The California Supreme Court is set to hear arguments challenging a key section of a law aimed at protecting children from sexual predators.

Jessica's Law prohibits registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park.

It mandates that all those paroled after Nov. 8, 2006 — when the law took effect — must comply or face more jail time.

The case to be heard Tuesday claims the requirement violates the constitutional rights of sex offenders.

Four registered sex offenders have sued the state, arguing the law makes it impossible to find a place to live.

The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday set two new execution dates even as the state continues to rework its procedures for putting condemned inmates to death by injection.

The execution dates are the first in four and a half months set by the court, which had been scheduling executions about once a month.

The death penalty is temporarily on hold in Ohio while the state develops the new policies. The update follows a botched execution on Sept. 15 that was halted after two hours when executioners couldn't find a usable vein on inmate Rommel Broom.

The court's decision Wednesday set a May 13 execution date for Michael Beuke, 47, convicted of the 1983 murder of Robert Craig, a man he met while hitchhiking on Interstate 275 in southwest Ohio.

Beuke shot Craig twice in the head and once in the chest, dumped his body in the bushes and stole his car.

The Supreme Court on Monday left in place a judge's ruling that allowed prosecutors to charge a reputed Ku Klux Klansman with kidnapping more than 40 years after two black men were abducted and killed in rural Mississippi.

The justices rejected a plea from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether too much time had elapsed for the case against James Ford Seale to go forward.

The action leaves in place a lower court ruling that the statute of limitations had not expired for a federal kidnapping charge against Seale in the 1964 disappearance of two 19-year-old friends.

Seale was convicted in 2007 of abducting the men. Authorities said they were beaten, weighted down and thrown, possibly still alive, into a Mississippi River backwater.

Disagreeing with their colleagues, Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia said the high court should have agreed to hear the case because it raises an important issue that potentially affects similar prosecutions. The court did not otherwise elaborate on its order.

The request by the New Orleans-based appeals court indicated that the decision could affect roughly two dozen other investigations into Civil Rights Era crimes. But Chief Judge Edith H. Jones and five other dissenters cast doubt on that number.

In 1964, when the men disappeared, kidnapping was punishable by death under federal law. But in the 1970s, Supreme Court decisions and acts of Congress changed the maximum sentence for kidnapping to life in prison. Capital crimes have no deadline for prosecution, but lesser crimes must be prosecuted within five years.

The Supreme Court turned away another appeal to stop the release of documents generated for sexual abuse lawsuits against priests in a Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from the Diocese of Bridgeport, which has been fighting for years to prevent the release of the documents. Last month, the justices refused to grant a delay at least while they considered the diocese's full appeal.

The order Monday was issued without comment.

The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and the Hartford Courant have asked to see the documents. The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that more than 12,000 pages from 23 lawsuits against the six priests should be unsealed.

The documents include depositions, affidavits and motions.

The records have been under seal since the diocese settled the cases in 2001.

The diocese says the First Amendment prohibits civil authorities from intruding into internal church decisions about priest assignments.

The Supreme Court Monday rejected a generic-drug maker's appeal challenging a patent for a blockbuster blood-thinning drug developed by Sanofi-Aventis SA and co-marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

The dispute arose after the Canadian generic-drug maker Apotex Corp. applied to market a generic version of the anti-blood-clotting drug Plavix shortly before its original patent expired in 2003.

France-based Sanofi sued Apotex for patent infringement because Sanofi researchers had separated Plavix's two main molecules and successfully applied for a second patent on just the effective molecule in the drug.

Apotex argued that the second patent, which doesn't expire until 2011, shouldn't have been granted. Two years ago the Supreme Court ruled in KSR v. Teleflex that a patent can't be awarded to the results of a procedure that is "obvious to try."

But both a U.S. judge in New York and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington upheld the patent's validity, ruling that the results of the drug tests couldn't have been predicted, even if trying the experiment itself were obvious.

A University of Connecticut student committed an act terrorism by posting Internet messages telling people to "stop the snitching" after the stabbing death of football player Jasper Howard, university police said Thursday.

Christopher Mutchler, an 18-year-old freshman from Wethersfield, faces charges of hindering prosecution, committing an act of terrorism and several misdemeanors. He is due in court Nov. 10.

The messages were found Oct. 20, posted on an ESPNU news page about the stabbing and a Facebook wall set up for mourners to leave condolence messages.

"STOP the snitching and post the names of anyone you know who gave information to the cops," read one profanity-laced posting on the ESPNU site. "jazz didnt deserve do die the person who killed him didnt intend to kill HIM anyone who snitched should face the social consequences."

Over 8,000 people visited the Facebook wall, and police say they had reason to believe the messages were instilling fear and preventing witnesses from coming forward.

A 40-year-old Denham Springs woman has been arrested for allegedly misappropriating $30,000 while working at a law firm.

According to court documents, the misappropriation of funds occurred between July 15, 2008, and June 12.

During that time, authorities say Christine Cronin Iddings used company credit cards to make purchases.

Investigators with the Attorney General's Fugitive Apprehension Unit arrested Iddings Thursday, and booked her into Parish Prison on 54 counts of access device fraud, 15 counts of forgery and a count of identity theft.

It wasn't immediately clear if Iddings has an attorney.