After 43 years in prison, James “Jimmy” Rodwell returned to Middlesex Superior Court on Monday to take another shot at overturning what he argues is a “wrongful conviction” for a 1978 gangland murder in Somerville.

“I’ve been in prison for 43 long years for a crime that I did not commit,” Rodwell said on Monday. “During this time, I could have taken plea deals to win my freedom if I had accepted responsibility for something I did not do. But my conscience and the truth means more to be than that.”

Lawyers for the defendant filed a motion seeking to reveal new “critical” evidence in the case they say “could lead to a new trial for Rodwell and his freedom.” The evidence is in two exhibits, a redacted DEA file and “paper 166.”

The motion states that once the evidence is revealed to the Advisory Board of Pardons, Governors Counsel and Gov. Healey, Rodwell intends to first seek clemency before filing an eighth motion for a new trial.

Rodwell, 68, was convicted in 1981 of the murder of drug dealer Louis Rose, Jr. in Somerville in Dec. 1978 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The case relied heavily on two key witness and convicted criminals, David Nagle, who said Rodwell confessed the murder to him in jail, and Francis Holmes, who said he witnessed the murder.

Rodwell’s defense have argued particularly Nagle’s history as a police informant and may have worked as a government agent pressured into his testimony.

Rodwell’s seventh motion for a new trial was last denied in 2018.

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“Mr. Rodwell was wrongfully and unjustly deprived of an evidentiary hearing on his motion to suppress statements of David Nagle in November of 1981 because he could not prove that Mr. Nagle was a government agent,” the defense’s motion states. “This was only the beginning of a vicious pattern of systematic withholding of exculpatory evidence that repeated itself over and over for the following four decades.”

The withholding of evidence by the prosecution and courts, Rodwell’s lawyers argue, has led to a long, grave “miscarriage of justice” they hope to correct now.

“When I get out of prison, I’ll do so with my head held high and my dignity intact,” Rodwell said.