TORONTO - A man whose murder confession put him behind bars for 31 years was a suicidal, inveterate liar whose admission of guilt cannot be believed, Ontario's highest court heard Wednesday.

The argument by Romeo Phillion's lawyers, however, ran headlong into the skepticism of the presiding justices, who noted his detailed confession was almost entirely correct factually.

"To me, it is an overwhelmingly accurate confession," Justice James MacPherson remarked.

"Not only is it accurate, it is accurately remembered 4 1/2 years later."

Phillion, now 69, was convicted in 1972 of second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Ottawa firefighter Leopold Roy in 1967 based entirely on the statement he gave to police -- a confession he immediately recanted.

The Court of Appeal is considering, at the federal government's request, whether Phillion's conviction was a miscarriage of justice.

In January 1972, Phillion admitted guilt following his arrest for the gunpoint robbery of a cab driver.

"I did the murder of the fireman a long time ago," he said as part of a voluntarily signed statement.

MacPherson noted the detailed confession was "dead accurate."

In response, lawyer Phil Campbell brandished a copy of a front-page newspaper report on the crime as he told the court much of the information in the confession was publicly known.

Campbell portrayed his client as an "uninhibited" liar who was suicidal, lived in a fantasy world, and was emotionally devastated at being separated from a man to whom he was deeply attached.

"The pivot point of this whole case . . . is how or why the appellant uttered the words that changed his life," Campbell said in seeking to have the court rely on expert evidence as to why Phillion falsely confessed.

The lawyer argued that Phillion was an immature attention seeker who, knowing he would get a stiff sentence for the cabbie robbery, decided to confess in hopes his boyfriend would collect reward money and so that he would become a "somebody."

"There is nothing that really anchors this confession in its content (or) psychologically," Campbell asserted.

While the legal consequences of the confession were "staggering," there is no sign Phillion thought through the implications of his lie, Campbell offered.

He noted Phillion, who had had several run-ins with police as a rootless, petty hoodlum, had falsely confessed to other murders and the cops and even his boyfriend viewed his various statements with suspicion.

At one point, Phillion had even tried to pin the Roy crime on his brother, an allegation police were able to debunk.

When police took him back to re-enact the Roy killing, he made several key mistakes -- something the real killer would not have done, his lawyer argued.

"This is one of the conundrums of this case," Justice Michael Moldaver interjected.

"When it suits your purpose, then you have an excuse for Mr. Phillion and when it doesn't, you just ignore it."

Phillion's lawyers also produced several police reports from 1968 in which they appeared to have decided he could not have committed the murder.

For one thing, his lawyers argued, police had managed to confirm that Phillion was nowhere near the scene of the crime but never disclosed that information to his lawyers at trial.

They also maintain the investigating officer had ruled out Phillion as a suspect but changed his mind and became bent on convicting him after the confession.

The hearing continues Thursday.