A Phoenix man accused of fatally shooting the operator of a photo speed-enforcement van has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Maricopa County Superior Court spokeswoman Karen Arra says 69-year-old Thomas Patrick Destories entered the plea Tuesday, stipulating 22 years in prison. Sentencing is Aug. 20.

Destories was charged with first-degree murder in the April 19, 2009, shooting of Doug Georgianni, who was operating a speed-enforcement van on a Phoenix freeway.

Destories' trial was slated to begin in January, but his attorney requested a psychiatric evaluation, saying Destories has a history of mental illness going back to 1970.

Two psychologists examined Destories and found him competent to stand trial.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has upheld a sexual abuse conviction of a former Jesuit priest who claimed he was falsely accused.

In a 7-0 ruling on Tuesday, justices ruled that Donald McGuire's prosecution 36 years after he allegedly abused two teenage boys in the 1960s was fair.

McGuire, a former spiritual adviser to Mother Teresa and her religious order of nuns, argued the delay hurt his ability to defend himself. Justices disagreed.

The men came forward in 2003 to report they were abused by McGuire during trips to a cottage in Fontana, Wis. in 1967 and 1968. At the time, McGuire taught the boys at the Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Ill.

McGuire was convicted on five counts of indecent behavior with a child. He is serving a 25-year prison term on separate, federal charges.

A Southern California law firm that has won more than $17 million from construction defect court settlements in the Sacramento area is being sued by former clients for legal malpractice.

Eleven local parties allege Lee Jackson, a partner in the Santa Monica office of Milstein, Adelman & Kreger LLP, misled them and settled a construction defect lawsuit against U.S. Home Corp. for less than 10 percent of the estimated cost of repairs.

The lawsuit, filed June 18 in Sacramento County Superior Court, alleges negligence, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud on the part of the Milstein firm. The suit demands damages of $1.5 million plus interest, punitive damages, fees and court costs.

“These people don’t feel they got adequate representation,” said Eugene Haydu, a Sacramento attorney who represents the plaintiffs. “We (attorneys) have a special duty to homeowners. Most of this is brand new to them and they can be taken advantage of — that’s what I think is most egregious."

American Bar Association witnesses will be lead-off witnesses today as the Senate Judiciary Committee resumes its confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.  

Kim Askew, chair of the ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, and William J. Kayatta Jr., a committee member from Maine, are scheduled to testify at 4 p.m. ET about how and why the ABA reached its evaluation that Kagan is “well qualified” to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, giving her the highest possible rating the committee can give.

Written copies of their testimony will be posted on the ABA website by 4 p.m. ET at http://www.abanet.org/scfedjud/statements.html 

The hearing is being televised, and the Senate Judiciary Committee is webcasting the testimony from its site, http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=4679

Also, below is a host of ABA produced materials to support your coverage. The ABA Standing Committee works independently of the association and has been evaluating nominees since the Eisenhower Administration. These materials provide a look behind the scenes at what it takes to issue an ABA SCOTUS rating. 

All digital resources below are available for embedding, linking use, social network sharing and website/blog reproduction purposes in part or in their entirety.

Based on the excellence she has displayed during a long career, if not her evasiveness during her hearings, she is well qualified for the court.

The nation's top civil liberties group on Wednesday issued travel alerts for Arizona, saying the state's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants could lead to racial profiling and warrantless arrests.

American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in Arizona, New Mexico and 26 other states put out the warnings in advance of the Fourth of July weekend. The Arizona chapter has received reports that law enforcement officers are already targeting some people even though the law doesn't take effect until July 29, its executive director said.

The alerts are designed to teach people about their rights if police stop and question them.

The Arizona law requires police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person's immigration status if officers have a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally. It also makes it a state crime for legal immigrants to not carry their immigration documents and bans day laborers and people who seek their services from blocking traffic on streets.

Attorneys defending the law against constitutional challenges filed by the ACLU and others argue that the Legislature amended it to strengthen restrictions against using race as the basis for questioning by police. Five lawsuits are pending in federal court, and the U.S. Justice Department is believed to be preparing a legal challenge.

Two conservative-driven decisions with potentially broad consequences will likely define the just-completed Supreme Court term: freeing corporations and unions to spend as much as they like in campaigns for Congress and president, and ruling that Americans have a right to a gun for self-defense wherever they live.

A key member of the five-justice majorities in both cases, and the author of the guns opinion, was Justice Samuel Alito. Though he has been on the court less than five years, Alito has had an outsize influence in firming up the court's conservative bloc.

His appointment to replace the more moderate Sandra Day O'Connor, more than any other choice in the last decade shows the importance of Supreme Court nominations. It also points up that Elena Kagan's nomination to take the place of the like-minded John Paul Stevens almost certainly will not have the same short-term impact as Alito has had.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday reaffirmed the limits on contributions that political parties can raise, and rejected a challenge by the Republican Party that the restrictions violated free-speech rights.

The justices sided with the Obama administration and affirmed a ruling that upheld the limits, a cornerstone of the 2002 federal campaign finance law designed to regulate the influence of money in politics.

Republican Party attorneys had sought to end the limits and cited the Supreme Court's ruling in January that corporations can spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress.

That decision has been denounced by President Barack Obama for turning loose a flood of special-interest money into the U.S. political system before the November congressional elections, when Democratic control of Congress is in jeopardy.

It also has provoked efforts by Democrats in Congress to adopt legislation to blunt the impact of the ruling and has become a major issue at the Senate confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, who Obama has nominated to the Supreme Court.