The police investigation into the death of high-flying American banker, Robert Kissel, was botched and bungled from the outset, denying his accused wife Nancy a fundamental legal right, the High Court heard on Monday.

Defense counsel Alexander King SC told the jury they cannot rely upon the police investigation beyond reasonable doubt, because officers ``thought this was an open and shut case'' and made only ``cursory glances'' resulting in unanswered questions and tainted evidence.

Furthermore, the officers failed to give Nancy Kissel, ``a simple application of legal rights,'' meaning that they now have to maintain, despite grilling cross-examinations, ``the stupid and ridiculous story about investigating a missing person'' when they knocked on her door on November 6, 2002, King said.

The result of this ``substandard'' investigation, and the maintenance of a missing-person investigation, which King called ``rubbish,'' is that the jury has been deprived of a confirmatory record of the true events on the night Nancy Kissel was arrested, King argued. King noted that a chief inspector, a senior inspector and a superintendent, along with a large team of officers, descended upon the Hong Kong Parkview residential complex for what they said was a missing person, or an assault investigation.

``That simply doesn't make sense,'' said King. He noted that Superintendent Nat Nichols, the senior officer involved in the investigation at the time, has not testified.

Possible vital evidence, in the medicine cabinet of the master bathroom was also missed, allowing domestic helpers to discard items during their packing, said King.

A domestic helper also testified during the trial that the master bedroom was never cordoned off and a friend of the victim had said the apartment was ``wide open'' and that the children and their dog were ``roaming around.''

When police told Nancy Kissel that they were investigating the missing person and her assault claim, they already had four search warrants, primarily for the storeroom, stating ``it is very suspicious that Mr Kissel had been killed by his wife.''

``Could it be any clearer?'' asked King, that their intention was to investigate murder, not a missing person or an assault.

There was then a six-minute period in the master bedroom when Nancy Kissel described to police how she had been assaulted by her husband.

``But the most senior officer at the scene, who says he is investigating an assault or missing person, can't remember a single thing she said,'' noted King.

``If it just stopped there it would be bad enough. But it doesn't stop there, it gets a whole lot worse,'' said King.

He said that when the police were notified on November 8 they had missed a black bag of bloodied items in their initial search, they should have thought ``we better search every room.''

But they didn't, and had to be asked to return again on November 12 and 13 to collect more bags of bloodied items, said King.

King noted that if it were not for the accused's solicitor, there would not even be a baseball bat available for examination in this trial.

Senior Inspector See Kwong-tak, had testified that they never found nor seized a baseball bat.

``Can you accept that evidence? I submit not,'' said King, drawing the jury's attention to the fact that government scientist Lun Tze-shan had testified that See had, ``surprise, surprise'' informed him of a baseball bat.

More recently, no fingerprinting was conducted on that baseball bat. King submitted that this was because police officers' fingerprints would have shown up since they picked it up and discarded it, said King. Today, King will elaborate further before Justice Michael Lunn why the work of the government forensic scientists was dubious and cannot be relied upon.