The order by Connecticut Superior Court Judge Arthur Hiller, issued Monday and made public Tuesday, prohibits them from selling homes or moving money, and marks the first time their assets have been frozen.

"This is an important step," said David Golub, a lawyer representing the town of Fairfield, Connecticut, in a lawsuit against Madoff and the so-called feeder funds run by Tremont Group Holdings, Maxam Capital Management and Fairfield Greenwich Group.

The town's pension funds charged in a lawsuit that the funds "knew -- or willfully refused to know -- that Madoff's investment returns were not actually produced by his purported split-strike conversion strategy."

Separately, a judge in New York denied an appeal by Madoff's brother, Peter, to lift a freeze on his assets in a civil lawsuit. Peter Madoff had reached an agreement with U.S. authorities in December on an asset freeze, according to court papers.

In a unanimous opinion, the high court refused to reverse the conviction of Michael Rivera, who was found guilty of first degree murder in the shooting death of 16-year-old Marcus Lee and sentenced to 85 years in prison.

Rivera's lawyer wanted to use one of his peremptory challenges on a female juror candidate, but a state judge refused to let him do it. The woman, Deloris Gomez, a business office supervisor at Cook County Hospital's outpatient orthopedic clinic, went on to become the jury forewoman.

The Illinois Supreme Court said she should have been dismissed, but that the error was harmless. Rivera's lawyers argued that the seating of an illegal juror should have required an automatic reversal.

"A state trial court's good faith but erroneous denial of a criminal defendant's peremptory challenge, we hold, does not require automatic reversal of the defendant's conviction, provided that all persons seated on the jury are qualified and unbiased," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court.

The high court on Thursday voided the convictions of many youth offenders who appeared before former Luzerne (loo-ZURN') County Judge Mark Ciavarella (shiv-uh-REL'-uh) from 2003 to 2008.

Federal prosecutors charged Ciavarella and another judge with taking $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in private lockups.

The judges pleaded guilty to fraud last month and face sentences of more than seven years in prison.

The juveniles whose records were expunged were low-level offenders who appeared in Ciavarella's courtroom without lawyers.

The Montana Supreme Court says a credit-card issuer cannot amend a cardholder agreement to add an arbitration clause, merely by enclosing a "bill stuffer" notice with the cardholder's monthly bill.

The court in a 5-1 ruling said the practice "does not provide sufficient notice to the consumer" about a change that would restrict his or her access to the courts.

The ruling came in a case brought against the Herbergers department stores by a Kalispell woman, Santana Kortum, who is an attorney. It reverses a District Court ruling that granted Herbergers' motion to compel arbitration and to dismiss the lawsuit, and sent the case back to the District Court for further proceedings.

"We conclude that making a change in a credit agreement by way of a "bill stuffer" does not provide sufficient notice to the consumer on which acceptance of the unilateral change to a contract can be expressly or implicitly found." Justice James C. Nelson wrote for the court. "Consequently, Herbergers' unilateral attempt to amend its original cardholder agreement to include an arbitration clause was ineffective.

Concurring in the opinion were Justices John Warner, Patricia Cotter, W. William Leaphart and Brian Morris. Chief Justice Mike McGrath did not participate in the ruling.

The decision could make it harder for some minority candidates to win election and for southern Democrats, in particular, to draw friendly electoral boundaries after the 2010 Census.

The 5-4 decision, with the court's conservatives in the majority, came in the case of a North Carolina plan that sought to preserve the influence of African-American voters even though they made up just 39 percent of the population in a state legislative district.

While not a majority, the black voters were numerous enough to effectively determine the outcome of elections, the state argued in urging the court to extend the civil rights law's provision to the district. The case dealt with the section of the law that bars states from reducing the chance for minorities to "elect representatives of their choice."

But Justice Anthony Kennedy, announcing the court's judgment, said the court would not extend the law to those so-called crossover districts. The 50 percent "rule draws clear lines for courts and legislatures alike," Kennedy said in striking down a North Carolina legislative district.

In 2007, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the district, saying the Voting Rights Act applies only to districts with a numerical majority of minority voters. The district also violated a provision of the state constitution keeping district boundaries from crossing county lines, the court said.

Defense attorney Ira Lee Sorkin's late father once had an account with Madoff. The lawyer also represented two Madoff-linked accountants in a securities case 17 years ago.

Madoff is expected to say he doesn't mind the potential conflict.

Prosecutors have sought a hearing Tuesday before Judge Denny Chin in federal court.

The court appearance is expected to be a warmup to Madoff's Thursday plea hearing when he is expected to plead guilty in the case. At least 25 investors have indicated they'd like to speak Thursday.

The 70-year-old Madoff was arrested in December and accused in a $50 billion fraud.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., who is being sued by Star Scientific, Inc.

Star Scientific, Inc. says R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. infringed on its patents on a way to cure tobacco minimizing the formation of tobacco-specific nitrosamines or TSNA, which may be carcinogenic.

But a trial court says the patents are unenforceable, because the inventor kept from the Patent and Trademark Office key documents and information — including that low-TSNA tobacco already had been grown in the U.S.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned that decision, saying a judge cannot throw a patent out without clear and convincing evidence that a deception was intentional.

R.J. Reynolds lawyers wanted the high court to look at the case again, saying the appeals court ignored previous rulings on how to judge when a patent applicant doesn't turn over all required information.