Nai Yin Xue

Auckland, Sept 10 NZPA - Nai Yin Xue, jailed for life for murdering his wife in September 2007, has launched an appeal.

Xue's lawyer Chris Comeskey said today his client would be appealing both his conviction and his sentence , which carried a minimum non-parole period of 12 years.

Xue strangled his wife An An Liu, 27, before dumping her body in the boot of the family car and fleeing to Australia with their three-year-old daughter Qian Xun.

He dumped the toddler at a Melbourne railway station before flying on to the United States, where he was caught after a nationwide manhunt.

He was eventually caught on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia by members of the local Chinese community.

Qian Xun moved to China shortly after the abandonment to live with her grandmother.

Mr Comeskey said the grounds for appeal included the fact that the jury was not kept together during their deliberations.

Under rules which came into effect shortly before Xue's trial, juries can go home at night during deliberations instead of being kept together and put up in a hotel as was previously the case.

However, the judge can order them to be kept together, or sequestered, if in the interests of justice.

"Jury non-sequestering is a fairly new thing, and this case had an extremely high profile," Mr Comeskey said.

"It's the sort of case where you are going to go home and all your friends would know it and have a view on it and the potential for influence is huge, you might have thought.

"It is one of the issues the Court of Appeal will be invited to consider."

Other reasons for the appeal included issues surrounding the fairness of the trial, and the effect of the judge's summing up.

Xue loudly protested the guilty verdict when it was delivered in the High Court at Auckland in July and Mr Comeskey indicated after sentencing that an appeal was possible.

He argued during the trial that Ms Liu may have died following a sex act gone wrong, pointing to traces of male DNA other than Xue's on two items of clothing found in the boot with her body.

Mr Comeskey said Xue was doing well in Rimutaka Prison in Upper Hutt and looking forward to the appeal.

He hoped there would be a court date to consider the issue before Christmas.

The jury found Xue strangled his wife on September 11, 2007 and dumped her naked body in his car outside their home in Keystone Ave, Mt Roskill.