The Supreme Court has left in place a court ruling that the Obama administration says will cost taxpayers at least $19 billion in royalties on energy leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

The justices declined Monday to hear the government's appeal of a ruling in favor of the Anadarko Petroleum Corp. involving eight deepwater leases the company holds in the gulf. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that the Interior Department could not collect royalties from the leases, even as oil prices rose and companies began posting huge profits.

The leases were obtained between 1996 and 2000 by Kerr-McGee Corp., which Anadarko later acquired.

The case revolves around a 1995 law that gave oil and natural gas producers a break from paying royalties at a time when energy prices were extremely low. The law waived all royalty payments until a specific amount of oil and gas was produced.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan told the court that the Interior Department has the authority to lift the royalty relief once prices reach a certain level.

The ruling could affect other leases and prohibit the government from collecting royalties from other producers.

A federal appeals court has halted the execution of a man who strangled his 67-year-old neighbor, citing last month's failed attempt to execute another inmate in Ohio.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Monday to delay the execution of 43-year-old Lawrence Reynolds until a federal judge has time to hear arguments over problems with the Sept. 15 injection process. Reynolds had been scheduled to die Thursday.

Gov. Ted Strickland stopped the planned execution of Romell Broom after executioners tried for two hours to find a usable vein.

Broom's execution also is on hold while his attorneys prepare for a federal court hearing Nov. 30. They argue that an unprecedented second execution attempt on Broom violates a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The Supreme Court has refused to hear former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio's appeal of his insider trading conviction.

The court said Monday it would not entertain Nacchio's request that he either be acquitted of the charge or granted a new trial.

Prosecutors said Nacchio sold $52 million worth of stock in 2001 while knowing that Denver-based Qwest Communications International Inc. would have trouble meeting its sales goals. Nacchio began serving a six-year sentence on April 14.

He contended the jury was given improper instructions about what internal information had to be disclosed publicly. He also argued that the trial judge improperly barred testimony from an expert who could have explained Nacchio's trading patterns.

A Miami law firm allegedly helped jailed financier R. Allen Stanford establish an unregulated money pipeline to Antigua, The Miami Herald reported Sunday.

The newspaper said in 1998 the firm of Greenberg Traurig helped Stanford, who is charged with running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, in create a pipeline between Miami and Antigua that became a cornerstone of Stanford's banking empire. That relationship has reportedly been targeted by a court-appointed receiver that is trying to recover money for Stanford's alleged victims.

The Herald said Greenberg Traurig helped Stanford set up a special trust office in Miami that could move millions of dollars overseas without having to report anything to the government.

The firm also allegedly helped Stanford institute changes in Antigua's banking system after a series of money laundering scandals prompted the U.S. Treasury to consider blacklisting all offshore institutions in the Caribbean island, officials say.

Highlights of some high-profile cases that the Supreme Court will take up in its term that begins Monday:

_Guns: The Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms has never been held to apply to state and local laws restricting guns. The court is taking up a challenge to a handgun ban in Chicago to decide whether this right, like many others in the Bill of Rights, acts to restrict state and local laws or only federal statutes. If the court sides with gun rights supporters, lawsuits to overturn all manner of gun control laws are likely.

_Animal cruelty videos: A 1999 federal law bars depictions of acts of animal cruelty, including pit bull fights. A federal appeals court overturned a Virginia man's conviction and struck down the law because it impermissibly restricted his First Amendment rights. The Obama administration says courts should treat this issue the same as child pornography and rule that pictures and videos deserve no constitutional protection.

_Mojave cross: For most of the past 75 years, a cross on public land in a remote part of the Mojave National Preserve has stood as a memorial to World War I soldiers. The court takes up a long-running legal fight over whether the cross, which Congress declared a national memorial, violates First Amendment religious protections despite Congress' decision to transfer the land to private ownership.

_Mutual fund fees: A fight over the fees paid to an investment adviser gives the court a timely chance to weigh in on compensation paid to financial services executives. Individual mutual fund investors claim in a suit that they are paying unreasonably higher fees than institutional investors to the adviser who chooses their funds' stocks. The court could use this case to resolve disagreements among lower courts about whether plaintiffs have to prove merely that the fees are excessive or demonstrate that the adviser misled the mutual funds' directors who approved the fees.

The high court on Monday left in place a federal appeals court ruling that state officials were within their rights in trying to keep viewpoints on abortion off of Illinois license plates. Choose Life Illinois, Inc. sued to force the state to issue the plates.

The administrators of Lehman Brothers' assets in Europe said Monday that they may seek a direct agreement with hedge funds and other creditors to return money tied up since the collapse of the parent company as an alternative to a court-sanctioned settlement.

PricewaterhouseCoopers — which controls some $8.9 billion in assets from Lehman Brothers International (Europe) since the parent company went bankrupt on Sept. 15, 2008 — has proposed a contractual agreement with creditors following an adverse ruling by the High Court in London. The court ruled in July that it had no power to grant the administrators' request to set a "bar date" or deadline for creditors to file claims.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is appealing the court ruling, with a hearing expected on Oct. 26, but meanwhile it has disclosed a timetable for the alternate settlement.

The administrators sought a bar date because they had not received responses from all clients of Lehman Brothers, they could not depend on the accuracy of Lehmans' record and had not received all the information requested from custodians, depositories and affiliates of Lehman Brothers International (Europe).