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The Utah Supreme Court has upheld the murder conviction of a Logan man serving life without parole for the 1984 slaying of Box Elder County gas station attendant Bradley Newell Perry.

In a 5-0 decision handed down Wednesday, the court rejected challenges to the admission of DNA evidence at Glenn Howard Griffin's trial and claims of inefficient assistance of counsel.

The appeal included other claims, but the ruling said there was no need to evaluate them because the DNA constituted "overwhelming evidence" implicating him in the murder.

"Therefore, any errors that might be established by the remaining claims would not have overcome the DNA evidence against Mr. Griffin and thus would not have made any difference in the ultimate verdict reached by the jury," Justice Deno Himonas wrote for the court.

Griffin, now 58, was charged with capital murder in Perry's death and found guilty in 2008 by a 1st District Court jury. Prosecutors asked for the death penalty but jurors imposed the life-without-parole term instead. The appeal sought to overturn the conviction and sentence.

In a written statement, Attorney General Sean Reyes said Thursday his office is pleased with the decision.

"Even after three decades, Bradley Perry and his family deserve justice and closure," Reyes said. "This ruling demonstrates that the legal system works and that we will pursue criminals until justice is served."

Griffin's attorney, Jennifer Gowans Vandenberg, could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday. She had argued at a February hearing that the DNA evidence in the case had chain-of-custody problems and that at least five hairs were not documented as coming from the crime scene.

In addition, Vandenberg said a lawyer who represented Griffin at a critical phase in his trial conducted no investigation into a key prosecution witness.

Utah Assistant Attorney General John Nielsen had countered that authorities kept track of the evidence and that Griffin had multiple experienced attorneys defending him before, during and after his trial.

Perry was working the graveyard shift at a gas station near Brigham City on May 26, 1984, when he was tied up, bludgeoned with a soda canister and repeatedly stabbed with a screw driver, according to court documents. Two Utah State University students who stopped at the station in the early morning hours say a man came outside and offered to help pump the gas for them.

One of the students gave the man five $1 bills for gas and both saw what looked like dried blood on his clothes, according to court documents. When the second student started heading toward the station to get cigarettes, the man stopped him and said he would get them. The student gave a $5 bill to the man, who returned with the pack and four dollars in change; those bills were among the ones that the first student had used to pay for the gas, court records say.

The students noticed one of the bills had a drop of blood on it that looked fresh, and they sped down Highway 89 to a pay phone to call police. Court documents say the dollar bill was turned over to an officer, and police later collected multiple hairs from inside the store.

Officers found Perry — a Weber State College student who was going to turn 23 in two days — dead inside a storage room with his hands tied behind his back and his body covered with injuries, including bruises and stab wounds. He also had a head wound that police believed had been inflicted by someone striking him with a 60-pound Dr. Pepper syrup container.

Throughout the years, police had approximately 200 suspects, but were unable to tie any of them to the slaying and the case went cold.

Then, in June 2005, Griffin was implicated in the murder when the Utah State Crime Lab checked DNA from the blood on the dollar bill against a DNA database. Griffin's DNA was a match, with just a 1 in 1.7 trillion chance that the blood was someone else's, according to a state scientist.

In addition, Griffin could not be excluded as the donor of DNA on hairs collected at the crime scene, court documents say.

Twitter @PamelaMansonSLC