Hong Kong prosecutors yesterday issued a new murder indictment against Nancy Kissel, an American who successfully appealed against an earlier conviction on charges of drugging and then bashing her husband to death in a luxury apartment complex.

Hong Kong's Department of Justice submitted the fresh murder charges against Kissel to the special administrative region's High Court, which scheduled a trial starting on November 1, said one of her lawyers, Alexander King.

Her attorneys had hoped for a charge of manslaughter.

Kissel was jailed for life after being convicted of murder in September 2005.

However, last month Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal ordered a retrial, saying she was improperly cross-examined and that the trial judge wrongly allowed hearsay evidence. It told prosecutors to file a fresh indictment.

Her first trial grabbed headlines around the world with its revelations about the breakdown of a wealthy expatriate couple's marriage.

Prosecutors alleged that Kissel carefully plotted her husband Robert's murder in November 2003, first drugging him with a milkshake laced with sedatives and then bludgeoning his head with a metal ornament.

Kissel said her husband confronted her about a divorce, attacked her with a baseball bat and tried to have anal sex with her, so she killed him in self defense.

While prosecutors portrayed Robert as a loving father, his wife said the former investment banker for Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch was a heavy drinker and cocaine user who frequently demanded oral and anal sex.

She acknowledged having an affair with an electrician who worked at the couple's vacation home in Vermont.