TORONTO - A man who spent 31 years in prison for murder based on his recanted confession was properly convicted despite allegations prosecutors failed to turn over key evidence, Crown lawyers told Romeo Phillion's Appeal Court hearing Monday.

It would be in an injustice now to decide the prosecution knew police had cleared Phillion of the 1967 crime but deliberately kept that information under wraps, Crown lawyer Lucy Cecchetto told the Ontario Court of Appeal.

"If there was a verified alibi, nobody would have suppressed it," Cecchetto said.

"(Phillion) murdered Leopold Roy 41 years ago. He received justice. He is entitled to that and nothing more."

Cecchetto argued no one paid much attention to the alibi because police had discounted it. That didn't mean the Crown did not disclose the information to Phillion's "nooks and crannies" lawyer, Cecchetto said.

Justice John Laskin interjected that there was "not a shred of evidence" that the prosecution shared the file with Phillion's defence lawyer at trial.

Phillion, 69, was convicted in 1972 of second-degree murder for stabbing Roy, an Ottawa firefighter.

His conviction was based solely on a confession he gave in January 1972 -- more than four years after the crime -- after he was arrested for the gunpoint robbery of a taxi driver. He recanted within hours.

His case attracted the attention of the Innocence Project and later the Association in the Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted, who argue a miscarriage of justice occurred.

Key to their claim is a 1968 report by the lead detective in the case that exonerated Phillion on the basis he was 200 kilometres away when Roy was killed.

Phillion's lawyers argue the defence was never told of that report, which only surfaced 26 years after the trial.

The lead detective now maintains he checked out the "verified" alibi after Phillion confessed in 1972 and decided it didn't hold water.

However, all his notes, occurrence reports and other materials relating to the debunking of the alibi disappeared without explanation.

The three Appeal Court justices hearing the case at the request of the federal government were skeptical that Phillion's trial lawyer, Arthur Cogan, must have known about the alibi -- debunked or not -- and simply ignored it at trial.

"Mr. Cogan would have been on this like a greyhound after a rabbit -- he would have tracked this down," Justice Michael Moldaver said.

"I'm looking at this as a sort of common-sense picture and I don't see it."

Cogan himself has previously told the court he was "shocked" to learn of the report's existence, which a parole officer sent to Phillion in 1998.

In initially absolving Phillion within several months of the murder, the officer found a service station in Trenton, Ont., where Phillion had pawned a radio because he couldn't pay a repair bill for his broken-down car around the time of the murder.

The officer retrieved the radio and tow ticket but that evidence somehow got lost, along with clothes, shoes and hair samples police had taken from the suspect.

Phillion's legal team maintains their attention-seeking client only confessed so his gay lover could claim the reward and to appear like an important "somebody."

Portrayed by his legal team as an "uninhibited liar," Phillion was given truth serum and a lie detector test, both of which indicated he was being truthful in denying he killed Roy.