AP - A man charged with smuggling songbirds into the United States by hiding them under his pants has pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles.

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AP - A former assistant prosecutor is trying again to become the first black district attorney in a city that has for years struggled to curb gun violence and secure the cooperation of witnesses to major crimes.

Seth Williams, 42, is considered the front-runner in Tuesday's five-way Democratic primary. The winner will be the heavy favorite in the November general election, since nearly 80 percent of Philadelphia voters are Democrats.

In 2005, Williams got about 45 percent of the vote when he challenged his former boss, DA Lynne Abraham. Abraham, who has been DA since 1991 and been dubbed "America's deadliest DA" for her support of the death penalty, is not running again.

The DA's office has struggled to rein in gun violence, much of it involving young, black males. Abraham has also struggled to encourage reluctant witnesses and confront pay-to-play corruption.

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AP - A person known only by DNA has killed five prostitutes over two decades in Milwaukee, the city where serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer once cruised gay bars for victims, police said Monday.

As a result, more than 20 DNA samples from other unsolved homicides of prostitutes are being sent to the state crime laboratory to see if they might have been linked to the same killer, police Chief Edward Flynn said at a news conference Monday.

Flynn said the unknown killer has never been arrested for a felony, which is Wisconsin's basis for those who must submit to DNA testing.

"He does not appear in any DNA database" checked by investigators, the chief said.

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AP - Arrest warrants have been issued for two men suspected of bursting into a family's home and kidnapping a 3-year-old who was later found wandering the streets in Mexico, sheriff's officials said Monday.

The suspects, both believed to be hiding in Mexico, are accused of taking Briant Rodriguez on May 3 after tying up his mother and four of his siblings. No motive has been released.

Authorities said they found evidence at the crime scene that links Israel Ledesma Moreno, 27, and Liberato Vega, 30, to the kidnapping.

State and federal warrants were issued against both men, who were in the country illegally and have a history of minor crimes in Southern California, FBI and San Bernardino County sheriff's officials said.

Sheriff's Sgt. Dave Phelps declined to comment on whether the men knew Briant's family.

Mexican authorities found Briant wandering the streets of Mexicali and contacted U.S. authorities, who brought him back across the border and reunited him with his mother on Saturday.

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AP - Former police officer Drew Peterson pleaded not guilty Monday to killing his third wife, whose death was reclassified as a homicide after the suburban officer's fourth wife disappeared.

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AP - A Boston University medical student accused of killing a 25-year-old New York City masseuse he met through Craigslist will be back in court this week for a pretrial hearing.

Philip Markoff is scheduled to appear in Boston Municipal Court on Thursday in connection with the fatal shooting of Julissa Brisman and the armed robbery of another woman four days earlier, both at posh Boston hotels.

Police say both women had advertised erotic services on Craigslist. Markoff has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

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AP - Lawyers in the upcoming kidnapping trial of a German national accused of kidnapping his daughter in Boston are filing their list of witnesses and questions they want to ask potential jurors.

Monday is the deadline for defense lawyers and prosecutors to file pretrial motions and other documents before jury selection begins May 26 in the trial of a man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller.

Rockefeller, whose real name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter (GAYR'-hahrtz-ry-tur), is accused of kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter during a supervised visit last July. Their disappearance touched off an international manhunt. They were found in Baltimore six days later, and the girl was unharmed.

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AP - A 3-year-old boy kidnapped nearly two weeks ago was in good spirits after he was found in Mexico and reunited with his mother, the sheriff said.

The boy, Briant Rodriguez, underwent physical and emotional evaluations at a local hospital Saturday after returning from the Mexican border town of Mexicali, where he was found wandering the streets. He was expected to return home after the checkup.

The reunion earlier in the day between Briant and his mother, Maria Rosalina Millan, ended an ordeal that began May 3 when two armed men who burst into his family's San Bernardino home and tied up his family, authorities said.

"I've been doing this for 30 years. I'm not saying it doesn't happen ... but the odds of finding him safe and alive — the odds of finding him alive — went down every day," San Bernardino County Sheriff Rod Hoops said. "Our detectives never gave up."

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AP - For the first time since a jaw-dropping scandal involving crooked judges and troubled kids, voters in northeast Pennsylvania are getting a chance to assert themselves at the ballot box — and, perhaps, to start fixing the problems that have turned this former hub of coal mining into a hothouse of corruption.

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AP - Jesse James Hollywood ordered the murder of a 15-year-old boy after kidnapping him to force the teen's half-brother to pay a $1,200 drug debt, a prosecutor said Friday during opening statements in the case that was made into the 2007 movie "Alpha Dog."

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AP - A 19-year-old Alaska man has pleaded "guilty, but mentally ill" in the stabbing deaths of his grandparents, aunt and her companion.

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Reuters - The court-appointed attorney overseeing the operations and assets of Texas financier Allen Stanford's businesses asked a federal judge on Friday to approve $20 million in fees and expenses for firms that have done work for him, according to court records.

"The tasks and challenges presented by this large receivership are numerous, complex, difficult, and in some respects unprecedented, Ralph Janvey, the receiver, said in a 51-page filing with federal court in Dallas.

