The high court on Monday said it will consider allowing prosecutors in Maryland to use a confession from convicted child molester Michael Shatzer that he sexually abused his son.

Shatzer was imprisoned at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown for child sexual abuse in 2003 when police started investigating allegations concerning his son. Shatzer requested an attorney and the investigation was soon dropped.

Three years later, the boy was old enough to offer details. According to court documents, when police questioned Shatzer again about the case, he was advised of his rights and signed a form waiving them before confessing.

After Shatzer was charged, he filed a motion to suppress his statements, arguing that he had asked for an attorney in the case before. A lower court said the confession could be used, but the Maryland Court of Appeals agreed with Shatzer and threw out the confession.

Judge Nancy Gertner postponed oral arguments set for Thursday in the copyright infringement lawsuit that pits a Boston University graduate student against the music recording industry. Proceedings will resume Feb. 24.

Gertner said the delay would give the First Circuit Court of Appeals time to resolve an extraordinary petition by the recording industry challenging how the court recording will be made and distributed.

Charles Nesson, a Harvard professor representing BU student Joel Tenenbaum, is challenging the constitutionality of the lawsuits and asked the court to authorize the webcast.

The case is part of an effort by the Recording Industry Association of America to stop online music sharing.

Kent was set to be arraigned Wednesday, a day after a federal grand jury in Houston added three new charges to the indictment it issued in August that accuses him of making unwanted sexual advances toward his former court case manager.

The new charges — aggravated sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact and obstruction of justice — allege Kent engaged in unwanted sexual contact with a second former court employee and later lied about it to investigators.

"There is a gag order in the case which prohibits the parties from making any sort of comment with the exception of stating without elaboration what the defense is to these new charges," said Dick DeGuerin, Kent's attorney. "They are untrue and we believe the product of intense pressure and threats brought against the complainant."

In a press release, the Justice Department only gave a brief description of the additional charges against Kent.

Kent, who was released on his own recognizance after last year's indictment, is still on the bench.

Jury selection in Kent's trial on the initial charges against him was set to begin Jan. 26. It was not immediately known if the new charges would delay the trial.

If convicted, Kent faces up to life in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. He is the first federal judge to be indicted in the last 18 years.

Kent initially faced two counts of abusive sexual contact and one count of attempted aggravated sexual abuse following a U.S. Justice Department investigation into complaints by case manager Cathy McBroom.

In an unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court ruled that the property belongs to the Episcopal Church because the parishes agreed to abide by the mother church's rules, which include specific language about property ownership.

St. James Church in Newport Beach, All Saints Church in Long Beach and St. David's Church in North Hollywood pulled out of the 2.1 million-member national Episcopal Church in 2004 and sought to retain property ownership.

Each church held deeds in their names to the property. The court ruled that Episcopal Church canons made it clear the property belonged to the individual parishes only as long as they remained part of the bigger church.

"When it disaffiliated from the general church, the local church did not have the right to take the church property with it," Supreme Court Justice Ming Chin wrote for the seven-member court.

The 2003 ordination of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire set off a wide-ranging debate within the church and upset conservative congregations. Since then, four dioceses and about 100 individual churches have split and set off bitter religious and legal feuds over church doctrine and division of property.

The issue was whether $5.2 million transferred from Colombia to the accounts of attorney Ben Kuehne were exempt from criminal prosecution because they were essentially legal fees. Kuehne's lawyers and defense attorneys' groups argued that the conspiracy charge against him violated the Sixth Amendment's guarantee that a person charged with a crime has a right to a lawyer.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke agreed, rejecting the U.S. Justice Department's contention that the payments were not necessary for the defense of Colombian drug baron Fabio Ochoa, who was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison.

"Congress has explicitly exempted from the money-laundering statute transactions necessary to preserve a person's right to representation," Cooke said in a 13-page ruling. "If I were to construe the statutory exemption as the government suggests, the exemption for such transactions would amount to no exemption at all."

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which filed briefs in the case, had argued that the conspiracy charge against Kuehne could deter lawyers around the country from representing numerous clients whose legal fees might stem from questionable sources.

In a recent letter to a federal judge, the receiver said founder Marc Dreier also may seek protection too.

Prosecutors have accused the 58-year-old Dreier of tricking hedge funds into making bogus investments. They say losses could top $380 million.

He ran a mid-size law firm that has represented celebrities including retired football star Michael Strahan and former News Corp. publishing executive Judith Regan.

Thomas Tamm, whose suburban Washington home was searched by federal agents last year, told the magazine he leaked the existence of the secret program to The New York Times 18 months before the newspaper broke the story.

"I thought this was something the other branches of the government and the public ought to know about. So they could decide: do they want this massive spying program to be taking place?" Tamm told Newsweek in what the magazine said were a series of recent interviews that he granted against the advice of his lawyers.

"If somebody were to say, who am I to do that? I would say, 'I had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.' It's stunning that somebody higher up the chain of command didn't speak up," the magazine quoted Tamm as saying.

Tamm, 56, told the magazine he called the Times from a subway station pay phone in Washington.

In December 2005 the Times published a story exposing the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants.

The story cited multiple anonymous sources. Newsweek said the Times reporters who wrote the story refused to say whether Tamm was one of them.

The eavesdropping had been conducted without public knowledge and without any court approval. It has since been put under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Tamm, who left the Justice Department in 2006, had worked in the department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, a secretive unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets, according to Newsweek.

He told the magazine he has since struggled to make a living in private practice. Tamm has not been charged with any crimes, though the magazine said his friends and relatives have been questioned by federal agents.