AP - Before John Allen Muhammad went to trial for orchestrating the deadly sniper rampage that terrorized the Washington, D.C., region, he claimed he was a prophet and that his teenage accomplice had concocted an herbal AIDS cure, his lawyers say.

Despite such grandiose statements and evidence that Muhammad's brain was damaged by childhood beatings, his trial counsel failed to stop Muhammad from acting as his own attorney for part of his capital murder trial, his new legal team has argued in briefs filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Tuesday, the appeals court is scheduled to hear those argument in Muhammad's bid to overturn his conviction and death sentence or return the case to the trial court for whatever further proceedings the appellate judges might deem appropriate.

Muhammad made his own opening statement and cross-examined witnesses for the first two days of his 2003 trial before turning the case back over to his court-appointed attorneys. His new lawyers claim on appeal that the failure to prevent him from representing himself violated his constitutional right to an effective defense.

A jury in Virginia Beach sentenced Muhammad to death for the Oct. 9, 2002, murder of Dean Meyers in Prince William County. In all, the shooting spree by Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo left 10 dead and a half-dozen wounded in four states and the District of Columbia.

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TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian court began a session to hear an appeal by Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi against her eight-year prison sentence for espionage, and her lawyer predicted on Sunday it would be "substantially" reduced.

An Iranian court heard the appeal of U.S.-born journalist Roxana Saberi against her eight-year jail sentence for espionage on Sunday and her lawyer said he was optimistic it would be fundamentally changed.

Lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi said the appeals court had ended a one-day session and would issue its verdict in the coming days. Saberi was convicted by a lower court on April 18 of spying for the United States, Iran's arch-foe.

He said he had asked for his 32-year-old client, who looked thin and tired when she entered the court room, to be released on bail but the court had yet to decide on the request.

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has said Saberi's conviction was a warning to foreign journalists working in Iran ahead of its presidential election in June.

The case could complicate Washington's efforts toward reconciliation with Iran after three decades of mutual mistrust.

"The court session was held under good conditions and me and my colleague ... were given adequate time to defend our client," Khorramshahi told reporters. Saberi had also been given "sufficient opportunity" to defend herself.

"I'm hopeful and optimistic that there will be fundamental changes in the sentence," he said. The lawyer earlier said he expected it to be "substantially" reduced.


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AP - A judge said Friday that she's referring a Los Angeles lawyer to federal prosecutors and the State Bar over his involvement in lawsuits that she found were part of a massive fraud by purported Nicaraguan banana workers against U.S. food giant Dole.

Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney said that attorney Juan Dominguez, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuits against Dole, would be subject to charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, defrauding a court, conspiring to extort a United States company and possibly federal racketeering violations. She also ordered Dominguez to appear in her courtroom on June 15 for a hearing on sanctions for alleged contempt of court.

"All of the alleged actions by attorney Dominguez have criminal overtones," she said.

However, Chaney refused Friday to stop release of a documentary movie titled "Bananas," which Dole said is defamatory to the company and was instigated by the same lawyer.

An after-hours phone message left Friday at Dominguez's law office was not returned.

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AP - Authorities say four teenagers at a Florida school have been charged with sexually assaulting a member of their flag football team with a broomstick and a hockey stick.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said Friday that a 13-year-old was assaulted April 30 at Walker Middle School in Odessa.

The sheriff's office says two teens held down the boy while two others assaulted him. The office said in an e-mailed statement that the four students were charged with sexual battery and false imprisonment.

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AP - The dozens of mock murder trials held in Atlanta's main courthouse Friday were punctuated with stubborn witnesses, compelling arguments and dizzying legal back-and-forths from high school students.

But the competition was underpinned by a real-life legal drama after an Orthodox Jewish school filed a discrimination complaint over the competition's schedule.

The Maimonides School, an Orthodox Jewish school in Brookline, Mass., has long planned to compete in the National High School Mock Trial Championship in Atlanta this weekend. But a key part of the competition falls on Saturday, and the students don't compete on the Sabbath.

The event's organizers rebuffed the school's attempts to tweak the schedule to accommodate the students' religious needs, so team members' parents hired an attorney to file a religious discrimination complaint to the Justice Department.

The legal fight heightened after a board member of the state Bar of Georgia resigned over the controversy and Fulton County's chief judge threatened to block the event from taking place in the downtown Atlanta courthouse unless the schedule was changed.

