who will make a final ruling. Among the judges' options are an overturning of the original verdict and the ordering of a retrial.

The trial has already spawned at least two books and a 2008 Lifetime TV movie starring John Stamos as Mr. Kissel's brother, Andrew Kissel—who, in a separate incident, was murdered a year later in Greenwich, Conn., while under house arrest in relation to a number of fraud cases.

The Hong Kong murder became a sensation there because of the peek it offered into the lives of the city's expatriate elite.

Though the family lived in Parkview, one of Hong Kong's most exclusive communities, the Kissels were "a dysfunctional family, and had been for a long time," Mr. McCoy said in his closing arguments Thursday.

Nancy and Robert married in 1989, and moved to Hong Kong in 1998 so Robert could take up a job with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. He jumped over to Merrill Lynch, where he rose to become managing director and head of the investment bank's Global Principal Investments unit in Asia-Pacific.

The couple moved in high circles, appearing at a banquet for former U.S. President George H.W. Bush just before Mr. Kissel's death.

Write to Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com

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