A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ordered a federal evidentiary hearing for Michael Wayne Hall, who was sentenced to die for the 1998 slaying of a 19-year-old woman abducted as she rode her bicycle to work.

The panel criticized both the trial court and the state's highest criminal appeals court for relying on written arguments rather than holding an open evidentiary hearing in Hall's case.

"The facts before us are a core manifestation of a case where the state failed to provide a full and fair hearing and where such a hearing would bring out facts which, if proven true, support ... relief," the judges said.

The ruling late Monday reversed the findings of a federal district judge who upheld the state courts' rejection of defense attorneys' claims that Hall is mentally disabled. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that mentally disabled people may not be executed.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled Monday that the state's three-year statute of limitations barred Kenesha Barnes' claim against Koppers Inc. and Beazer East Inc.

After a three-week trial in 2006, a jury found the companies liable for negligently exposing Barnes' mother, Sherrie, to harmful chemicals from the Grenada plant, which treats railroad crossties and utility poles with creosote and other chemicals.

Sherrie Barnes, who lived next to the plant her entire life, died about a year after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in June 1997. More than five years elapsed between her diagnosis and the date in 2003 when Kenesha Barnes filed a wrongful death suit on her mother's behalf.

A three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit said the companies raised "troubling questions" about how the case was handled by U.S. District Judge W. Allen Pepper Jr., including his decisions on the admission of expert testimony.

The decision by a U.S. court to award a summary judgment in AstraZeneca's favor avoids the need for a full trial and means that generic copies of Seroquel, which raked in $4 billion in sales last year, will not be launched any time soon.

"We are pleased with the court's decision to uphold our valid intellectual property," AstraZeneca chief executive officer David Brennan said in a statement.

Shares rose 6.1 percent to 2,260 pence ($44.88) in London. Shares jumped 3.4 percent to $44.89 in premarket trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., the world's biggest generic drug maker, said it plans to appeal the judgment by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

A summary judgment of "No Inequitable Conduct" is traditionally difficult to win because it requires the company to prove the intent of the patent holder.

Addressing the National Sheriff's Association, McCain acknowledged that Democrat Barack Obama had also disagreed with the decision that struck down a Louisiana law allowing capital punishment for people who rape children under 12. Obama said he believed carefully crafted state laws permitting execution of child rapists do not violate the Constitution.

Nevertheless, McCain asked: "Why is it that the majority includes the same justices he usually holds out as the models for future nominations?"

"My opponent may not care for this particular decision, but it was exactly the kind of opinion we could expect from an Obama court," the Arizona senator said.

When asked by CNN in May whether any current justices would be models for his nominees, Obama replied that he considered Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter to be sensible judges. All three voted in the majority in the child rape case, as did Justices Anthony Kennedy and John Paul Stevens.

McCain himself voted to confirm four of the five who voted in the majority. He was not in the Senate in 1975 when Stevens was confirmed.

The 4-0 decision ends the nearly decade-long court fight and spares the companies from potentially billions in cleanup costs for hundreds of thousands of contaminated homes.

Rhode Island was the first state to successfully sue former makers of lead pigment and paint, which can cause learning disabilities, brain damage and other health problems in children. A jury in 2006 found Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries, Inc. and Millennium Holdings LLC liable for creating a public nuisance by manufacturing a toxic product.

The state had proposed that the companies spend $2.4 billion inspecting and cleaning hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island homes believed to contain lead paint.

The ruling was immediately denounced by groups supporting punitive action against paint companies.

The ruling, thought to be the first successful appeal of a detainee's designation as an enemy combatant, ordered the government to release, transfer or hold a new military tribunal hearing for Parhat.

Parhat, a member of China's Muslim Uighur minority, claimed to have fled China in 2001 to an Uighur camp in Afghanistan. The camp was destroyed during US air strikes against the Taliban in October 2001, and he fled again to Pakistan.

It was there that Parhat was handed over to US authorities and in June 2002 was transferred to Guantanamo, where he remains.

A military tribunal assessed Parhat's status in 2004 and, while finding he had not engaged in hostilities against the United States or its allies, ruled he was an enemy combatant because he had lived at the Afghan camp.

The camp was run by the leader of an Uighur independence group, known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which was allegedly "associated" with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, court documents show.

The main evidence against Parhat consisted of four government intelligence documents which described activities and relationships that had "reportedly" occurred, were "said to" or "suspected" of having taken place. The court said these assertions could not be verified.

The 39-page opinion also noted the government had suggested that "several of the assertions in the intelligence documents are reliable because they are made in at least three different documents."

It cited Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark," where a character absurdly declares: "I have said it thrice: what I tell you three times is true," and said it had no reason to suggest the documents were not all based on the same source.

The opinion also noted that Parhat had made a "credible argument that ... the common source is the Chinese government, which may be less than objective with respect to the Uighurs," who allege oppression by Beijing.

In addition, the court rejected the government's assertion that statements made in the documents "are reliable because the State and Defense Departments would not have put them in intelligence documents were that not the case."

"This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true," the panel said, which would negate any need for a military tribunal or judicial review of tribunal decisions.

The Justice Department was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that "we are evaluating our options" following the ruling.