Ex-fugitive appeals N.Y. murder conviction

updated 3:14 p.m. ET Oct. 1, 2008

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - A former fugitive convicted of killing a state trooper and wounding two others in 2006 continues to make trouble as an inmate as his lawyers move forward with an appeal, officials say.

Ralph "Bucky" Phillips has been sanctioned five times since arriving at Clinton Correctional Facility, a remote prison near the Canadian border, in early 2007, the state Corrections Department said Tuesday.

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

In prison, Phillips has faced 11 charges of inmate misconduct, ranging from harassment and violent behavior to mailing a letter a year ago "asking that certain explosive devices be brought" into the prison, Corrections Department spokesman Erik Kriss said.

He is in a special prison housing unit through next June as a result of two more recent violations, Kriss said.

At an Oct. 20 hearing, his current attorneys will ask an appeals court in Rochester to overturn his convictions so he can stand trial.

On the run
A career criminal, Phillips escaped from a jail near Buffalo 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.

Then, in 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 being 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 attorney falsely told him that if he didn't, his former girlfriend and their daughter could be imprisoned as accessories.

The Buffalo News quoted a letter from Phillips in May in which he complained that prison officials "are trying to destroy my mental facilities (sic) by housing me with mentally disturbed prisoners who scream and yell night and day and cover themselves in feces, flood their cells and throw feces."

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