PORTLAND – The state supreme court Tuesday upheld a Glenburn man’s murder conviction for the shooting death of a longtime acquaintance whose dismembered body was found buried in woods behind the killer’s house.

The Supreme Judicial Court unanimously denied the appeal of Jimmy Lipham, 45, who had admitted shooting David Langway, 53, of Winterport on July, 31, 2003, but maintained that the .45-caliber handgun went off accidentally when he tripped and fell as the two were getting ready to poach a deer.

Lipham contended the trial judge erred in admitting into evidence a recording of a telephone conversation with his wife that she secretly taped at the request of police while he was visiting family in his native Alabama.

Lipham did not respond to his wife’s allegations that he killed Langway intentionally, other than to instruct her to file for a legal separation and to tell police nothing. Lipham was arrested soon afterward for murder and later confessed to the shooting, saying it was an accident.

Lipham claimed that the recorded phone call was a confidential husband-wife communication, but the supreme court concluded that the trial judge acted properly in determining that the defendant had waived the privilege by his subsequent voluntary admission to the killing.

“The disclosure that he had killed Langway disclosed a ‘significant part’ of his privileged conversation with his wife,” the justices said.

The court also rejected Lipham’s claim that the admission of the phone call was unfairly prejudicial.

Lipham was found guilty after a three-day jury trial last year and was sentenced in February to 40 years in prison.