Former deputy headteacher Sion Jenkins will be told on Friday whether he has won his second appeal against a conviction for murdering his foster daughter Billie-Jo.

Three appeal judges who have heard nine days of detailed evidence and legal argument have three options - dismiss the appeal, allow it and free Jenkins from his life sentence or quash his conviction and order a retrial.

The Crown has argued that the Court of Appeal should uphold the conviction or, failing that, direct that Jenkins should face a new judge and jury.

Jenkins' lawyers insisted a fair retrial would be impossible after so many years in a case which depended largely on disputed detailed and complex scientific evidence from expert witnesses on both sides.

Jenkins, 46, was convicted at Lewes Crown Court in 1998 of battering his 13-year-old foster daughter to death with an 18in metal tent spike as she was painting a patio door at their home in Lower Park Road, Hastings.

It was alleged that, during a three-minute visit to the house on February 15, 1997, Jenkins argued with Billie-Jo, lost his temper, hit her over the head up to ten times and then drove off on a spurious shopping trip to a DIY store with two of his four natural daughters, Charlotte, then known as Lottie, and Annie.

Earlier, Crown lawyers contested a claim that Jenkins was denied a fair trial because his daughters had been turned against him by their mother and the police.

Jenkins claimed defence lawyers at his trial six years ago were deterred from calling the two girls to give evidence because of indications that they were hostile towards him.

But Crown counsel Richard Camden Pratt QC told the Court of Appeal it was clear from recorded interviews the girls gave to a psychiatrist that this was not true.

Lottie, then ten, had said she wanted to give evidence but said she would feel guilty if something said in court caused her father to be found guilty.

Annie, 12, said she did not want to go to court but would if she had to. She would not want to help the prosecution against her father but would not want to lie to help him. Mr Camden Pratt said: "This is hardly indicative of a child who has become hostile to her father. She just wanted to tell the truth."

It was the prospect of their telling the truth about what happened on the day of Billie-Jo's death that really worried the defence, he said.

Jenkins himself had said he would be "more comfortable not involving the children".