The jury that found a Christchurch woman guilty of murdering her husband was unaware that she is already serving a prison sentence for another crime.
Helen Milner, 50, was yesterday convicted in the High Court in Christchurch of killing her husband Phil Nisbet by spiking his food with a drug to which he was allergic. She will be sentenced in February.
After the verdict was reached, it emerged that she was in prison throughout the trial for trying to pervert the course of justice, at the expense of her own son.
Milner had complained to the police that her son Adam Kearns, who was 18 at the time, had been sending threatening texts to her phone, in breach of a restraining order for which he spent 16 days in custody.
Milner was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison, and later denied parole, when the police discovered the texts were sent by Milner herself.
She had also been convicted of fraud worth $29,000.
In New Zealand, it is usual for previous convictions such as this to be suppressed during a trial.
