STATE APPEALS OVER REVERSAL OF MURDER CONVICTION

Williamson man had been found guilty in 1991 death.

The state has appealed a ruling made by the 3rd Court of Appeals that reversed a murder conviction against Rex Nisbett, who was accused of killing his wife in 1991 in her Williamson County apartment.

Nisbett was sentenced to 42 years in prison in 2014 after a jury found him guilty of the murder of 29-year-old Vicki Lynn Nisbett. Her body hasn’t been found. The 3rd Court of Appeal’s ruling in December said prosecutors failed to provide sufficient evidence about how Nisbett killed his wife. Nisbett and his wife were in the process of getting a divorce.

Rex Nisbett was being held in the Williamson County Jail on Friday with no bail set pending the results of the state’s appeal.

The office of the state prosecuting attorney, which represents the state in all appeals before the Court of Criminal Appeals, filed the appeal of the reversal this week. It said “the state can prove murder through circumstantial evidence without producing a body or being able to identify the manner and means of death.”

Rex Nisbett told his wife’s mother after his wife disappeared that he did not find any blood in Vicki Nisbett’s apartment when he and his mother “cleaned it thoroughly,” the state’s appeal said.

It said detectives later found Vicki Nisbett’s bloodstains in the carpet padding of her closet and a handprint from Rex Nisbett on the wall made in his wife’s blood.

The 3rd Court of Appeals “credited the testimony (in Rex Nisbett’s trial) that there was not enough blood in the apartment to demonstrate fatal blood loss while ignoring the testimony that suggests there was far more blood before appellant (Rex Nisbett) ‘thoroughly’ cleaned the apartment,” according to the state’s appeal.

It said Rex Nisbett also told police he was home with his kids the entire night of his wife’s disappearance but that he was lying because he borrowed a neighbor’s car that night. “That neighbor noticed the next day that his car had damage to the front trim and the truck lock was pulled out of the deck lid,” the state’s appeal said.