A man accused of a dismemberment killing has lost a unique legal challenge of Manitoba’s jury system in which he claimed the right to be tried by a jury composed mostly of natives like himself.

Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Marc Monnin handed down a decision Wednesday, ruling Sydney Teerhuis’ rights are not being violated by the current system.

Teerhuis, 35, argued last fall the jury selection process doesn’t allow for a true representation of the public to hear a criminal case and is a violation of his charter rights.

Teerhuis is accused of dismembering, beheading and castrating Robin Greene, 38, inside a Winnipeg hotel in the summer of 2003. Police were led to the body after a man walked into the Public Safety Building and allegedly confessed.

Investigators initially believed they were responding to a prank call and were stunned to find the victim inside the bathtub of a hotel suite on July 2, 2003 — cut into eight pieces.

Police have been unable to locate some internal organs  — including the heart and intestines — and their disposition remains a disturbing mystery.

Police also recovered inside the suite a necklace that had been stolen one day earlier from the set of the Hollywood movie, Shall We Dance?, starring Jennifer Lopez, Susan Sarandon and Richard Gere.

The movie was being filmed in Winnipeg. The $4,000 necklace belonged to Sarandon but played no role in the killing in terms of motive, according to police.

The celebrity link to the gruesome case sparked interest in the United States from gossip magazines, tabloid newspapers and entertainment talk shows.

Greene and his alleged killer weren’t known to each other, but apparently met just prior to the homicide and agreed to return to the hotel for consensual sex.

One of Teerhuis’ main arguments about the jury process was that aboriginals are unfairly barred from jury duty because of a rule that states jurors can’t have criminal records.

Teerhuis cited statistics that show 61 per cent of people in prison are native.

Defence lawyer Greg Brodsky claimed justice officials have created a system where the only people selected for jury duty are “the elderly and the unemployed.”

Jury co-ordinator Gail Hildebrand told court that about 1,600 jury notices were sent out in anticipation of the Teerhuis trial, which was set to begin last September.

She said the list of names was randomly generated through provincial health records and she didn’t know how many people on it were native.

Crown attorney Deborah Carlson said there is no evidence anything improper occurred when dismissing prospective jurors.

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles is the rightful owner of the buildings and other property of a conservative La Crescenta congregation that broke away from the diocese last year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday.

The decision by Judge John Shepard Wiley Jr. against St. Luke's of the Mountains came more than a week after an appeals court panel in Orange County ruled in favor of the six-county Los Angeles Diocese in a similar property dispute with three other parishes.

The judge said Tuesday that he could not ignore the higher court's extensive June 25 ruling on comparable issues, but said he expected an appeal in the St. Luke's dispute as well.

"This case is far from over, but it's over in this court," he said.

In February 2006, a majority of St. Luke's congregants voted to pull out of the diocese and the 2.3-million-member Episcopal Church because of differences over biblical authority and interpretation, including the Episcopal Church's 2003 decision to consecrate an openly gay priest as bishop of New Hampshire.

The other dissident congregations — St. James Church in Newport Beach, All Saints Church in Long Beach and St. David's Church in North Hollywood — broke away in August 2004 over largely the same issues. Each has placed itself under the authority of a conservative Anglican bishop in Uganda.

The diocese sued, arguing that the congregations held their buildings and other property in trust for the diocese and the Episcopal Church as a whole. An Orange County trial judge, in separate decisions, had ruled in favor of the three parishes.

But a three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana overturned those opinions last week.

In Tuesday's hearing, Wiley said that before the appellate court's detailed, 77-page ruling, he had been leaning toward a decision for St. Luke's. But after the appellate ruling, he was obliged to defer to the higher court and its analysis of church property precedents in California and elsewhere, he said.

Outside the courtroom, officials and attorneys for St. Luke's said they were disappointed by the judge's decision, but not surprised.

"This doesn't change our decision to withdraw from the diocese and the Episcopal Church, and to uphold the decisions of the wider Anglican Communion," said the Rev. Ronald W. Jackson, the church's rector. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the 77-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion.

Jackson said he continued to believe that the St. Luke's property was owned by the congregation itself, not the diocese.