Stanford, two of his top aides and three of his companies are accused of an $8.5 billion fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Janvey, who took over on February 17 in a bid to secure the firm's assets for investors, said his task has been complicated by the fact Allen Stanford's now shuttered financial empire was far flung and complex.

The billionaire controlled about 140 entities that were chartered and operated in locations spanning 15 U.S. states and 13 countries in Europe, the Caribbean, Canada and Latin America, the court papers said.

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AP - An adviser to the mayor and two former police officers were among dozens of members and associates of a motorcycle gang charged Thursday with attempted murder, cocaine and steroid distribution and other crimes.

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AFP - President Barack Obama's administration is to announce Friday it will retain Bush-era military commissions to try some terror suspects, but with improved legal safeguards, an official said.

The move, word of which has already faced tough opposition from rights groups, reflects the thick tangle of legal and national security arguments Obama is facing as he attempts to overhaul the legal struggle against terrorism.

Obama halted the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals pending a review soon after taking office in January, saying the system as it stood did not work, but did not rule out the use of a modified tribunal system in future.

And on the campaign trail last year, then-candidate Obama had called the military commissions "an enormous failure."

But an announcement on a new tribunals system will be made Friday, an administration official said.

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AP - A federal judge on Thursday dismissed evidence gained from search warrants prosecutors used to build their fraud and theft case against celebrity pathologist Cyril Wecht, who has investigated the deaths of Elvis Presley and JonBenet Ramsey.

The ruling should effectively end the prosecution's effort to retry Wecht, whose previous trial ended in a hung jury, one of Wecht's attorneys said after the ruling was issued.

"They used all this evidence in the first trial against Dr. Wecht ... and they couldn't get a conviction with it," attorney Jerry McDevitt said at a news conference. "Without this evidence, they don't even a have a case, in my opinion."

Wecht, of Pittsburgh, is accused of using his former Allegheny County Coroner's Office staff and resources to benefit his lucrative private practice, which also probed the suicide of Vince Foster, the deputy White House counsel under former President Bill Clinton and a longtime law firm partner of Hillary Clinton, among other cases.

Wecht, 78, also is accused of overbilling private clients for limousines and air fare and of ripping off prosecutors in surrounding counties for mileage fees when he appeared as an expert witness.

Acknowledging that the judge did not outright dismiss the case, Wecht said he had a "sense of temporary or partial relief."

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AP - The murder case against Jesse James Hollywood read like a screenplay even before it was turned into the 2007 movie "Alpha Dog."

A 15-year-old boy was kidnapped and killed over a $1,200 drug debt owed by his half-brother. A 4 1/2-year manhunt ended on a beach in Brazil. And allegations of misconduct by a prosecutor prompted a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now, the ending of the real-life story is about to be written.

Nine years after the killing, the trial of Hollywood is finally set to begin Friday to determine if he ordered the kidnap-murder of Nicholas Markowitz. If convicted, Hollywood could face the death penalty.

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AP - Monsignor William A. Kerr, a leading human rights figure whom serial killer Ted Bundy sought out to be his spiritual counselor on death row, died Wednesday. He was 68.

Kerr was hospitalized May 3 after suffering a stroke as he concluded celebrating a Mass.

"Monsignor Kerr traveled all over the globe, touching lives everywhere as he worked to build a more peaceful world," Florida State University President T.K. Wetherell said in announcing his death. "The world has lost a true visionary."

Kerr in 1978 administered last rites to a woman bludgeoned to death in her sorority house near the Florida State campus by Bundy, who later turned to the priest for spiritual counseling. Kerr last spoke with Bundy two days before the condemned man died in Florida's electric chair in January 1989.

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AP - The prosecution of an immigrant accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide has been dealt a setback by a federal judge in Kansas.

U.S. District Judge Monti Belot rejected a request from federal prosecutors Wednesday for more time to prepare for the trial of Lazare Kobagaya (luh-ZAR' koh-buh-geye-uh), an 85-year-old Topeka man.

Kobagaya is charged with fraud and unlawfully obtaining U.S. citizenship in 2006. The government says the case may be the first U.S. criminal prosecution involving proof of genocide.

Prosecutors say authorities in a related case in Finland have restricted use of their evidence in the U.S. trial until there's an indictment in the European case. That indictment is expected in August.

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AP - Possible Supreme Court nominee Diane P. Wood asked the most questions and showed no extra measure of caution Wednesday as judges on Chicago's federal appeals court plunged into a dispute over alleged housing discrimination.

Wood, 58, has been mentioned as a possible pick by President Barack Obama for the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

But she showed no inclination to make herself a smaller target for critics by avoiding combat Wednesday, asking more than 30 questions at the 70-minute hearing, more than any of the seven other judges at the full-court session.

In the case before the court, the Shoreline Towers Condominium Association was accused of discriminating against condo owner Lynne Bloch by repeatedly removing a mezuzah — a traditional scroll attached to the front door.

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AP - A prosecutor in Northern California has filed vehicular manslaughter charges against the driver of a bus that crashed and killed 11 people.

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