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(Salt Lake City-AP) -- A judge has denied Lee Roy Wood's motion to withdraw his plea of guilty to capital murder in the slaying of Roosevelt's police chief.
Eighth District Judge A. Lynn Payne ruled Wednesday that Wood had missed the filing deadline by more than a month.
Wood's handwritten motion claimed he was coerced into pleading guilty, he was suffering from depression and he got bad advice from his defense attorneys.
Wood admitted fatally shooting Chief Cecil Gurr on July sixth, 2001, and to firing shots at two other officers. Wood was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Gurr was killed while responding to a report that Wood was threatening a woman with a rifle in the parking lot of a Uintah County convenience store.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
