CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Lawyers for former NFL receiver Rae Carruth appealed his murder conspiracy conviction Monday, saying a judge should not have allowed jurors to hear statements by Carruth's girlfriend Cherica Adams following her November 1999 shooting.

The documents filed Monday with the N.C. Court of Appeals in Raleigh said that Superior Court Judge Charles Lamm erred in admitting notes written by Adams from her hospital bed, ''as these constituted inadmissible and unreliable hearsay that was unfairly prejudicial to'' the former Carolina Panthers star.

The notes, scribbled by Adams about seven hours after she was shot Nov. 16, 1999, were a key issue during Carruth's trial in Mecklenburg County Superior Court.

Carruth, a second-team All-American wide receiver at Colorado and the Panthers' first-round draft choice in 1997, was convicted in January 2001 of conspiracy to commit murder, shooting into an occupied vehicle and using a gun to try to kill the baby Adams was carrying.

He was acquitted on a first-degree murder charge that could have brought the death penalty.

Carruth is serving a sentence of at least 18 years, 11 months at Nash Correctional Institution near Rocky Mount.

Carruth lawyer Gordon Widenhouse said the inconsistency of the verdicts -- guilty of murder conspiracy, but innocent of murder -- strengthens the claim that the errors alleged in the appeal led to Carruth's conviction.

''Any error is much more likely to be prejudicial because the jury obviously was torn about how to resolve the issues,'' he said.

Adams, 24, was eight months pregnant with Carruth's child when she was ambushed and shot four times as she drove behind Carruth on a dark road in south Charlotte.

Adams died a month later. Her son, Chancellor Lee Adams, survived an emergency delivery.

Police arrested Carruth and three other men and charged them with murder. Carruth was accused of masterminding the plot and leading Adams into an ambush because he didn't want the baby.

According to trial testimony by nurse Traci Willard, Adams wrote, ''He was driving in front of me and stopped in the road. And a car pulled up beside me and he blocked the front and never came back.''

When Willard asked Adams who blocked her, the nurse testified, ''She wrote, 'Rae.'''

Carruth's lead lawyer, David Rudolf, tried to keep jurors from hearing about the notes and a 911 call Adams made after the shooting, but Lamm ruled they were admissible.

''I think he (Lamm) gave me a fair trial, but he was bound and determined that those notes were going to get in and I think he was wrong about that,'' Rudolf said.

In all, the documents filed Monday list 26 errors Carruth's lawyers believe justify reversing the convictions.

Not all will be mentioned when lawyers file a brief summarizing their appeal, which will be due 30 days after the court mails a copy of the errors and the accompanying trial transcripts to Carruth's lawyers and the office of Attorney General Roy Cooper.

If the court wants to hear oral arguments in the case, those likely would not occur until sometime next year.

John Bason, spokesman for the state Department of Justice, declined to comment on the appeal except to say it would be handled like any other case.

Other issues raised in the filing Monday include: