The Washington state Supreme Court has ruled that public libraries can use Internet filters to block content.

In a 6-3 ruling Thursday, the court says public libraries have discretion about which Internet content to allow, just as they decide which magazines and books to offer.

The majority says libraries don't need to completely remove Internet filters and can provide access to websites containing constitutionally protected speech if requested by an adult.

But a blistering dissent by Justice Tom Chambers argues that the ruling restricts constitutionally protected speech.

A law firm employing the trustee winding down Bernard Madoff's investment firm has won court approval to be paid $20.3 million of additional fees, pushing its total to $50.9 million for 13-1/2 months of work.

In an order made public on Thursday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland in Manhattan authorized the additional payment to Baker & Hostetler LLP, plus reimbursement of $390,200 of expenses, covering the Oct. 1, 2009 to Jan. 31, 2010 period.

Baker & Hostetler has been awarded $59.8 million of fees overall, but is deferring 15 percent, or $9 million, until the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC is complete, court records show.

Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee and a Baker & Hostetler partner, has been trying to recover assets for victims of Madoff and his estimated $65 billion Ponzi scheme. He has separately been awarded $1.93 million in fees.

Lifland's order came over the objections of some Madoff victims. They believe Picard either undervalues some claims, allows claims to be paid too slowly, or has a conflict of interest because he also represents the interests of the Securities Investor Protection Corp against the victims.

A federal appeals court on Thursday intervened to block the release of nine members of a Michigan militia accused of plotting to overthrow the government, dealing a setback to the defendants as they gathered in a courtroom hoping to rejoin their families.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati issued a temporary stay about 12 hours after a federal judge in Detroit said she would no longer freeze her Monday decision releasing the nine with electronic monitors and other restrictions.

With some already in street clothes, the militia members were transported to court to be processed for release Thursday. But they were returned to jail after a magistrate judge announced the appeals court decision.

The Utah Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of a condemned inmate set to die by firing squad.

Ronnie Lee Gardner is scheduled to be executed June 18.

His attorneys filed an appeal seeking to stop the execution and asking for a review of Gardner's 1985 death sentence.

Gardner was convicted in the fatal courthouse shooting of attorney Michael Burdell.

The high court on Thursday set a June 3 hearing date and issued a schedule for attorneys to submit written arguments.

Gardner's attorneys will argue he was denied state funds to pay for experts and investigators who could have provided mitigating evidence during the penalty phase of his trial.

Former Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona has asked an appeals court to reverse his 2009 conviction for witness tampering.

A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Wednesday in Pasadena.

The former sheriff was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison for trying to persuade ex-assistant sheriff Don Haidl to lie during a grand jury probe.

Carona's lawyers argued that prosecutors broke an ethical rule when they arranged for Haidl to secretly record an August 2007 conversation despite knowing Carona had retained a criminal defense attorney.

A federal attorney argued that the government used what he called "permissible decoys."

Carona was acquitted in January of conspiracy, mail fraud and a second witness tampering count in a sweeping public corruption case.

Hill, Peterson, Carper, Bee & Deitzler PLLC is joining firms who have filed class-action lawsuits relating to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

A Charleston law firm has joined a consortium of 10 law firms filing lawsuits against British Petroleum relating to a recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The law firm of Hill, Peterson, Carper, Bee & Deitzler PLLC is joining firms throughout the country who have filed class-action lawsuits on behalf of people who allege they have been damaged by the spill.

According to a release by the Kennedy Environmental Law Group, or KELG, the oil spill and the inability of BP to contain the spill, has resulted in significant damage to the fishery ecosystem and the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

The consortium has filed suits in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida.

Ed Hill, an attorney for Hill, Peterson, Carper, Bee & Deitzler, said the law firms involved with the cases all have been involved in previous environmental law cases. He said the suits were filed after the firms recognized the enormous environmental disaster occurring in the Gulf of Mexico.

As a scholar, poet and abolitionist, George B. Vashon broke barriers in the 1800s: he was the first black to graduate from Oberlin College, the first black lawyer in New York state and the first black professor at Howard University.

But in his home state of Pennsylvania, where Vashon grew up and studied law, he was twice rejected from practicing law because he was black.

On Tuesday, more than 160 years after Vashon applied to be admitted to the Allegheny County bar, the state Supreme Court ordered that he be posthumously admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania. Vashon's relatives and a Pittsburgh attorney who heard about Vashon's story had asked the court earlier this year to do just that.

"I think it's very important not just as a family matter, it goes far beyond family," said Nolan N. Atkinson Jr., Vashon's great grandson and a lawyer in Philadelphia. "It's very important for all lawyers who are entering this profession to know that there were significant achievements made by African Americans in the 19th century."

Vashon was born in Carlisle in 1824, and his family later moved to Pittsburgh, where he grew up. At 16, he was admitted to Oberlin College and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1844.