The mock trial's organizers begrudgingly relented Thursday, saying the decision forced organizers to choose between canceling the competition or adhering to "an unreasonable request."

For the school's leaders, the outside-the-courtroom arguments provided a compelling legal lesson for the students competing in the event.

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AP - Drew Peterson, the former police sergeant who went on a high-profile media blitz after his fourth wife's disappearance more than a year and a half ago, was expected to appear in court on murder charges in the death of his previous ex-wife.

Peterson, 55, was scheduled to be arraigned Friday on charges of first-degree murder in the 2004 death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, who was found in an empty bathtub at home.

He was arrested during an evening traffic stop Thursday near his Bolingbrook home and held on $20 million bond, Illinois State Police Capt. Carl Dobrich said.

"We are very confident in our case," Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow said.

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AP - A Manhattan jury has convicted four current or former Ernst & Young partners on criminal tax shelter charges.

Federal prosecutors say the four defendants were found guilty Thursday of conspiracy, tax evasion and other charges related to the design, marketing and implementation of tax shelters sold by Ernst & Young.

Officials say Robert Coplan, Martin Nissenbaum, Richard Shapiro, and Brian Vaughn were members of the accounting firm's tax shelter group. They say the tax shelters created by the defendants helped the wealthy escape taxes on incomes exceeding $10 million.

Proscuctors said the fraud occurred over a period of eight years, between 1998 and 2006.

The defendants had pleaded not guilty.

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AFP - A US federal jury will determine whether former soldier Steven Dale Green should be executed for raping an Iraqi teenager and executing the girl and her family, court officials said.

It took the jurors less than two days of deliberations to find Green guilty on all 17 criminal counts, which included rape, premeditated murder and obstruction of justice.

Three other soldiers were given life sentences in the March 2006 atrocity that was devised over whiskey and a game of cards at a traffic check point in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.

Green, who was named as the ringleader, was tried in civil court after being discharged from the army due to a "personality disorder" before his role in the crime came to light.

While Green confessed to the slayings when army investigators were called to the scene the next day, the involvement of US soldiers did not come to light until stress counselors talked to the squad several months later.

Green's mother, father and brother -- who were not present during the trial at his request -- are scheduled to testify on his behalf during the sentencing phase.

His attorney said the verdict was not a surprise because "we never denied his involvement in this case.

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AP - A former handyman has pleaded guilty to killing two men, including a California journalist who was investigating the finances of an Oakland-based community group for which the defendant worked.

Devaughndre Broussard entered his plea Thursday to two counts of voluntary manslaughter as part of a deal with prosecutors. He faces 25 years in prison.

The 21-year-old admitted to fatally shooting Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey in August 2007 and another man the same year. Broussard agreed to testify before a grand jury against Yusuf Bey IV and associate Antoine Mackey.

Bey was the leader of the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery, which promoted self-sufficiency and ran bakeries and other businesses. He is accused of ordering the murders.

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AP - A mother of nine who was arrested after authorities found a dead fetus stored in the refrigerator of her trash-strewn home was convicted Thursday of child injury and child endangerment.

Jurors deliberated just 32 minutes before finding Gloria Ramirez guilty of one count of injury to a child and six counts of child endangerment. She stood with her head down as the verdicts were read.

Jurors will begin deliberating Ramirez's sentence Friday. She faces up to 10 years in prison on the injury to a child conviction, and each child-endangerment count carries a maximum two-year term. She is eligible for probation because she had no previous convictions.

Police arrived at the 28-year-old's home in 2007 after her husband called a funeral home to ask about a casket for a fetus she had miscarried. They found rodents, roaches, dirty diapers stacked in closets, moldy food and trash covering most floors, and the fetus inside a white baby wipe box in the refrigerator.

Seven children were removed from the home. Ramirez has since given birth to twins and is currently eight months pregnant.

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AP - A Missouri mother should serve three years in prison for her role in a MySpace hoax on a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide, federal prosecutors said in court documents filed Wednesday.

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AFP - Retired Australian swimmer Scott Miller, a silver medallist at the Atlanta Olympics, has pleaded guilty to supplying the drug ecstasy to a friend.

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AP - A former sheriff in Southern California has appealed his conviction and 5 1/2-year sentence for felony witness tampering.

