BROCKTON, Mass. – A convicted killer whose bid to change his name for religious reasons was denied by a judge isn’t giving up.

Charles Jaynes, who was found guilty of murdering a 10-year-old Cambridge boy, appeared in court Tuesday to ask for a taxpayer-funded attorney and investigator for his appeal.

Jaynes, 37, said in court that his crimes may have played a role when a probate and family court judge in December denied his petition to change his name to Manasseh-Invictus Auric Thutmose V, in line with his jailhouse conversion to Wiccanism.

In his denial, the probate judge said that allowing the name change is not in the “public interest” and Jaynes has a history of “using aliases, concealing his identity and eluding criminal prosecution.”

“I seem to be the only one in Plymouth County who can’t exercise his religious, his federal and state constitutional rights … his 14th Amendment rights mean nothing,” Jaynes said Wednesday.

He said he wants an investigation “for transparency with this court, that this court is doing everything on the up and up, and not just being punitive because he’s Charles Jaynes.”

WCVB-TV reported that the judge did not immediately rule and no date has been set for his appeal hearing.

Jaynes is serving a life sentence for the 1997 slaying of Jeffrey Curley, whose body was found in a weighed-down container in a Maine river a few days after he was killed.