High Court judge Michael Lunn indicated Wednesday that he will finish his directions to the jury today and allow them to consider the verdict in the sensational trial which opened on June 6.

The trial has captivated Hong Kong with its long and often sordid commentary, detailing Nancy and Robert Kissel's fall from being a happy, privileged couple to accused and victim.

One of the many issues the jury must decide is whether Robert Kissel was drugged and lying helpless on the night he was killed due to being served a milkshake laced with sedatives.

Lunn noted that a government toxicologist had never before seen the combination of hypnotics and sedatives found in the victim's stomach. But he also accepted that the government laboratory could only test for trace amounts of the drugs and that there was no way of knowing what effect the drugs had prior to death.

Blood stain pattern analyst Lun Tze- shan testified that he believed the victim was lying at the foot of the bed due to blood stains in that area of the master bedroom. He said he found no suggestion of "contact blood" on the walls.

But Lunn also directed the jury to "have regard to [defense counsel] Mr [Alexander] King's stinging criticisms" about the way this examination was conducted and the suggestion it was "fundamentally flawed."

The prosecution alleges that in the months leading up to the fatal night of November 2, 2003, Nancy Kissel, 41, who was having an affair with a TV repairman in the United States, searched for dangerous drugs on Web sites, went shopping for such drugs, concealed them in a milkshake which she served to both her husband and a neighbor.

Later that evening she allegedly smashed the victim's skull with five fatal blows with a heavy metal ornament in their Parkview apartment.

Her actions are so incriminating that the accused now has to claim memory loss in relation to those events, the prosecution contends.

The defense counters that Nancy Kissel was the real victim. She suffered five-years of violence and sexual abuse at the hands of an obsessively driven investment banker who became paranoid about possible divorce on the grounds of spousal abuse, which would wreck his career.

On the night he died, Robert Kissel threatened his wife with divorce and the removal of the children from her care, the only thing left in her life, the defense said. Consequently a furious fight ensued during which the victim attempted to force sodomy on the accused and when she resisted, he came at her swinging a baseball bat.

Nancy Kissel testified that she feared for her life and defended herself with the metal ornament. She accepts that she inflicted the fatal blows to her husband's head, but claims she cannot remember how she did it.

The prosecution relies upon circumstantial evidence since there is no video footage nor eye-witnesses to the killing.

David Noh, who had worked with the victim testified that in a phone conversation that evening, November 2, 2003, when Robert Kissel would already have drunk the milkshake, he found him sounding sleepy and tired.

Andrew Tanzer, a neighbor, was chatting with the victim in the Kissel apartment the day they drank milkshakes prepared by the accused. Consequently, around 4pm he either blacked out, fell asleep or was semi- conscious and testified the effects were "something like amnesia," said Lunn.

Tanzer's wife said she tried slapping his cheeks to keep him awake that night, and considered calling an ambulance due to his strange behavior.

The judge will finish his summary of the evidence today before allowing the five-man, two-woman jury to begin pondering Nancy Kissel's fate.