COEUR d'ALENE - Jonathan W. Ellington, convicted in 2012 of second-degree murder for a road-rage incident, has lost an appeal to the Idaho Supreme Court and a request for a third trial.

Ellington, now 53, was found by a jury to have intentionally run over 41-year-old Vonette L. Larsen on New Year's Day 2006. He is serving his sentence at the Idaho State Correctional Center, where his next parole hearing is scheduled for June 2016.

Ellington is scheduled to satisfy his murder-charge sentence in May 2024.

He was convicted following two separate trials, the first in 2006, and has appealed both times. Both appeals related to traffic accident reconstruction experts hired by the prosecution as witnesses.

In this appeal, Ellington said accident reconstruction expert John Daily used the wrong formula in a calculation related to vehicle collisions just prior to Larsen being struck.

Additionally, approximately three weeks after the second trial concluded, a defense expert found Daily's testimony at trial contradicted a particular passage from a textbook Daily co-authored.

Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones, who wrote the court's opinion, said the 1st District Court Judge who presided over the case didn't abuse his discretion in denying Ellington's motion for a new trial.

"The district court found that Ellington's allegedly new evidence 'is at best impeachment evidence that the defendant could have used during trial to impeach Mr. Daily's use of the rotational mechanics theory,'" Jones wrote in the opinion released Wednesday.

"This is 'essentially an evidentiary ruling.' 'A district court's evidentiary rulings will not be disturbed by this court unless there has been a clear abuse of discretion.'"

"It is gratifying to see the Supreme Court affirm the conviction in this case by denying the appeal of the defense's motion for a new trial," Kootenai County Prosecutor Barry McHugh said Thursday. "On behalf of my office, I want to thank the Larsen family and law enforcement for their cooperation and work in this case."

On the day of her death, Larsen and her husband, Joel Larsen, were called by their daughters to help track a man in a Chevy Blazer, who turned out to be Ellington.

Ellington and the sisters, who had been driving a Honda Accord in the Athol area, crossed paths and a road-rage incident ensued.

The Larsen family, in two vehicles, eventually cornered Ellington on Scarcello Road, less than a mile east of Twin Lakes Village and Highway 41.

Ellington then used his Blazer to ram the sisters' Honda, then ran over Vonette Larsen, who had exited a car she was driving and was running across the roadway.

Joel Larsen fired his .44 Magnum revolver at the Blazer in the chaos.

Ellington won the appeal of his 2006 conviction after the Supreme Court found Idaho State Police traffic accident expert Fred Rice likely committed perjury during that trial.

Rice testified then that there is no such thing as an average perception reaction time and that debris fields are an unreliable means of reconstructing an accident.

After that first trial, Ellington's defense discovered prior testimony from Rice, as well as instructional materials he used in teaching accident reconstruction to other police officers, in which he endorsed the usefulness of debris fields and average perception reaction times.

"The new evidence did not merely call into question the reliability of Cpl. Rice's testimony at Ellington's first trial, but constituted affirmative evidence in support of Ellington's claims concerning the usefulness of debris fields in accident reconstruction and the value of the average perception reaction time," Jones wrote.