The Manitoba Court of Appeal heard arguments on Friday from Sydney Teerhuis, who was convicted in a grisly 2003 murder.

Teerhuis is appealing his second-degree murder conviction for the killing of 38-year-old Robin Greene.

Greene was stabbed multiple times, beheaded and dismembered in a room at the Royal Albert Arms Hotel in downtown Winnipeg.

In 2008, Teerhuis was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Teerhuis wrote a handwritten letter to the Appeal Court in which he laid out his complaints about his last trial.

In the letter, he claims the Crown prosecutor based a lot of her argument on hearsay and disputes some of the testimony of the pathologist who performed Greene's autopsy.

Teerhuis's lawyer, Greg Brodsky, said Teerhuis didn't have a chance to be tried by a jury of his peers, because there were not enough aboriginal people or people with disabilities in the jury pool.

"The whole community has to be a part of the jury pool from which the jury is selected he didn't get that," Brodsky.

In the letter to the Appeal Court, Teerhuis also claimed to know one of the jurors.

The Crown Attorney said that the selection process is done randomly by computer. At the start of the process, 1,600 names came up that were eventually narrowed down to 12.

Brodsky also objected that the jury was shown gruesome crime scene pictures that didn't offer any evidence and were used only to prejudice their decision.

He also argued the trial judge didn't properly explain to the jury how to decide if Teerhuis intended to kill.

However, local author Dan Zupansky said that Teerhuis knew exactly what he was doing, because the convicted killer told him exactly how he did it through detailed letters and graphic drawings.

Zupansky included them in a book he wrote about the murder called Trophy Kill.

"He wanted to be famous and that's why he did what he did," Zupansky said.

The three Court of Appeal judges have reserved their decision.

If Teerhuis is granted a new trial, it will be his third.

He successfully appealed a prior conviction for the murder and was granted a second trial in 2008.

- with a report from CTV's Caroline Barghout