ROCHESTER - Ralph “Bucky” Phillips, a notorious fugitive who killed a New York state trooper and wounded two others in 2006, failed to persuade an appeals court to withdraw his guilty pleas and allow him to stand trial.

Phillips, 46, 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 murder and other charges. But he argued in an appeal last month that he entered the pleas only because he got bad advice from a court-appointed lawyer.

In a unanimous decision Friday afternoon, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court determined that Phillips voluntarily admitted his intention to kill or wound state troopers staking out his former girlfriend's house in rural Chautauqua County in western New York.

“He knew that the police had set up surveillance at the location ... that the weapon he used was 'very powerful' and could inflict a fatal wound, and that he shot the two men,” the judges wrote.

“We therefore conclude that the plea ... is factually sufficient” and that Phillips “intended to kill the victims and that he 'knew or reasonably should have known' that they were police officers.”

Calls to attorney Linda Campbell, who argued Phillips' appeal, were not immediately returned.

Phillips contends he pleaded guilty because his trial lawyer falsely told him that if he didn't, his former girlfriend and their daughter could be imprisoned as accessories. The judges countered that Phillips “stated at the time of the plea that he was satisfied with the services of his attorney.”

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.

The following August, he shot troopers Joseph Longobardo and Donald Baker Jr. with a high-powered rifle as they crouched in woods near 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 has been sanctioned five times since arriving in early 2007 at Clinton Correctional Facility, a remote prison near the Canadian border, and was placed in a special prison housing unit through next June.

“What I don't want to do is perpetuate a stage for Mr. Phillips,” Chautauqua County prosecutor David Foley said in a telephone interview. “What pleases me about (the ruling) is hopefully it will end his ability to get attention put on himself.

“He deserves every moment that he sits in a special housing unit on his own as far as I'm concerned.”

Phillips has faced 11 charges of inmate misconduct, ranging from harassment and violent behavior to mailing a letter a year ago asking someone to smuggle in unspecified explosive devices, the state Department of Corrections said.

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.”