The Supreme People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City yesterday maintained the death sentence for 45-year-old Du Kim Lien, who killed her husband, a police colonel, with sleeping pills first and then pesticide through injection last year.

>> Wife who killed cop husband gets death >> Wife who killed cop with pesticide and syringe faces dock The victim was Colonel Tran Xuan Chuyen who had worked in the Phu Lam Police Office under HCMC Traffic Police Department.  He died at 50. Lien, who was arrested on March 14, 2012, on charges of murder, was sentenced to death by the HCMC People’s Court on March 29, 2013. She later appealed.  At court yesterday, Lien cried and said she deeply repented of her crime. She begged the jury to give her a lighter sentence so that she could have a chance to live with her children.   However, the court rejected her appeal, affirming that there was no ground to consider a commutation, since she had carried out the killing in a cruel and despicable manner. Lien had a strong determination to kill her husband at any cost and with such a crime she deserved the death penalty, the jury concluded. At the March 29 trial, Lien told the court that she had suggested to Chuyen that they should sell their house to pay debts totaling VND1.3 billion ($62,400) that she had borrowed from many people, but Chuyen did not agree.  Chuyen often beat her when he got home after drinking, especially after she told him about her plan to sell the house, Lien had told the court. Therefore, she decided to kill him so that she would become the sole owner of the property and have a free hand to sell it at any time. On March 11, 2012, after Chuyen returned home and got drunk, she mixed 10 sleeping pills into a glass of milk and offered it to him. Finding Chuyen not dead after hours of sleeping, Lien fed him with the sleeping pills again, but the man was still alive, so she decided to kill him with pesticide. She then injected pesticide into her husband’s bottoms through a syringe and also poured it into his mouth until he died on March 13.