A judge removed a juror from a trial in suburban Detroit after the young woman wrote on Facebook that the defendant was guilty. The problem? The trial wasn't over. Hadley Jons, of Warren just north of Detroit, could be found in contempt when she returns to the Macomb County circuit court Thursday.

Jons, 20, was a juror in a case of resisting arrest. On Aug. 11, a day off from the trial and before the prosecution finished its case, she wrote on Facebook that it was "gonna be fun to tell the defendant they're guilty."

The post was discovered by defense lawyer Saleema Sheikh's son.

Circuit Judge Diane Druzinski confronted Jons the next day and replaced her with an alternate.

"You don't know how disturbing this is," Druzinski said, according to The Macomb Daily.

A message seeking comment was left for Jons on Monday.

"I would like to see her get some jail time, nothing major, a few hours or overnight," Sheikh said. "This is the jury system. People need to know how important it is."

Sheikh's son, Jaxon Goodman, discovered the comment while checking jurors' names on the Internet. He works in his mother's law office.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit earlier this month declined to schedule an en banc hearing, or a hearing before all judges in the ninth circuit, as requested by the defendant in a drug-related case. The defendant was seeking to suppress evidence gathered against him by federal agents who attached a GPS device to his vehicle without first obtaining a warrant.

The defendant, Juan Pineda-Moreno of Oregon, claims that U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search by planting, without a warrant, a tracking device on a vehicle parked in his driveway in 2007. The agents were tracking Pineda-Moreno on suspicion that he belonged to a marijuana growing operation.

A three-judge panel of the appellate court in January rejected Pineda-Moreno's claims and ruled that his constitutional rights were not violated. The court this month rejected a petition by Pineda-Moreno for a rehearing of his case by the full Ninth Circuit panel of judges.

The appellate court's ruling essentially gives law enforcement agencies in the nine Western states under the Ninth Circuit's jurisdiction the legal authority to surreptitiously enter personal property and attach a GPS tracking device on vehicles parked there without first obtaining a warrant.

A long-running age discrimination suit against 3M Co. is back in Ramsey County District Court, and an attorney is once again seeking to turn it into a class action on behalf of as many as 5,000 3M employees.

The suit was originally filed in 2004 on behalf of six 3M employees who alleged they were discriminated against based on age during the tenure of CEO James McNerney Jr., which extended from 2001 to 2005.

After hearing arguments over class-action certification -- in which plaintiffs and 3M attorneys presented anecdotal and statistical evidence to refute the other's positions -- District Judge Gregg Johnson took the case under advisement. By law, he must rule on the case within 90 days.

The suit, which has had an up-and-down history, was previously certified as a class action by Johnson in 2008, but last year the Minnesota Court of Appeals returned the case to the lower court with instructions to review whether the "preponderance of the evidence" justified making the case a class action.

An attorney for Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland's office asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court Monday to strike down a new law designed to raise revenue for the state's Medicaid program.

Attorney Michael Ridgeway told the high court state lawmakers did not follow constitutional guidelines when they passed the bill. Their errors included failing to get a required three-fourths vote of the House and Senate, he said.

The law sets a 1 percent fee on claims paid by private health insurers and companies with self-insured health care plans to support Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income and elderly residents.

Attorneys for the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, the state's Medicaid provider, and other state agencies urged the court to uphold the new law and said it was meant to increase residents' access to health care services provided by Medicaid.

The doctor charged in Michael Jackson's death is due back in court for a scheduling hearing that will determine when prosecutors will publicly present some of their evidence.

Dr. Conrad Murray is required to attend Monday's hearing, during which a Los Angeles judge is expected to schedule a preliminary hearing for later this year.

The judge will decide at that hearing whether there is enough evidence for the involuntary manslaughter case against the cardiologist to continue. Murray, who maintains offices in Las Vegas and Houston, was charged in February for administering a lethal dose of anesthetic propofol to Jackson.

Murray has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys have said the physician did not give Jackson anything that "should have" killed him.

NASA's former chief of staff has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a case stemming from a $600,000 contract for Mississippi State University, a client of his consulting firm.

Sheila Wilbanks, a U.S. Attorney's office spokeswoman, said Courtney Stadd pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Gulfport, Miss.

Stadd faces up to five years in prison at sentencing on Nov. 18.

Prosecutors say Stadd conspired with Liam Sarsfield, NASA's former chief deputy engineer, to guide contracts. Sarsfield pleaded guilty in November to one count.

Stadd was NASA's chief of staff and White House liaison from 2001-2003. Stadd was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to probation in a different case for steering a $10 million contract to MSU.

The 14 crosses erected along Utah roads to commemorate fallen state Highway Patrol troopers convey a state preference for Christianity and are a violation of the U.S. Constitution, a federal appeals court said Wednesday.

The ruling reverses a 2007 decision by a federal district judge that said the crosses communicate a secular message about deaths and were not a public endorsement of religion. It's the latest in a recent rash of mixed-bag rulings on the public use of crosses.

A three-judge panel from Denver's 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its 38-page ruling that a "reasonable observer" would conclude that the state and the Utah Highway Patrol were endorsing Christianity with the cross memorials.

"This may lead the reasonable observer to fear that Christians are likely to receive preferential treatment from the UHP," the justices wrote.

The 12-foot high white crosses with 6-foot horizontal crossbars are affixed with the patrol's beehive logo and a biography of the deceased trooper.

First erected in 1998, monuments were paid for with private funds and erected only with the permission of the troopers' families. Nearly all of the 14 crosses are on public land.

Two men behind the cross project have said they selected crosses for the memorials because the image of a cross can simultaneously convey a message of death, remembrance, honor, gratitude and sacrifice.