A former investigator involved in the Jayson Williams manslaughter case on Tuesday described how he used a racial slur to describe the former NBA star, while his boss explained why he chose not to disclose the incident before Williams' 2004 trial.

The testimony occurred during a hearing in state Superior Court, where Williams' defense team is attempting to show that racial bias tainted the investigation and prosecution.

Williams, who retired in 2000 after nine seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Nets, was acquitted of aggravated manslaughter in 2004 in the shooting two years earlier of hired driver Costas "Gus" Christofi at Williams' central New Jersey mansion.

He was convicted on four counts of attempting to cover up the crime, and a jury deadlocked on a reckless manslaughter count for which Williams faces a retrial scheduled for January.

Tuesday's hearing, and another scheduled for Wednesday, were prompted by Hunterdon County Prosecutor J. Patrick Barnes' disclosure of the racial epithet in 2007, more than three years after the trial.

Barnes said Tuesday he was notified about the slur in early 2003 from an employee who had been in the room when Hunt, who is white, said it in 2002. Barnes said although he reacted with "anger and disappointment," he chose not to inform the trial judge or Williams' defense team.

The state of Wyoming has asked a federal appeals court to give a judge authority to block a proposal reducing the number of snowmobiles allowed in Yellowstone National Park.

The National Park Service has said it intends to release a plan that could limit snowmobile traffic into Yellowstone and neighboring federal lands to 318 trips a day — less than half of last season's daily limit of 720.

The Wyoming Attorney General's Office argued Friday that the plan would violate U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer's order that set the daily limit at 720 snowmobiles a day.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver heard arguments Friday in Laramie on an appeal by the National Parks Conservation Association, which wants Brimmer's order invalidated.

Snowmobile management issues in Yellowstone have been in turmoil over the last few years as federal courts in Wyoming and Washington, D.C. both have presided over lawsuits on the issue.

Conservation groups have sued seeking lower daily limits while Wyoming, Park County and snowmobile groups have pushed to maintain access.

In letters written to her mother, the woman charged in the 2002 kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart has sought forgiveness for any pain she has caused and says she expects to spend the rest of her life in prison.

Wanda Eileen Barzee, 63, however, makes just one reference to Smart in the 12 letters obtained by The Associated Press. And she doesn't provide details about the nine months the girl allegedly spent with her and her now-estranged husband Brian David Mitchell.

The couple is charged with multiple felonies in state court and last year was indicted by a federal grand jury.

But Barzee writes of repentance only when discussing her desire to be re-baptized in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In a June 21 letter, she recounts talking to a local church leader about the steps necessary to regain her membership, which includes making a full confession.

Proud of his religion and worried about its future, Chicago dentist Max Feinberg wrote a will with an unusual catch: His grandchildren wouldn't inherit a penny if they married someone who wasn't Jewish.

His decision led to family feuds, lawsuits, counterclaims and, on Thursday, a unanimous ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court that Feinberg and his wife were within their rights to disinherit any grandchildren who married outside the faith.

"Equal protection does not require that all children be treated equally ... and the free exercise clause does not require a grandparent to treat grandchildren who reject his religious beliefs and customs in the same manner as he treats those who conform to his traditions," Justice Rita Garman wrote in a ruling that overturned decisions by two lower courts.

One disinherited granddaughter had argued it was improper for a will to set up conditions that promote religious intolerance in people's marriage decisions or even encouraged couples to divorce.

"It is at war with society's interest in eliminating bigotry and prejudice, and conflicts with modern moral standards of religious tolerance," said Michele Feinberg Trull's brief to the Supreme Court.

The court's ruling was based partly on technicalities in the way this estate was arranged. The court did not provide a broad ruling on whether similar religious restrictions would be valid under other circumstances.

A federal appeals court on Thursday tossed out a $5 million verdict against protesters who carried signs with inflammatory messages like "Thank God for dead soldiers" outside the Maryland funeral of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the signs contained "imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric" protected by the First Amendment. Such messages are intended to spark debate and cannot be reasonably read as factual assertions about an individual, the court said.

A jury in Baltimore had awarded Albert Snyder damages for emotional distress and invasion of privacy. The 2006 funeral of Snyder's son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster, Md., was among many military funerals that have been picketed by members of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas.

Albert Snyder's attorney, Sean E. Summers, said he and his client were disappointed.

Property rights advocates who fought to keep the city of New London from taking homes by eminent domain say the city's failure to develop the land is poetic justice. But city officials say the land's fate was victim of the bad economy.

Susette Kelo and six other homeowners fought for years to keep New London from taking their homes. The city won the right to buy the land in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2005.

Officials hoped for more than 3,000 new jobs in the development. But today, there's only a state park and a handful of new jobs.

Federal prosecutors said Tuesday that a review of most accounts held by financier Bernard Madoff's customers when he was arrested shows that about half of the customers had not lost money because they withdrew more money than they originally invested.

Prosecutors made the revelation as they told a judge in court papers that there was no need to order restitution because all of Madoff's assets will be distributed to investors through forfeiture requirements.

As part of their filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, they summarized the findings of a court-appointed trustee who is calculating how much investors lost so it can be decided how to divide up assets that are recovered.

The government said a search of financial records, including microfilm records dating back to 1979, show that investors suffered net losses exceeding $13 billion. In all, 15,870 claims have been made to the trustee by those seeking a share of any recovered money.

The court document said there were approximately 8,094 customer accounts held by Madoff's private investment business from at least 2000 through December 2008. At the time of his Dec. 11 arrest, there were 4,902 active customer accounts, the government said.

Most of the customers who had current accounts have made claims with the trustee, prosecutors wrote. Of those, nearly 50 percent had a net loss, meaning they contributed more funds to their accounts than they withdrew, while about half had no net loss because they withdrew more funds than they contributed, prosecutors said.