A FORMER University of York graduate who is serving a life sentence for murdering his wife and baby daughter has filed an appeal against his convictions.

Neil Entwistle was told in 2008 that he would spend the rest of his life in jail after being found guilty of killing his 27-year-old American wife Rachel, who he met while studying in York.

He was also convicted of shooting their nine-month-old daughter Lillian Rose at the family's home in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, in January 2006.

A lawyer acting for the 32-year-old, of Workshop, Nottinghamshire, says evidence was illegally seized and should have been suppressed, and that jurors may have been biased by media coverage of the case. Prosecutors have said Entwistle received a "true and just" trial.

The former IT consultant fled to the UK the day after the murders, and in the appeal brief, filed at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, his lawyer Stephen Paul Maidman argued two home searches by police were carried out without warrants.

He also argued the judge did not thoroughly question potential jurors to identify any bias against Entwistle after international news coverage of the case.

"The defendant is entitled to a new trial utilising a jury selection process where there can be no question that ths seated jurors are fair and impartial," he wrote.

District attorney Gerry Leone, whose office prosecuted the case, said in a statement: "The crimes committed by Neil Entwistle against his wife and daughter are to be condemned as horrific and unspeakable acts.

"He received a commendable defence and a fair and just trial under our laws."

Prosecutors said police were justified in entering the Entwistle family home because they were responding to the pleas of worried relatives and friends. They also said that, at the time of the murders, Entwistle had run up debts amounting to tens of thousands of dollars and had complained about his sex life with his wife.

Jurors rejected his defence that his wife had killed their daughter before turning the gun on herself and that Entwistle had covered it up to "protect her honour".