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.

Connecticut's Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit against the state by workers who said they were entitled to $127 million in stock proceeds used by the state to fill a budget gap.

The 6-1 decision issued Wednesday centers on 2.2 million shares that Anthem Insurance Co. issued when it converted from a mutual company to a stock company in 2001.

Former public defender Ronald Gold alleged he and up to 40,000 other state workers were entitled to the profits as policyholders. The state said the government, not the individuals, held the policy.

Gold's attorney says they still have a pending lawsuit against Anthem, alleging it gave the stock to the wrong entity.

Prosecutors say they will ask a federal appeals court to quickly intervene and stop the release of nine jailed Michigan militia members accused of conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government.

U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade says the conditions set by a judge will not ensure the public's safety. She says the appeals court will be asked to issue an emergency stay Thursday.

The nine were expected to be returned to court to be processed at 11 a.m. EDT before being released. But the appeals court could halt everything.

U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts on Monday said the militia members could be released until trial with electronic monitoring devices. She froze her order until Wednesday night.

They are charged with conspiracy to commit sedition, or rebellion, against the government and the attempted use of weapons of mass destruction.

The operators of the Deepwater Horizon left burned and injured rig workers for 10 hours alongside the burning rig before taking them ashore for medical treatment, a Houston law firm alleges in a lawsuit.

The suit was filed in Galveston County Court at Law on behalf of four plaintiffs involved in the April 20 explosion and fire on the drilling platform, which sank 50 miles off the Louisiana shore in the Gulf of Mexico.

Attorneys with Arnold & Itkin filed the lawsuit May 4, seeking a jury trial to obtain an unspecified judgment against 10 defendants, including three divisions of Transocean Inc., the rig owner; four divisions of BP, which leased the rig; Halliburton Energy Systems; Sperry-Sun Drilling Systems and Cameron International Corp.

The plaintiffs are Joshua Kritzer, Bill Johnson and Nick Watkins, all of Louisiana, and Rhonda Burkeen of Mississippi, the widow of Aaron Burkeen, one of the 11 men killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion and fire.

Kritzer was an employee of Offshore Cleaning Systems, and was working on the rig when an explosion threw him 30 feet down a hallway, where the ceiling collapsed on him, the lawsuit says. He suffered head and other physical injuries.