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An emotional Romeo Phillion emerged Thursday from his marathon Appeal Court hearing into whether he was wrongfully convicted of murder and shed a tear for a life wasted.

“I signed my life away,” Mr. Phillion said of his recanted confession in 1972 that would put him behind bars for the next 31 years, all the while proclaiming his innocence.

“I was so naive, so stupid. I kicked my butt for what I did. I ruined my life for a stupid thing.”

Speaking after the Ontario Court of Appeal wrapped up its review, a frail Phillion, 69, said he wanted those involved in his prosecution to “face the music.”

“I want a public inquiry,” Mr. Phillion said. “That's all I want: exoneration and a public inquiry.”

The three justices who spent eight days hearing final submissions reserved their decision, saying it would take “a little while” to decide on the “enormously difficult case.”

Mr. Phillion said if they don't acquit him outright, he wants the court to order a new trial even though his lawyers and the Crown agree there would be no point in trying him again for a 41-year-old murder.

It would, however, at least force the Crown to decide whether to stay or withdraw the charges, his lawyers said.

“I want to clear my name. A stay would not clear my name,” said Mr. Phillion, who is out on bail pending the outcome of his appeal.

“I'm still not free. My name's not clear yet. But it will be.”

Mr. Phillion was convicted in 1972 of the second-degree murder of Ottawa firefighter Leopold Roy solely on the basis of his voluntary confession to police, more than four years after the crime.

What he didn't know, and what his legal team argues, is that police checked his story that he had been several hours from the crime scene at the time of the murder and had ruled him out as the killer.

Mr. Phillion's lawyers have pinned their hopes on a police report from 1968 that states emphatically he could not have been the killer. The full document, which he had previously seen only in heavily edited form, was slipped to Mr. Phillion only in 1998 by a parole officer.

Mr. Phillion's lawyers say neither police nor the Crown at his trial ever mentioned the alibi. Nor did they mention that police ostensibly investigated some time later and decided the alibi was false.

The lead detective in the case, John McCombie, would later say only that he “checked out” the alibi and discounted it. All Det. McCombie's notes have disappeared and no one has produced any evidence he did so.

Mr. Phillion's lawyer, James Lockyer, called Det. McCombie's statement a “brazen claim.”

“He was really struggling to come up with a story,” Mr. Lockyer asserted, even suggesting evidence that might have exonerated Mr. Phillion had been deliberately misplaced.

The Crown maintains that Mr. Phillion's trial lawyer was apprised of the initial alibi verification and its subsequent debunking but chose to ignore it for strategic reasons.

The Crown also maintains that Mr. Phillion's confession was largely accurate, although his lawyers argue he knew details of the high-profile killing from published reports.

They also want the Appeal Court to consider evidence from a British expert who concluded the confession Mr. Phillion signed was false. The Crown maintains the expert opinion amounts to junk science.

The court heard the five-foot-five Mr. Phillion was an inveterate liar with low self-esteem, immature and an attention-seeker who confessed while in a suicidal state because he wanted to look “big” and impress his gay lover.

“Why would they believe the false confession then, if I told so many lies?” Mr. Phillion said. “It was false. I regret it.”

Born in Cobalt, Ont., Mr. Phillion was one of nine siblings whose alcoholic father beat his wife and children, according to defence documents.

His older brother, Armand, said Mr. Phillion and his identical twin brother Don were always running away and were caught one time as children sniffing gasoline.

At age 10, the twins were sent to St. Joseph's Training School in Alfred, Ont., where Romeo suffered severe physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers who ran the school, the documents say.

He left at age 15 with a Grade 6 education.

Described by his own lawyer as a petty hoodlum, who lived a “rootless, aimless, undocumented drifting lifestyle,” the young Mr. Phillion's disdain for authority was palpable.

He taunted police, carried out armed robberies, flouted traffic rules and pimped his common-law wife while becoming involved with a young transvestite to whom he became deeply attached.

His mug shot from his 1972 arrest shows a curly-topped James Dean shock of hair and sneer, a far cry from the gaunt five-foot-five man with thinning grey hair who now moves uncertainly and looks as if he wouldn't weigh 100 pounds soaking wet.

“I was no angel. But I was no killer. I have never killed a man. I'd rather die first,” Mr. Phillion said during a break in the appeal hearing last week.

“Having me pinned as a killer is hard on my head. That's a heavy one.”

Mr. Phillion is adamant he was framed.

“Oh yeah. There's no doubt,” he said.

Mr. Phillion always refused to apply for parole — he was eligible after 10 years — on the grounds that it would amount to an admission of guilt.

He was freed on $50,000 bail in 2003 pending the Appeal Court hearing, requested by the federal government, into whether a miscarriage of justice occurred.