A man who was found guilty of butchering a companion, assuming his identity and raiding his accounts is asking the North Dakota Supreme Court to throw out his murder conviction.

An attorney for Dennis Gaede argued Tuesday that prosecutors improperly used his client's previous theft and fraud convictions to blacken his reputation when he went on trial for murder last year. Gaede was convicte, and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

The earlier convictions were irrelevant to whether Gaede, 43, killed Timothy Wicks at Gaede's rural Cass County home in December 2001, attorney William Kirschner said during Supreme Court arguments on Tuesday.

Jurors should not have been allowed to hear about the unrelated crimes attributed to Gaede, Kirschner said, because they were only used "to smear Mr. Gaede."

- Associated Press