02 July 2013 :

Du Kim Lien, 45, had her death sentence -- for killing her husband, a police officer, with pesticide and sleeping pills -- upheld at her appeal trial. The country’s highest court upheld the death sentence handed down to a woman who killed her husband, a police officer, with a pesticide and sleeping pills two years ago. Du Kim Lien, 45, had her appeal rejected by the Supreme People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City for what the court described as her “cruel and vile” acts. Lien was sentenced to death by a HCMC court at the conclusion of her first trial March 29 for murdering Tran Xuan Chuyen, 52, a city traffic police officer by giving him an overdose of sleeping pills and later injecting him with a pesticide. She reportedly killed him for his refusal to sell their house to pay off her debts, which totaled VND1.3 billion (US$61,700). She had planned to pawn the house to repay her debts after he died. He had threatened to divorce her. On the night of March 11, 2011, she dissolved 10 sleeping pills in a glass of milk and gave it to him to drink. The next morning, finding he was groggy but alive, she put five more in some water and poured it into his mouth. A day later she injected a pesticide into him, and Chuyen finally died.