Maine’s highest court on Tuesday upheld the convictions a 23-year-old man serving a life sentence for a triple murder whose lawyer said he was “played” by a skilled law enforcement officer during an interrogation.

The defense contended Thayne Ormsby’s remark that “I’m going to have to plead the Fifth on that one” should have been enough for the detective to end the interrogation.

But the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled unanimously that Ormsby’s confessions were made voluntarily and that their admission during his trial didn’t violate his Fifth Amendment rights.

Ormsby was convicted last year of three counts of murder and one count of arson for the 2010 stabbing deaths of Jeffrey Ryan, his 10-year-old son and a family friend in the small town of Amity along the Canadian border. Ormsby is from Ellsworth but was living in the town of Orient at the time of the murders.

In their ruling, the justices also upheld Ormsby’s sentence of three life terms and ruled that the trial judge did not err by not informing the jury of the consequences of a verdict of not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.