The District’s highest court has upheld convictions on numerous assault charges against a 40-year-old former truck driver who set fire to the manager of a strip club in Northwest. Vasile Graure claimed in the D.C. Court of Appeals that statements made by Good Guys Club manager Vladimir Djordjevic moments after Graure doused him with gasoline and lit him on fire should not have been admitted during the trial. Djordjevic died from his injuries in May 2010, nearly three years after the attack. Graure was indicted on murder charges in December and is still awaiting trial.

But regardless of how the murder trial turns out, Graure will still have to serve the 30-year sentence handed out by a superior court judge in 2008 because Djordjevic’s statements identifying Graure as his attacker were upheld by the appeals court.