British minister's niece on trial for murder in France

Jessica Davies contacted police in the early hours of a Sunday in November 2007 to say she had stabbed the 24-year-old man at her apartment in the chic Saint-Germain-en-Laye suburb west of Paris, judicial officials said.

Police found the now 30-year-old niece of Britain's multi-millionaire junior defence minister Quentin Davies so drunk that she could not be brought before a judge until the evening, sources said at the time.

Davies, who is being held in Versailles women's prison, claimed to remember nothing of the stabbing, only that she had met Olivier Mugnier in an Irish pub near her flat a few hours before his death, according to one source.

The trial by jury in a court in Versailles is expected to last two days, with a verdict on Tuesday. Davies faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison if convicted of voluntary homicide without premeditation.