Nancy Kissel suffers setback in early release bid

The American woman serving a life sentence for the murder of her husband in 2003 in a case that shocked Hong Kong has failed in her latest attempt to have her prison term reduced, RTHK reports.

The Court of Appeal today refused to grant leave for Nancy Kissel, now 56, to take the case to the Court of Final Appeal over a lower court's decision to throw out her request for a judicial review.

Kissel drugged her husband, Robert, with a sedative-laced milkshake and bludgeoned him to death with a lead ornament at their luxury flat in Tai Tam.

She was convicted of murder in 2005, but the verdict was later quashed by the Court of Final Appeal. She was found guilty again in a retrial.

She later sought to have the Long-term Prison Sentences Review Board convert her sentence to a definite term, but was turned down in 2016, prompting her to seek a judicial review of that decision. But that legal challenge was twice dismissed by different courts.

Kissel had argued that the board should have at least told her what it believed was the minimum sentence she should serve for the murder conviction "as a matter of fairness and natural justice.''

She said how the board currently functions is in breach of the Basic Law and the Bill of Rights, adding the top court should hear her case because it is of "great general or public importance" and would affect many others serving indeterminate or long jail terms.

The Court of Appeal said the larger part of her case is not arguable, rejecting her bid to take the case to the Court of Final Appeal.

But the appeal court said Kissel still could make an application directly to the  highest court to hear her case, on the grounds relating to the constitutionality of the review board's functions.