With the prosecution leading off inside a packed courtroom, both sides appealed to the jury to decide - is Kissel a vicious killer, as Chapman said, or an abused victim who acted in self-defense, as her lawyer claimed.

``Before our very eyes, the summer has disappeared,'' said Alexander King SC, representing Kissel, as he recounted the long saga of sex, love, lies and deception that has unfolded during the course of what has been dubbed the milkshake murder trial.

``The evidence of the prosecution case points conclusively to her guilt on the count of murder,'' Chapman said earlier in a lengthy summation that took up the better part of Friday's hearings.

But King told the jury the prosecution's case was flawed and that ``common sense'' will rule out their ``theory of premeditation.''

Kissel's lawyer said: ``The only true verdict according to the evidence, is `not guilty'.''

Chapman began Friday saying that the detailed record of Internet searches for sedative drugs was ``unassailable evidence'' that Robert Kissel's wife of 16 years had the intent to kill him.

``On November 2, 2003, Nancy Kissel would do exactly that,'' Chapman said.

In August, she had searched on the Internet for ``sleeping pills, overdose on sleeping pills, medication causing heart attack, drug overdose,'' he said.

``Nothing can be possibly clearer than that,'' Chapman said, which establishes her ``murderous intent.''

He asked the jurors to bear in mind, that the accused was named as the primary beneficiary in the victim's will and life insurance polices, and that his estate had been estimated at US$18 million (HK$140.4 million).

By August 2003, she had spent four to five months away from Hong Kong in the US state of Vermont, ``and her perspective and outlook in life had changed considerably when Michael Del Priore had entered her life,'' Chapman said, referring to Nancy Kissel's alleged lover, a TV repairman.

``She was planning thereafter, with possibly Michael Del Priore's tacit encouragement, to remove the obstacle in her life which Robert Kissel had become,'' he said.

Her show of normality, her suggestions of an abusive husband to counselors and doctors in the days leading up to the death of the victim, was evidence that she was ``attempting to lay the ground for the events that followed,'' Chapman said.

She obtained the drugs, which found their way into her husband's stomach via a pink milkshake, in advance, Chapman said, for ``no possible medical reason.''

He dismissed Nancy Kissel's testimony that she was attacked by the victim before the murder. ``There was no life or death struggle,'' said Chapman. No-one heard screaming, nor yelling, nor was there evidence of defensive injuries on the deceased.

``This was no frenzied attack. This was a cold-blooded killing,'' he said, noting that Kissel herself has admitted to inflicting five vicious and fatal blows to the head of her husband with a metal ornament.

From November 2 until her arrest on the night of November 6, ``she set about a cover-up in the most calculating and determined way possible,'' Chapman said.

Those actions ``speak so loudly and so incriminatingly that Nancy Kissel now claims to have no recollection of those events,'' he said.

``This case is not about a battered wife doing away with an abusive husband,'' he said.

Kissel's allegations that her husband was abusive are a ``self-serving act of deception and lies'' he said, part of an ``assassination of the character of Robert Kissel [that] was solely done in an attempt to avoid criminal responsibility for what she had done.''

Acts of forced and injurious sodomy committed against the accused by her husband over many years were a similar fabrication. She never sought medical attention for the supposed attacks, he said. ``Why not? It never happened.''

The years of physical and sexual abuse were invisible to friends and family, including those who guaranteed her bail and her own father, he said. ``The reason for this?'' Chapman asked. ``It never happened.''

When it came time to respond, King noted that 3.30pm on a Friday was ``the worst time to start.''

But he outlined his arguments and prepared the jurors for Monday.

``We say, she is not guilty, because in the course of events, Mrs Kissel acted in lawful self-defense,'' King said.

He said that ``circumstantial evidence'' points conclusively in the direction of the defense and that, like a rope, ``when you put all the strands together, it's strong enough to rely upon.''

The prosecution case has been flawed since November 6, 2003, when police went to the Kissel residence before arresting her, King said.

``The police at that time thought there was nothing to investigate,'' because they were already convinced of her guilt, he said.

From then on ``flaws in the prosecution case have continued,'' King said, promising to elaborate Monday.

He warned that the jurors must ``resist the temptation to come to a collective decision'' and that it was the individual view that matters.

King also warned against speculative inferences and prejudice against the lifestyle led by the accused. But once the jurors put that aside and look at the evidence carefully, they will see the prosecution has ``failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that she did not kill in self-defense,'' he said.

The trial continues Monday.