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AP - Almost two years after newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey was gunned down in broad daylight, the leader of a community group Bailey was investigating was expected to answer charges that he ordered the murders of Bailey and two other men.

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AFP - A US bankruptcy judge in New York cleared the way for the fast-track sale of collapsing auto giant Chrysler, with Fiat as the lead bidder.

After a nearly eight-hour hearing, Judge Arthur Gonzalez rejected arguments from a group of Chrysler lenders who called "illegal" the US government-backed restructuring plan unveiled last Thursday.

Gonzalez told a packed federal courtroom that the plan was "a fair and ordinary process," stressing the "urgent need for the sale to be consummated."

Although Fiat now looks on track to rescue Chrysler from collapse, Gonzalez said that other bidders had the opportunity to compete.

Parties have until May 20 to present their offers before the court makes a final decision on May 27.

The dates were extended by about a week in response to court arguments from the lenders that the Chrysler sale promoted by President Barack Obama's government was unfair and left no time for competition.

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AP - Investigators trying to find a 3-year-old kidnap victim, snatched from his home by armed robbers who threatened to kill him, have received dozens of tips but no solid leads, officials said Tuesday.

There was no ransom demand 48 hours after the abduction, and San Bernardino County sheriff's Lt. Rick Ells said detectives were worried that news vans outside the home could be deterring the kidnappers from making contact.

"Every minute, every second that passes, is critical," Sgt. Doug Hubbard said at a news conference. "But we are remaining positive and investigating it as if we just went on scene."

Two gunmen burst through the family's front door Sunday and tied up 3-year-old Briant Rodriguez, four of his siblings and their mother, Maria Rosalina Millan, then ransacked the house, stealing money and other property, the Sheriff's Department said.

After about 20 minutes, the men left with Briant, ordering his mother and the other children not to call police, the department said in a statement.

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AP - A northwestern Pennsylvania man has pleaded guilty to intentionally releasing thousands of gallons of oil into two streams because he was upset with his former employer.

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AP - A Dominican immigrant who was held hostage and beaten after being lured to suburban Atlanta to settle a drug debt was sentenced Tuesday to nearly four years in prison for his involvement with a cocaine distribution cell.

U.S. District Judge Jack Camp sentenced Oscar Reynoso, 31, to 46 months in federal prison, with five years supervised release to follow. Reynoso is a legal resident who lived in Rhode Island but will face deportation once he is released, said U.S. Attorney David Nahmias. He pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to possess with intent to distribute at least 5 kilograms of cocaine.

"This shows there are no free passes for drug dealers, even when they become the victim of violent crimes by their associates," Nahmias said after the sentencing.

Law enforcement officials say Reynoso thought he was coming to the Atlanta area to buy a car and was taken to a house in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Lilburn. When he entered the home's garage, he was ambushed and assaulted by eight men carrying guns.

They chained him to a wall in the basement, beat him and gave him little food or water for nearly a week before authorities found him.

The men holding Reynoso contacted his friends and relatives to collect a $150,000 drug debt they said he owed. Reynoso has said he didn't owe the men any money but has admitted to being involved in drug activity in Rhode Island.

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AP - Actor-director Woody Allen has asked a judge to stop a clothing company from putting his former longtime companion Mia Farrow and his wife — Farrow's adopted daughter — on the witness stand as it defends itself against his claims it used his image on billboards without permission.

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AFP - Fugitive director Roman Polanski will not return to the United States for a hearing this week where his lawyers will seek to quash a decades-old sex case against him, court documents showed.

Oscar-winner Polanski, famed for films such as "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown," fled the United States in 1978 before being sentenced for his guilty plea on a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza said in February he may consider Polanski's case at this Thursday's hearing but only if the director returned from France, where he now lives.

Polanski's legal team says the film-maker's conviction should be tossed on the grounds of misconduct, claiming the late judge who heard his case in the 1970s had improperly colluded with prosecutors.

The allegation emerged in a controversial 2008 documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired."

Espinoza agreed at an earlier hearing there appeared to have been "substantial misconduct" in the case. But he said the case could only proceed if Polanski was present at the hearing.

However Polanski's attorneys said in a court filing Monday that the director's personal appearance in court "is neither necessary nor relevant" to the question of deciding whether there was misconduct.

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