"We're a vibrant, growing congregation and we're going to continue the ministry that Christ has called us to," he said.

Eric Sohlgren, lead attorney for St. Luke's and the other dissident local parishes, said St. Luke's officials were expected to quickly decide whether to appeal. Sohlgren repeated his view that the appellate ruling was contrary to three decades of legal precedent in California and that it probably would be overturned.

But the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Los Angeles Diocese, said he was happy with Tuesday's decision and eager to reconcile with St. Luke's parishioners and leaders, many of whom he has known for years.

"We want to sit down with them, to understand their pain, have them understand ours and come back together," Bruno said.

The Southern California parishes are among about four dozen congregations that have seceded from the Episcopal Church since the consecration of the gay bishop in 2003. Many of those are in similar legal struggles over church property.

A Los Angeles jury in 2001 had rejected Davis' claims, but the trial judge, Robert C. Hubbell, threw out the verdict and ordered a new trial after several jurors accused two members of the panel of misconduct. An appellate court in 2005 restored the jury verdict, saying conflicting accounts of what happened in the jury room did not merit a new trial. Restricting its review to a narrow legal issue - whether the appellate court was correct in reviewing the competing juror accounts in the absence of a rationale being provided by Hubbell for his own ruling - the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate decision.

"We are pleased this lengthy litigation is finally over," said NFL executive vice president Joe Browne.

Jeff Birren, the Raiders' general counsel, said, "The Supreme Court ruled that because the judge failed to insert a couple of extra words of explanation, the Raiders should be denied a new trial. The Supreme Court's ruling is incomprehensible."

Davis had claimed more than $1 billion worth of damages from the NFL, but jurors didn't believe his account that the league forced his decision to move back to Oakland by imposing onerous terms before it would help build a new Hollywood Park stadium. The jury sided with the NFL, which argued Davis took the deal in Oakland because he thought it would turn out best for the team.

After the verdict was reached, Davis personally interviewed jurors and found some who were willing to sign statements saying a member of the panel was prejudiced against the Raiders. That juror, Joseph Abiog, maintained he had no bias, saying he only had joked that "I hate the Raiders" because he once lost a bet on the team in Las Vegas.

The Oakland contract has been disastrous both for the Raiders and taxpayers in the city and in Alameda County, as Raiders fans refused to buy all the pricey personal seat licenses and club seats that the deal's proponents had projected. The Raiders have fallen to among the lowest revenue-producing teams in the league, while the city and county have paid $236 million to cover the deal costs to date, a number that will increase until bonds used to rebuild McAfee Coliseum are retired in 2025.

Panner also installed small cameras in air vents above an examination table to record a nurse practitioner performing breast and pelvic exams on a 16-year-old patient.

The recordings were made in 2001 at the Modoc Medical Clinic and were discovered three years later by hunters walking in a field, the U.S. attorney's office said. The tapes had been buried in a Tupperware-style container.

Scott said Panner admitted producing the tapes and acknowledged he kept them because he was a "pack rat." Calls to a residential number in Panner's name in Alturas went unanswered Monday.

According to state Medical Board records, Panner was a graduate of the University of California, Irvine, and had practiced medicine for 27 years. He surrendered his medical license in April 2006.

He faces up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced in September in U.S. District Court.

J. Barrington Vaught, the Water Works' local counsel in the suit, said the Georgia Environmental Protection Division and Gov. Sonny Perdue's office asked the Water Works in a June 22 telephone conference to change certain passages in the lawsuit.

Water Works is being represented by Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird. Vaught is a partner with Columbus-based Hatcher, Stubbs, Land, Hollis and Rothschild, which is representing Water Works locally.

Specifically, he said state officials were concerned about passages that can be construed as "anti-Atlanta" that allege the Corps is reserving water in Lake Lanier for municipalities near the lake, which the suit contends was not authorized by the congressional act that created the lake.

The state of Georgia is already a plaintiff in two water allocation lawsuits that have been merged with two other actions filed by Alabama and Florida. Water Works President Billy Turner and his lawyers have said those lawsuits do not focus on Columbus' particular water interests.

