By BEN DOBBIN
Associated Press

ROCHESTER - A former fugitive convicted of killing a New York state trooper and wounding two others in 2006 argued in an appeal Monday that he never admitted in his plea his intention to kill anyone.

Ralph "Bucky" Phillips is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole after telling a judge in November 2006 that he was "guilty as hell" of a litany of charges. But Phillips, 46, maintains he entered the pleas only because he got bad advice from a court-appointed lawyer.

At a hearing before the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, his attorney maintained that Phillips never admitted "he intended to kill anyone" nor "knew or reasonably should have known" the two men he shot as they staked out his former girlfriend's home in rural Chautauqua County were police officers.

Prosecutors countered that Phillips' guilty plea was legally sufficient.

"He's saying he was never asked that question ... ‘Did you intend to kill?' " county District Attorney David Foley said. "My argument is ... if you aim a gun that you know can kill someone at a human being, you can infer from those facts that he intended to kill."

According to the statute, Foley argued, "it's not what Mr. Phillips says now subjectively, it's what a reasonable person would believe. And that's a legal standard, it's an objective standard."

The appeals court is likely to decide in about a month whether to overturn Phillips' convictions.

A career criminal, Phillips escaped from the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden in April 2006, using an industrial can opener to cut a hole in a kitchen ceiling. While on the run, he was stopped in a stolen car in June and opened fire on Trooper Sean Brown, who was wounded in the abdomen but survived.

The following August, he shot Troopers Joseph Longobardo and Donald Baker Jr. with a high-powered rifle as they staked out his former girlfriend's home. Longobardo died three days later, while Baker, shot through the torso, wound up hospitalized for almost three months.

Phillips was finally captured in September 2006, just across the state line in Pennsylvania, after one of the largest manhunts in state history.

He now claims he pleaded guilty because his lawyer falsely told him that if he didn't, his former girlfriend and their daughter could be imprisoned as accessories.