If two witnesses misstated or lied about when a conversation took place, many other witnesses confirmed that Ronald L. Fuller killed 13-year-old Jeremy Farrand in the boy's Prindle Street home in Sharon on May 29, 1999, said a response to Fuller's appeal to the state Superior Court.

Mercer County Common Pleas Court Judge Michael J. Wherry and Mercer County assistant district attorneys Timothy R. Bonner and David A. Ristvey all said that the appeal by court-appointed defense attorney Wayne Hundertmark was "without legal merit."

Fuller, 26, of Farrell is appealing his April 2000 conviction of first-degree murder, burglary, possession of offensive weapons and possession of instruments of crime. Fuller is serving a life sentence without parole in a state penitentiary.

During a two-week trial, prosecutors claimed Fuller shot the boy in retaliation for Lindsey Lowe's implication of Fuller's friend DaRonica Cozart in an unrelated robbery. Ms. Cozart testified she told Fuller that Lowe frequented the Prindle Street house.

Fuller testified that he gave his sawed-off shotgun to Ms. Cozart's boyfriend, T.J. Green, who then shot the boy.

In his appeal, Hundertmark claimed the prosecution allowed Ms. Cozart and another witness, Larry Manning, to lie to the jury. Ms. Cozart said Fuller told her not to worry during a conversation prior to the murder, but Fuller's girlfriend, Regina Campbell, said the conversation didn't occur until a party after Jeremy was killed.

Manning, a prosecution witness, told the jury Fuller admitted to the killing one day but told Southwest Mercer County Regional police the admission occurred the next day, Wherry recounted in his response.

Manning admitted lying to police because he feared he might be implicated, the judge said.

"The asserted perjuries were merely inconsistencies found among witnesses in all cases," Wherry said in his written response.

Many of the witnesses against Fuller pleaded guilty to or were facing prosecution in other unrelated crimes at the time of the trial. "The testimony of many of the witnesses were subject to severe examination because of their past and/or their lifestyles, but consistent throughout was the insistence that Fuller had directly or indirectly admitted the murder," Wherry said.

Hundertmark also claimed that his presentation was harmed when the judge, agreeing to prosecutors' request, withdrew instructions to the jury on the legal principle of accomplice liability.

Although Hundertmark argued in pretrial hearings against the accomplice-liability instruction, the defense attorney had no objection to its withdrawal prior to the end of the trial, the judge said.

Hundertmark could have objected or moved for a mistrial by claiming misconduct by the prosecution, but he did not, Wherry said.