A man who confessed in jail to a murder he had been cleared of has failed to get a conviction for lying in court about the killing overturned.

Rickie Sanjuliano, then called Ricky Miell, had denied murdering Stephen Burton in a house in Cowley Road, Oxford, in 1996 and was acquitted by a jury.

But he subsequently told prison visitors and a prison supervisor he was the killer, and then ended up back in court on a charge of perjury.

He pleaded guilty to lying to the court and was jailed.

Last July he subsequently found himself arrested for murdering Mr Burton under new 'double jeopardy' laws, which allow someone to stand trial a second time for the same crime.

Senior judges threw out the police attempt to pursue a second murder trial because they said the 'confession' was not reliable.

Today, Sanjuliano appeared in court asking for the perjury conviction to be overturned.

The court heard Sanjuliano told officers who interviewed him that he had tailored his confession so that, while it sounded truthful, it did not match forensic evidence of the killing.

He said in a police interview: "I thought long and hard and planned what I was going to say and made sure there was (sic) many details that sounded believable."

But Sanjuliano, who lived in Bradley Road, Nuffield, near Wallingford, when he was arrested last year, failed to win his appeal.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said: "It seems to us that this application is essentially opportunistic. There is no merit in it."