Hong Kong A wealthy American expatriate who beat her banker husband to death after drugging him with a milkshake laced with sedatives was back in a court Monday appealing her conviction.

Michigan-born Nancy Kissel was jailed for life in September 2005 in the murder of Robert Kissel, a senior Merrill Lynch banker, at their luxury apartment on Hong Kong island.

The three-month trial, which had all the elements of a Hollywood movie, captivated Hong Kong and grabbed the attention of the local and international media during the summer of 2005.

Nancy Kissel, who has been held at the Tai Lam Centre for Women in Hong Kong, has always denied the November 2003 murder, saying she acted in self-defence after years of physical and sexual assaults by her 40-year-old husband.

The prosecution argued the murder was cold-blooded and that Nancy Kissel first sedated her victim with a drug-laced milkshake before bludgeoning him to death with a heavy metal ornament.

She wrapped his body in a rug and then arranged for workmen to carry it to a storeroom.

The prosecution argued the murder was planned to avoid a messy divorce so Nancy Kissel could be with her TV repairman lover, Michael Del Priore, who lived in a trailer park in Vermont.

The appeal, set for eight days, was expected to challenge the judge's summation, arguing that its length at 2.5 hours and speed in which it was delivered made it difficult for the jury, whose first language was not English, to understand.

The defence was also expected to claim that the jury should have been given the option of delivering a verdict of diminished responsibility despite the fact that Nancy Kissel had said at the time she didn't want it as an option.

Nancy Kissel, 44, came to Hong Kong with her husband in 1997. The couple had three children, all of whom are now in the care of the family of the victim's younger sister in Seattle. (dpa)