Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and several state Supreme Court justices are planning a nationwide push during next year's state legislative sessions to end the practice of electing judges. Nevada already has such a proposal before voters on the 2010 ballot.

Many judges and the American Bar Association argue the legal system is tainted by judges seeking campaign donations.

"It doesn't support the fundamental principle of judges acting fairly and impartially," Ohio Chief Justice Tom Moyer told The Associated Press.

A judicial think tank at the University of Denver has assembled a group of prominent judges, including O'Connor, to push for the abolition of directly elected judges in the 33 states that have them.

They want state commissions made up mostly of non-lawyers to pick judges. Governors would appoint judges the commissions select, and voters would decide in future elections whether the judges keep their jobs.

Burglars broke into the offices occupied by two members of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's legal defense team overnight and stole eight computers and a safe, police said Friday.

The break-in occurred at the South Side offices of veteran Chicago criminal defense lawyer Sam Adam and his son, Samuel E. Adam, police said. They are two of the three leading members of the team defending Blagojevich on charges that he schemed to sell or trade President Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat.

Chief of detectives Steve Peterson told a news conference that detectives don't know whether anything related to Blagojevich's federal fraud case was contained on the computers. But he said they are interviewing the attorneys.

Even if the computers contained sensitive material related to the federal case against Blagojevich, the lawyers had all of its material in backup files on a master server elsewhere in the offices that was untouched by the burglars, according to an individual with knowledge of the legal defense team.

A number of discs with material related to the case were around the office but not taken, said that person who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich would claim his 5th Amendment right against self incrimination if asked to testify in a civil lawsuit spurred by his federal corruption indictment, his lawyer says.

Attorney Jay Edelson told The Associated Press on Thursday night that the former governor also would assert legislative privilege. That right protects state lawmakers and other officials from being bombarded by suits over legislation.

Four Illinois gambling casinos have filed suit to recover $90 million they were forced to pay Illinois racetracks under measures signed by Blagojevich.

The federal indictment says Blagojevich conspired to squeeze a racetrack owner for a campaign contribution in exchange for signing one of the measures in 2008.

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a California death row inmate who was convicted in the gruesome murders of four people in 1983.

The justices said Monday they would not review an appeals court ruling that upheld the murder conviction and death sentence of Kevin Cooper.

Cooper came within a few hours of execution in 2004 before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in to order genetic testing on a hair and a bloody shirt found at the murder scene that Cooper said would prove he was not the killer.

The San Francisco-based appeals court later backed a district judge's ruling that the test results did not show Cooper's innocence.

Cooper, who has long maintained his innocence, had escaped from a California state prison. He was convicted of the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, both 41, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Christopher Hughes, her friend. They were stabbed and hacked repeatedly with a hatchet and buck knife. Joshua Ryen, then 8, survived a slit throat.

The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that the state improperly adopted its three-drug method of lethally injecting condemned inmates.

The court says in a ruling issued Wednesday that the state must go back and readopt the method because officials did not follow state administrative procedures. That includes holding public hearings.

The challenge was brought by three death row inmates.

Kentucky's lethal injection method was previously challenged by one of the inmates, Ralph Baze.

That case rose all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and led all the states who use a similar method to Kentucky to halt lethal injections until it was upheld.

Wednesday's ruling does not affect the validity of the three-drug method.

New York's highest court ruled Monday that families forced to pay high phone rates to talk to relatives in state prison won't receive refunds for the cost.

The lawsuit was first brought by the inmates' families in 2004.

In a 5-1 decision, the Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court's ruling that the families failed to assert legitimate claims under the state constitution.

The court found that the fee was bad public policy, but didn't qualify as being unconstitutional.

Defense organizations and relatives of inmates argued that the state had illegally collected millions of dollars through a prison telephone service contract. They said the state's contract with MCI Worldcom Communication violated the state constitution. The contract has since been taken over by Verizon.

"We're very disappointed," said Rachel Meeropol, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. The center has represented families in the case.

Georgia's biggest court system has warned that a 2010 Fulton County proposal that cuts $53 million from the judicial budget could force them to shut down the courthouse, jeopardize death penalty cases and slash as many as 1,000 jobs.

Fulton County's judicial leaders declared an "economic state of emergency" and warned Wednesday that the cuts, which amount to about a fourth of Fulton County's judicial budget, would lead to drastic changes at the Fulton County Jail, the sheriff's office along with prosecutors, judges and public defenders.

"This is not something you can adjust to," said Doris Downs, the county's chief superior court judge. "This is going to dismantle the justice system."

The proposed cuts, which were released last week, are part of a spending plan that would slash the county's funding by $148.2 million in 2010. Downs and other judicial leaders said the cuts came as a surprise to them and urged commissioners to rethink the spending plan before it plunges the legal system into a "crisis."

Fulton County Commission Chair John Eaves said the spending plan is still tentative and that commissioners will approve final changes in January. But he said that the judicial system will have to shoulder a portion of the cuts along with other county agencies.