After spending almost 32 years behind bars for a murder he says he didn't commit, Romeo Phillion is back in court, asking to be formally charged for the murder again.

While the request may sound unusual, the 70-year-old Phillion says it's the only way he can plead not guilty, be acquitted and finally clear his name.

Last year, the conviction against Phillion for the 1967 stabbing death of Ottawa man Leopold Roy was overturned by the Ontario court of appeal. The court didn't exonerate Phillion but instead ordered a new trial.

The Crown, aware that 30 years had passed and many of the key witnesses were dead, decided it would not proceed with a retrial and withdrew the charge.

But, Phillion wants to be formally charged again so he can plead not guilty, the Crown can say it has no evidence to present, and the judge can formally acquit him. Only that will remove the cloud of suspicion that still hangs over him, he says.

"I'm like a bouncing ball: here and there and everywhere. And I'm tired of it," he explained to CTV's Canada AM Tuesday, from Ottawa.

"So I'm a fighter, I'm not going to quit. They want me to get frustrated, I will get frustrated. I'll be more of a fighter then. Maybe they should get frustrated with me and do the right thing."

Phillion's lawyer James Lockyer will be back before an Ontario Superior Court justice Tuesday for the second day of arguments in a motion in which he is asking that his client be arraigned for the crime again.

Lockyer told the court Monday that Phillion's rights were violated when he was wrongfully convicted at his 1972 trial. Now his Charter rights are being violated again, Lockyer argued, because the Crown is denying Phillion a fair trial, which has left a "cloud of suspicion" over his client's head.

"How a case comes to an end is of national importance," Lockyer told the judge.

The Ottawa Crown attorney's office argues that a new charge isn't needed and disputes Phillion's claim that he has faced "stigma and trauma" for being not properly exonerated. It notes that Phillion has introduced no evidence to show that his public standing had been diminished by his conviction.

Lockyer argued such evidence shouldn't be needed.

"This isn't a public relations exercise," he told the court, adding the outcome of the case held "devastating importance" to his client.

Phillion says he's hopeful he will eventually get his request.

"I have a [judge] now I feel good with, I feel comfortable with, and she'll do the right thing," he said.

Lockyer told the court that his client has faced years of injustice. He recounted how five years after Roy was stabbed in an Ottawa building where he was a superintendent, Phillion was taken into police custody on a robbery charge. Phillion confessed to the 1967 murder but recanted a couple of hours later.

Phillion says now he was tricked into the confession.

"They had a friend of mine in a jail cell. He had no record, nothing to do with cops at all. They were using him as a rabbit to get to me. They were going to charge him with the charge I was facing," he said.

Though Phillion maintained his innocence, he was convicted. But he was unaware that a police detective had checked out his alibi and confirmed that he had been at a Trenton service station with a broken-down car less than two hours before the murder and could not have driven back to Ottawa in time.

Phillion says, while he was in prison in the 1990s, he asked to look at his file.

"For years, I tried to get the information [through the freedom of information act] and it came back to me all scrubbed out with magic marker. I couldn't read nothing," he says.

It was only later, through "pure happenstance," that a clean copy of the police memos inadvertently found its way into his  parole file, Lockyer told the court.

Phillion said he'll never forget the day his parole officer brought him those papers.

"He just dropped them on my bunk and said, ‘Here.' The alibi was there," he remembers. "I was so happy to see that. That's all I needed. It was a surprise to me."

Outside the courthouse Monday, Phillion remained determined. "I want that cloud off me -- period," he said.

The hearing is expected to continue for several days this week.