"The whole object of this is to try to draft a complaint that will work in harmony with the claims the state of Georgia has against the Corps of Engineers, rather than us appearing to be adverse to the interests of the state of Georgia and in particular the Atlanta area," he said.

Vaught said Water Works will change the wording of the lawsuit to try to satisfy the state.

"But at the same time we've got to continue to make certain allegations in the complaint to preserve the city's right to proceed with the lawsuit," he said.

Water Works was expected to return to Columbus Council last week asking for a resolution making the city a party in the lawsuit, which delayed the request until the the council's July 10 meeting due to the state's request, Vaught said. Columbus Council canceled its meeting for this week.

Water Works officials went before the 10-member council on June 19 requesting the resolution, but councilors asked for another week to review the lawsuit. Councilors also requested Water Works to contact Columbus' congressional delegation about the potential litigation.

Although Columbus's supply of drinking water isn't in peril, Turner has said dips in the flow could jeopardize Columbus' ability to discharge treated waste water in compliance with its state permit.

If the flow doesn't consistently meet a minimum amount required by the Water Works' waste water permit, it could cost the utility $10 million-$50 million to upgrade its treatment equipment -- an expense Turner said would raise customers' water bills.

Vaught said Thursday that although Water Works is still committed to filing the lawsuit, it is awaiting a letter from either the EPD or the governor's office detailing the state's position on Columbus' demand for a guarantee that it will get the water it needs.

"At the present time we have no assurances from anyone in the government of the state of Georgia that our concerns and needs are being taken care of," Vaught said.

Panetti has been on Death Row in Texas since 1995 and has been diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Panetti's lawyers and attorneys for the state said he was mentally disturbed. The question was whether he was sufficiently mentally ill that it would violate the 8th Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment, to execute him.

Panetti was hospitalized for mental illness 14 times in the decade before using a shotgun to kill his former in-laws in the Texas hill-country town of Fredericksburg, as his estranged wife Sonja and her son watched.

Panetti was ruled mentally competent to stand trial, to represent himself and to be executed. Before Thursday's decision, four courts, including the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, rejected pleas by Panetti's lawyers to spare his life.

The case presented a particularly thorny question, because evidence was introduced that Panetti was aware that he had killed Amanda and Joe Alvarado. But expert testimony was presented that Panetti, known as "the Preacher" on Death Row, believed he was going to be executed because Texas was conspiring with the devil to block him from preaching the Gospel to fellow inmates -- not because of the Alvarado murders.

Kennedy found that Panetti's execution would be inconsistent with a 1986 Supreme Court decision that a person should not be put to death if he could not perceive "the connection between his crime and his punishment."

He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Dissenting was Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito Jr.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to a federal judge in Austin, Texas, to reassess Panetti's mental health in light of the decision issued Thursday. Ted Cruz, the Texas solicitor general, said he would continue to press for Panetti's execution.

The high court's decision was hailed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which submitted a friend-of-the-court brief, as did the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association.

"For once, law has caught up with medical science," said Ronald Honberg, NAMI's director of policy and legal affairs.

"The circumstances of this case are tragic. ... However, execution of someone who is profoundly ill would only compound the original tragedy and represent a profound injustice for us all," Honberg said.

A teenager has pleaded guilty to a murder that sent a mob of the victim's relatives on a search for the killer, ending in the fatal beating of another man they thought was involved.

Leonard Staton, 19, pleaded guilty Thursday to killing Patrick McClendon, 20. Staton faces a minimum of 24 years in prison for second-degree murder, kidnapping, robbery and possession of a stolen firearm.

Staton called police last summer to confess to killing McClendon, his one-time friend, over 2 ounces of marijuana.

Hours before that call, a search party of McClendon's family and friends came across the victim's car, hidden among pine trees on property that belonged to the family of Tony Blakeney, 40.

The search party then turned on Blakeney, who lived at the house and was part of the search party, authorities said. Sheriff's deputies found Blakeney lying on the ground, and he died at a hospital.

Eleven men - most of them relatives of McClendon's, and all under 30 - face murder charges in Blakeney's death.

Investigators have said Blakeney had no part in McClendon's killing.