Banks killed 13 people in a 1982 shooting rampage in northeastern Pennsylvania. Five of the victims were his own children.

Judge Michael Conahan agrees with defense attorneys that Banks is psychotic and unable to comprehend his death sentence or participate in his defense.

Conahan issued the ruling Monday, several weeks after a hearing on Banks' mental state.

The judge had decided once before that Banks couldn't be put to death. But the state Supreme Court ordered a fresh hearing after finding that Conahan improperly barred a prosecution psychiatrist from testifying.

Prosecutors concede Banks is mentally ill but maintain the execution should go forward.

More than a year after the agreement was announced, the sudden recusal of a retired judge unanimously selected to review the priests' files has threatened to undo the fragile deal and could send both sides back to court for months. At the same time, an attorney who has been paid by the church to defend accused clergy is fighting to keep those records sealed — and plaintiffs accuse the archdiocese of using him as their proxy.

The developments have been gut-wrenching for alleged victims, who believe the church papers will contain evidence of criminal wrongdoing by church leaders. The Los Angeles settlement — by far the nation's largest — was supposed to close the book on the nationwide church abuse crisis that erupted in Boston in 2002.

"Many of us survivors went to litigation to produce the documents," said Esther Miller, one of more than 500 plaintiffs included in last year's agreement. "People want to move on and heal and they still have our feet to the fire. The money did nothing. It just pays for expensive therapy sessions."

The Wayne County prosecutor's office, which has charged Kilpatrick with eight felonies in his perjury case, said the plea would take place during a scheduled docket conference before Circuit Court Judge David Groner on Thursday morning.

And while the mayor's lawyers later insisted that no deal had been struck, Kilpatrick spokesman Chris Garrett confirmed negotiations toward a plea were continuing.

It was "apparent that they are close," Kilpatrick attorney James Thomas said late Wednesday, adding that he was unsure if the deal being negotiated included any jail time for the mayor.

The mayor would automatically be expelled from office if he is convicted of a felony. Kilpatrick also faces assault charges stemming from a confrontation in July.

The announcement of a potential deal by the prosecutor's office interrupted an extraordinary hearing Wednesday in which Gov. Jennifer Granholm is tasked with deciding if Kilpatrick should be removed from office for misconduct for his role in an $8.4 million whistle-blowers' settlement.

The governor's spokeswoman, Liz Boyd, said the removal hearing's second day would resume Thursday, an hour after Kilpatrick's appearance ends in Wayne County Circuit Court. A deal to resign would make Granholm's role moot.

The City Council has asked Granholm to use her constitutional authority to expel Kilpatrick for misconduct, saying it was misled when it approved the settlement last year with fired police officers.

Council members said they didn't know the deal carried secret provisions to keep a lid on steamy text messages between Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty, who was his chief of staff, on city-issued pagers.

A decision by gay couples to wed represents "a personal expression of emotional devotion, support and interdependence and a public commitment," state Supreme Court Judge Lucy Billings wrote in a decision issued Tuesday. "With that validity, they expect equal treatment with other married couples."

Thousands of gay New Yorkers over the next few years are expected to make use of Massachusetts' recent decision to let out-of-state gay couples marry there. The Christian legal organization that brought the New York case said it would appeal, while gay-rights and civil-liberties groups hailed the ruling as strengthening legal support for same-sex couples.

In a statement, Gov. David Paterson called it "a wise and fair determination."

Same-sex couples cannot marry in New York, and the state's highest court has said only the Legislature has the authority to change that. But Paterson's counsel told state agencies in May that a recent state appellate court ruling required them to recognize gay marriages legally performed elsewhere or risk discrimination claims.

The directive prompted a lawsuit from the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based group that has repeatedly challenged attempts to extend spousal rights to gay couples in New York. Several Republican state senators had signed onto the latest suit.

The alliance is involved in cases around the country that concern gay marriage, abortion, school prayer and other social issues. It already had several ongoing cases over attempts to extend spousal rights to gay couples in New York.

Darryl Burton, 46, was scheduled to appear Tuesday at a news conference in Kansas City along with the lawyers and supporters who fought for eight years to have his conviction and life sentence thrown out.

Burton was released from the Jefferson City Correctional Center on Friday, the same day prosecutors in St. Louis decided against trying him a second time.

Attorney Cheryl Pilate, of suburban Kansas City, said Monday night that she and co-counsel Charlie Rogers picked Burton up at the prison, along with a Columbia pastor who had befriended him.

"He had his first meal in Columbia with us," Pilate said. The group then went to St. Louis so that Burton could visit with family members, including "nieces and nephews he had never seen before. That was wonderful." He also has family in Kansas City and will live there, she said.

No physical evidence or suggested motive had ever tied Burton to the June 1984 shooting death of Donald Ball at an Amoco station in St. Louis. Instead, he was convicted solely on the testimony of two men who claimed to have witnessed the shooting.

But one of those witnesses, Claudex Simmons, lied during Burton's 1985 trial in St. Louis Circuit Court when he testified that his own criminal history consisted of just two convictions.

Simmons had actually been convicted of at least seven felonies and five misdemeanors — information that should have been disclosed to the jury, Cole County Circuit Judge Richard G. Callahan wrote in an Aug. 18 ruling accompanying a writ of habeas corpus.

No prisoners so far have sought to arrange weddings with same-sex partners since the state Supreme Court granted same-sex couples the right to wed as of mid-June, according to Michele Kane, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Nonetheless, department lawyers are drafting guidelines to bring the state's 33 adult prisons into compliance with the court's ruling that same-sex couples must be treated the same as opposite-sex couples under the California Constitution, Kane said.

What they have determined so far is that would mean allowing gay inmates to marry someone on the outside, but not a fellow prisoner — the same rules that apply to straight inmates, according to Kane.

"They will have the same marriage rights as other inmates — they will be able to marry non-inmates, but barred from marrying other inmates in prison," she said.

Prison officials were concerned that allowing two men or two women in the same prison to get married would pose novel safety and security concerns, according to Kane.

Hundreds of detainees are awaiting hearings in a Washington federal court in the coming months to determine whether they were properly labeled enemy combatants and imprisoned without being charged.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, who has said he wants to resolve the 24 cases assigned to him before the next president is sworn in, urged President Bush's administration to find a way for at least part of those cases to be held in public.

"If it can't be done, I have great concern that these hearings will be virtually or exclusively classified, closed to the public and, I might add, to the detainees," Leon said.

Leon said he would try to run a secure phone line from the military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to his courtroom so the detainees can listen to the hearing. Because prisoners are prohibited from hearing classified information, however, that effort would be useless if the entire hearing were classified.