A lawyer for Kwame Kilpatrick said Thursday that the ex-Detroit mayor would fight Wednesday's indictment.

"Mr. Kilpatrick will vigorously defend these allegations," Farmington Hills attorney Arnold Reed said at a news conference. He said an indictment is no evidence of guilt and that Kilpatrick committed no crime.

Reed, who said he serves as Kilpatrick's appellate lawyer, scoffed at the indictment.
"A federal grand jury will indict an empty glass of water if told to do so by the prosecution," he said.

He said he talked with Kilpatrick on Thursday and that the ex-mayor wants to do everything he can to fight the charges. Reed also said that the indictment is making Kilpatrick more focused.

Reed said he plans soon to appeal the probation violation sentence of 18 months to five years that Kilpatrick received May 25 for hiding assets to avoid paying $1 million in court-ordered restitution resulting from his 2008 perjury conviction. Reed wants Kilpatrick released on bond from state prison pending appeal.

The Supreme Court has sided with former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling in limiting the use of a federal fraud law that has been a favorite of white-collar crime prosecutors.

The court said Thursday that the "honest services" law could not be used in convicting Skilling for his role in the collapse of Enron. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her majority opinion that the ruling does not necessarily require Skilling's conviction to be overturned.

During arguments in December and March, several justices seemed inclined to limit prosecutors' use of this law, which critics have said is vague and has been used to make a crime out of mistakes and minor transgressions in the business and political world.

The court, at the same time, rejected Skilling's claim that he did not get a fair trial in Houston because of harshly critical publicity that surrounded the case in Enron's hometown.

The court in this ruling also sided with former newspaper magnate Conrad Black, setting aside a federal appeals court decision that had upheld Black's honest services fraud conviction. But as in Skilling's case, the justices left the ultimate resolution of the case to the appeals court.

The justices also threw out an appeals court ruling against former Alaska legislator Bruce Weyhrauch, who is facing charges under the honest services law.

Thursday's ruling could affect the ongoing prosecution of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the convictions of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and ex-HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy.

A second man is expected to change his not-guilty plea in the arson fire that destroyed a predominantly black Massachusetts church hours after Barack Obama was elected president.

Thomas Gleason Jr. has a change-of-plea hearing scheduled Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Springfield. Gleason had been scheduled to go to trial on civil rights and other charges later this week.

His lawyer, Mark Albano, declined to comment when reached Monday.

Gleason is one of three white men charged with burning down the Macedonia Church of God in Christ on Nov. 5, 2008, the day after Obama was elected the nation's first black president.

Last week, Benjamin Haskell pleaded guilty in a deal that calls for him to spend nine years in prison.

A former vice president of an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse will be sentenced to 27 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $27 million restitution for his conviction on financial fraud charges, a federal judge said Monday.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Linda R. Reade released the memorandum outlining the sentence she will hand down for Sholom Rubashkin during the former Agriprocessor's Inc. manager on Tuesday in federal court in Cedar Rapids.

A jury found Rubashkin guilty last fall on 86 federal financial fraud charges. Prosecutors had sought a 25-year sentence. Rubashkin's attorney, Guy Cook, said the sentence is longer than necessary and plans to appeal.

"It's unfair and excessive and is essentially a life sentence for a 51-year-old man," Cook said.

Cook said he spoke to Rubashkin Monday and he described Rubashkin as calm and focused.

Rubashkin oversaw the plant in Postville, Iowa, that gained attention in 2008 after a large-scale immigration raid in which authorities detained 389 illegal immigrants. The plant filed for bankruptcy months after the raid and was later sold. Prosecutors claim evidence of the massive fraud scheme was uncovered during an investigation by a court-appointed trustee.

Prosecutors later alleged that Rubashkin intentionally deceived the company's lender and that he directed employees to create fake invoices in order to show St. Louis-based First Bank that the plant had more money flowing in that it really did. But Cook tried to portray Rubashkin as a bumbling businessman who was in over his head, and who never read the loan agreement with First Bank.

The Supreme Court has upheld a federal law that bars "material support" to foreign terrorist organizations, rejecting a free speech challenge from humanitarian aid groups.

The court ruled 6-3 Monday that the government may prohibit all forms of aid to designated terrorist groups, even if the support consists of training and advice about entirely peaceful and legal activities.

Material support intended even for benign purposes can help a terrorist group in other ways, Chief Justice John Roberts said in his majority opinion.

"Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends," Roberts said.

Justice Stephen Breyer took the unusual step of reading his dissent aloud in the courtroom. Breyer said he rejects the majority's conclusion "that the Constitution permits the government to prosecute the plaintiffs criminally" for providing instruction and advice about the terror groups' lawful political objectives. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined the dissent.

The law allows medicine and religious materials to go to groups on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

A central figure in Pennsylvania's legislative corruption case — former lawmaker Mike Veon — is scheduled for sentencing in Harrisburg.

The former state House Democratic whip is to appear Friday before Dauphin Court Judge Richard Lewis.

Veon stands convicted of 14 counts of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest, involving the illegal use of public resources for political campaigning. Veon was one of 25 people arrested in the investigation into alleged corruption among Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature.

The state attorney general's office is seeking a 12- to 17-year prison sentence for Veon.

Veon's lawyer says he will ask for a sentence that includes probation but no prison time.

An anti-abortion protester arrested in 2007 had a First Amendment right to demonstrate on a sidewalk near the entrance the building that houses the Liberty Bell, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision overturns lower-court rulings that upheld the arrest of Christian evangelical leader Michael Marcavage. Marcavage, who lives in suburban Lansdowne, had been sentenced to a year's probation for refusing a National Park Service order to move to a nearby designated demonstration area.

The appeals court tossed the two charges on free-speech and procedural grounds. The three-judge panel said Marcavage caused no more of a disturbance than other people near the Liberty Bell entrance, including a cancer-survivors group and the drivers of horse-drawn carriages hawking their services.

Marcavage founded a group, Repent America, that opposes abortion, homosexuality and the teaching of evolution.

He has been arrested repeatedly during protests up and down the East Coast. He successfully challenged a 2004 arrest for picketing at a Philadelphia street festival for gays and lesbians, but a Massachusetts court last year upheld a disorderly conduct conviction based on his refusal to stop using a megaphone at Salem's famed Halloween celebration.