CHICAGO (AP) – An appeals court has upheld the 2004 conviction of a white supremacist for soliciting the murder of a federal judge in Chicago.

Matthew Hale is serving a 40-year prison sentence for asking an undercover FBI informant to kill Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow. She had ruled against him in a trademark case.

The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a series of claims by the former East Peoria resident, including that his trial attorneys did a poor job representing him.

The ruling released Tuesday by the three-judge panel was unanimous.

Lefkow’s husband and mother were killed in her home a year after Hale’s conviction. But the killer had no connection to Hale’s case.

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