CHEYENNE - The Wyoming Supreme Court has upheld a Gillette man's convictions for murder and conspiracy in the death of a teenager who was strangled and dumped by the side of an interstate highway in 2005.

The court on Wednesday rejected an appeal from Kent Alan Proffit Sr. He's serving life in prison without parole in the death of Jeremy Forquer, 19.

The Wyoming Supreme Court last week also upheld Proffit's separate conviction of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the death of another teenager. A jury found that Proffit ordered two Gillette teenagers to kill 16-year-old Bryce Chavers of Gillette in 2005. Chavers had been scheduled to testify against Proffit at a sexual abuse trial.

During Proffit's trial in the Forquer case, Lt. Eric Seeman of the Campbell County Sheriff's Department testified that Proffit told him he was present during Forquer's killing, but that it was an accident. Proffit told Seeman that another teenager had killed Forquer while demonstrating a chokehold at a trailer house in Gillette.

In his appeal in the Forquer case, Proffit argued that it was improper for Campbell County District Judge John R. Perry to disallow a witness the defense team had intended to call to criticize investigators' techniques.

Proffit also argued that it amounted to misconduct for a prosecutor to mention to the jury that Proffit had borrowed money from his sister. Perry had ruled earlier that it would be improper to allow the sister's testimony that Proffit had borrowed the money so he could buy Forquer a bus ticket back to his family home in Missouri.

The Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice Michael Golden, slammed Proffit for arguing that the mention of the loan amounted to prosecutorial misconduct.

"Needless to say, Proffit's frivolous ranting and bald assertion of prejudice are wholly insufficient to satisfy the plain error standard," Golden wrote.