The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts late last week denied a twice-convicted murderer any further hearings on the 1995 stabbing death of Sharliee Banks, 33, in her Washington Avenue apartment, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

The state’s highest court on Friday notified Conley’s office and counsel for WILLIAM LAPAGE (D.O.B. 8/20/52) that it had denied Lapage’s request for further review of a Jan. 31, 2012, decision by the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirming his most recent murder conviction.

“For the families left behind, an appeal can reopen wounds that never fully heal,” Conley said. “In a case like this, tried to two convictions but still active with motions for new trials and appellate review, loved ones might ask themselves when it will ever end. At last, we can say with confidence: it ends here.”

 Lapage was first convicted in 1997, with a Suffolk Superior Court jury finding him guilty of first-degree murder and flatly rejecting his claim that he acted in self-defense when he fatally stabbed and slashed his girlfriend in the neck, stomach, face, wrist, and hands during an Feb. 25, 1995, argument over money. Jurors found Lapage guilty under the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty.

 Lapage moved unsuccessfully for a new trial in 1999, but succeeded in a subsequent appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court. Finding that the trial judge had provided the jury with a flawed instruction on voluntary manslaughter, the SJC reversed the conviction in 2001 and remanded the case for a new trial. The case was re-tried in 2005, with this jury convicting Lapage of second-degree murder.

 Lapage then moved for a third trial, claiming that his attorney in the 2005 proceedings should have introduced the victim’s criminal history to support a claim that she was the first aggressor. A Suffolk Superior Court judge disagreed, finding in 2010 that the defendant provided no specific acts in Banks’ past that would support a claim that she initiated the physical confrontation that ended with her murder. Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed that judge’s decision.

 The Appeals Court likewise affirmed the 2005 trial conviction. The judge in that trial detected an improper pattern in Lapage’s peremptory challenges of young women from the jury and seated, against the defendant’s argument, two such jurors. This, along with testimony of a medical examiner who replaced the one who had performed the original 1995 autopsy and had subsequently moved out of state, were the basis of this appeal.

 “We find no merit to the arguments and accordingly affirm” the conviction, the Appeals Court wrote in a Jan. 31 decision.

 Assistant District Attorney Teresa Anderson of Conley’s Appellate Division argued in support of Lapage’s second conviction and against the motion for new trial. Former Assistant District Attorney Kathleen McCarthy prosecuted Lapage in the 1997 trial and Assistant District Attorney Paul Treseler re-tried him in 2005. Katherine Moran was the DA’s victim-witness advocate most recently assigned to the case.