Former Tyco International Ltd. (TYC) top executives L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark H. Swartz have appealed their fraud convictions to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In their appeal filed Friday, Kozlowski, Tyco's former chief executive, and Swartz, the company's former chief financial officer, asked the high court to review a decision by the New York Court of Appeals last year upholding their criminal convictions on charges they systematically looted the Bermuda conglomerate.

If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, the former executives are planning to challenge a finding by the state's highest court that a lower court didn't abuse its discretion in quashing a subpoena by the men after their first trial.

Kozlowski and Swartz were seeking memorandums and notes from law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP relating to interviews of employees, directors or auditors of Tyco. Boies Schiller conducted an internal investigation for Tyco in 2002.

"This case merits review because it presents a direct and increasingly frequent collision between bedrock values - a criminal defendant's right to obtain evidence necessary for his defense versus a non-governmental third party's interest in being able to conduct investigations without fear of having to later divulge its files - in a specific context that makes that collision almost inevitable: a non-public internal investigation followed by a public prosecution," lawyers for the former executives said in their filing.

In June 2005, a jury convicted Kozlowski and Swartz each of 22 of 23 counts, including grand larceny, conspiracy and securities fraud, in connection with giant bonuses and other improper compensation they received while working as Tyco's top executives. Their convictions followed a mistrial in the case in 2004.

Kozlowski, 62 years old, and Swartz, 48, have been incarcerated since a state judge sentenced them in August 2005 to between eight and one-third and 25 years in prison.

Kozlowski is serving his prison term at Midstate Correctional Facility in Marcy, N.Y., about 52 miles outside of Syracuse, while Swartz is incarcerated about three hours away at Wallkill Correctional Facility in Wallkill.

Tyco, which has its headquarters in Bermuda, operates out of West Windsor, N.J.

"Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz were denied access to evidence so important that New York's highest court recognized it might have established their innocence," said Alan Lewis, a lawyer for Kozlowski. "As profoundly troubling as that is, the explanation given by New York's highest court - the notion that Mr. Kozlowski and Mr. Swartz lost the right to obtain the evidence because they failed to interview prosecution witnesses before there was a prosecution - is even more disturbing."

-By Chad Bray, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-227-2017; chad.bray@dowjones.com