The Missouri Supreme Court overturned a man's death sentence Tuesday because his attorney failed to question the character of a murder victim who had child pornography on his computer.

The high court acknowledged in its unanimous ruling that character evidence about murder victims typically is barred. But when relatives of victim Ralph Lape Jr. testified about his generous character during the sentencing phase of Mark Gill's murder trial, defense attorneys should have countered by highlighting the smut on Lape's computer, the Supreme Court said.

Had Gill's attorneys done so, the Supreme Court said, jurors may have been less inclined to sentence him to death for the July 2002 kidnapping, robbery and shooting. The Supreme Court sent the case back to a lower court for a new sentencing hearing.

Cape Girardeau County Prosecutor Morley Swingle said he would again seek the death penalty for Gill.

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a California death row inmate who was convicted in the gruesome murders of four people in 1983.

The justices said Monday they would not review an appeals court ruling that upheld the murder conviction and death sentence of Kevin Cooper.

Cooper came within a few hours of execution in 2004 before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in to order genetic testing on a hair and a bloody shirt found at the murder scene that Cooper said would prove he was not the killer.

The San Francisco-based appeals court later backed a district judge's ruling that the test results did not show Cooper's innocence.

Cooper, who has long maintained his innocence, had escaped from a California state prison. He was convicted of the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, both 41, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Christopher Hughes, her friend. They were stabbed and hacked repeatedly with a hatchet and buck knife. Joshua Ryen, then 8, survived a slit throat.

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected another request by former Qwest Communications International Inc. CEO Joseph Nacchio to review his insider trading conviction.

The court revealed Monday that it won't reconsider its decision in October not to take up his case.

Nacchio was convicted in 2007 on 19 counts of insider trading, and he reported to prison in April.

However a federal judge is reconsidering his sentence. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July that he should be resentenced because the trial judge miscalculated when he sentenced Nacchio to six years in prison and ordered him to pay $71 million in fines and forfeitures.

Nacchio still faces a civil lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Roman Catholic diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., is expected to release thousands of documents connected to sexual abuse lawsuits.

The diocese was ordered by a Waterbury Superior Court judge to release the papers Tuesday.

The files include more than 12,000 pages from 23 lawsuits against six priests settled by the diocese in 2001. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the diocese's appeal of a Connecticut Supreme Court decision ordering release of the documents.

Depositions, affidavits and motions are included in the records, which have been under seal. They could shed light on how newly retired New York Cardinal Edward Egan handled the abuse allegations when he was Bridgeport bishop.

The latest property rights battle before the U.S. Supreme Court started where the Gulf of Mexico laps at the crystalline white beaches of this seaside resort.

The justices will hear oral arguments Wednesday over whether a nearly seven-mile stretch of beach is public or private after the state of Florida poured more sand on the rapidly eroding shores. The new sand dumped in a project that ended in 2007 was designated public property by the state, angering residents who believe their property extends to the water, no matter how much sand is in between.

Six residents claim in a lawsuit they are due undetermined compensation, contending the state's action was a "taking" of their property.

"They have been trying to take our private beaches and make them public for years now," said Linda Cherry, head of the local Save Our Beaches group that supports the landowners. "In this case, they are taking our property without permission and without compensation. If the government can take our property like this, they can take anyone's property."

It's the first major property rights case to come before the high court since Justice Sonia Sotomayor took the bench. Perhaps the most famous and controversial "takings" case came in 2005, when the justices ruled 5-4 that cities had the right to use eminent domain powers to take property for private development.

Lawyers for Merck & Co. told the Supreme Court Monday that investors waited too late and didn't do all of the necessary investigations to sue the drug maker over whether it properly warned about the risks of its blockbuster painkiller Vioxx.

Whether the high court agrees with the drug maker will help clarify the legal standards for determining exactly when the clock starts running for the two-year window to sue a company accused of defrauding investors.

Merck wants the high court to overturn a decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that will let proceed a class-action securities lawsuit related to the tens of billions of dollars in shareholder value lost overnight after Merck pulled Vioxx off the market.

The Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based company withdrew the drug from the market on Sept. 30, 2004, because it doubled the risks of heart attack, stroke and death.

Investors had accused Merck of providing misleading information or omitting information about the risks of Vioxx. After a widely publicized study comparing Vioxx to naproxen, another pain reliever, found about five times more heart attacks in the patient group taking Vioxx, Merck officials argued repeatedly that was because naproxen protected the heart.

The Supreme Court won't revive a student's lawsuit against a school that punished her for talking about her religion during her high school graduation speech.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Erica Corder. She was punished for her 2006 speech at the Lewis-Palmer High School commencement in Monument, Colo.

School officials screened Corder's speech in advance but she changed her text, urging the audience to consider the Christian faith.

The principal made her to write a letter acknowledging the remarks were her personal views before she was given her diploma.

Corder sued, but federal courts threw out her lawsuit. Judges say the school didn't violate her rights because her remarks were school-sponsored, rather than private speech.