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PHOENIX -- Police have arrested a man who they say sexually assaulted a 4 year old girl at a playground at University Park. Suspect booked into 4th Avenue Jail Police say the girl was at the playground with her family near by. Several witnesses say they saw suspect William Speed grab the girl while she played on the jungle gym and begin sexually assaulting her. The girl screamed and her family had to fight Speed to get him off of the girl. The family and nearby witnesses restrained Speed until police arrived. Suspect William Speed is a Level 3 sex...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- A federal judge Wednesday rejected automakers' lawsuit against California, saying the state has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Ishii clears one of the hurdles in California's effort to regulate tailpipe emissions from cars, trucks and sports utility vehicles.

A Crittenden County Circuit Court judge has ordered a special grand jury to look into the shooting death of DeAuntae Farrow by a West Memphis police officer last summer. The order, signed late Wednesday afternoon by Judge Victor L. Hill, suggests that the grand jury could convene by Dec. 10. In explaining his reasons for issuing the order, Hill said the judicial system is concerned not only with being fair, but with the appearance that it is fair. Likewise, he wrote, there have some persons in authority “who have made it known that they have only disdain for the rights...

San Francisco (AP) -- An electronic privacy group challenging President Bush's domestic spying program scored a minor victory after a judge ordered the federal government to release information about lobbying efforts by telecommunications companies to protect them from prosecution. The Electronic Frontier Foundation in January 2006 filed a class-action suit against AT&T Inc., accusing the company of illegally making communications on its networks available to the National Security Agency without warrants. Congress is now considering changing the law to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that would protect them from such court challenges. "Any attempt for immunity is aimed at...

A wealthy Los Altos Hills businessman who has been in prison since 1986 for murdering his wife should be paroled, a state appeals court has ruled, rejecting arguments by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that the gravity of the case ought to keep the killer behind bars. John Dannenberg, 66, has repeatedly been denied parole since he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for second-degree murder in the May 1985 slaying of his wife, Linda. In 2005, after the state Supreme Court barred his release, the state parole board reversed course and decided that he could be freed. Schwarzenegger...

SACRAMENTO -- The federal receiver who controls California's inmate health care system is ordering salary increases for nearly 1,500 prison doctors and nurses. Robert Sillen says the raises are needed to fill vacancies in a medical system so bad that some inmates die of neglect or malpractice. He's raising doctors' salaries as much as 20 percent, to about $250,000 a year for many physicians. A federal judge gave Sillen authority to raise doctors' salaries as high as $300,000. It's the second increase this year. Sillen says the first bump, in March, didn't do enough to trim a nearly 40 percent...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- A judge who lost a $54 million lawsuit against his dry cleaner over a pair of missing pants has lost his job, District of Columbia officials confirmed. Roy Pearson's term as an administrative law judge expired May 2 and the D.C. Commission on Selection and Tenure of Administrative Law Judges has voted not to reappoint him, Lisa Coleman, the city's general counsel, wrote Nov. 8 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Associated Press. Pearson was one of about 30 judges who worked in the Office of Administrative Hearings, which handles disputes involving...

San Francisco (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Navy to lessen the harm its high-power sonar does to whales and other marine life during exercises off the Southern California coast. The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals sent the matter to a trial judge in Los Angeles to figure out exactly how to fix the problem it says is apparent with the sonar. The three-judge panel said the sonars need to be fixed before the Navy's next planned exercise in January. The action was taken because the court said it's likely the Natural Resources Defense...

Lansing, Mich. (AP) -- The constitutional rights of more than 1,000 inmates serving life sentences in Michigan prisons have been violated ever since parole policies were toughened in the 1990s, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani said the cumulative effect of the parole changes violates the Constitution's ban on laws being applied retroactively. She released her decision this week but has yet to decide what her ruling means for 1,000 to 1,200 Michigan prisoners sentenced before 1992 to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Since the early 1990s, the Michigan Parole Board has been...

San Francisco (AP) -- A federal judge on Wednesday granted a request by labor and civil liberties organizations to temporarily block the U.S. government from proceeding with a plan to crack down on businesses who may be employing illegal immigrants. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security could not go ahead with a plan to send joint letters warning businesses they'll face penalties if they keep workers whose Social Security numbers don't match their names. Breyer said the new work-site rule would likely impose hardships on businesses and their workers. "The...

New York (AP) -- A federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit alleging that Target Corp. is breaking California and federal law by failing to make its Web site usable for the blind. The plaintiffs fault Target for not adopting technology used by other companies to make Web sites accessible to the blind. The technology allows reading software to vocalize invisible code embedded in computer graphics and describe content on a Web page. Granting class-action status allows blind people throughout the country who have tried to access Target.com to become plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges violations of the...

Nashville, Tenn. (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled that Tennessee's procedure for lethal injections is cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger's ruling could halt an execution scheduled for next week.

Montpelier, Vt. (AP) -- Vermont and several other states scored a victory on Wednesday in their battle to get automakers to comply with rules aimed at reducing global warming. A federal judge ruled that states can regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, rejecting automakers' claims that federal law pre-empts state rules and that technology can't be developed to meet them. "There is no question that the GHG (greenhouse gas) regulations present great challenges to automakers," Judge William Sessions III, sitting in the U.S. District Court in Burlington, wrote at the conclusion of his 240-page decision. He added, "History suggests that...

LOS ANGELES—Siding with subsidized tenants, a federal judge ruled poor renters getting federal help are protected by Los Angeles rent control laws. U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins said in a tentative ruling Monday that the city's rules apply even though federal rules allow landlords to opt out of the so-called Section 8 program if they want to charge more money. The decision was in response to a Legal Aid Foundation lawsuit filed on behalf of 22 tenants of an Echo Park building whose owners include a University of California, Los Angeles, real estate professor. But the ruling, expected to...

CINCINNATI (AP) -- A death row inmate convicted of setting a fire that killed five children must be released or retried because his constitutional rights were violated when his confession was used at trial, a federal appeals court panel ruled Tuesday. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges ruled 2-1 that William Garner didn't understand his right to silence when he told police he would waive his Miranda rights against self-incrimination. He gave a taped statement to police, saying he set fire to a Cincinnati apartment with six children inside to destroy evidence of his burglary, according to court...

Alcoholics Anonymous, the renowned 12-step program that directs problem drinkers to seek help from a higher power, says it's not a religion and is open to nonbelievers. But it has enough religious overtones that a parolee can't be ordered to attend its meetings as a condition of staying out of prison, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. In fact, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the constitutional dividing line between church and state in such cases is so clear that a parole officer can be sued for damages for ordering a parolee to go through...

Could ruling to protect smelt drive foes to the table to agree on restoring the Delta? For years, anyone watching the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has known that a smack-down was looming over endangered smelt. These tiny fish, a bellwether for the ecosystem, have declined over the last decade while water exports from the Delta have been rising.The Endangered Species Act gives judges wide latitude in curtailing government operations that prompt the extinction of a species. And while the smelt and other Delta fish appear to face a variety of threats -- including invasive species, water pollution and loss of habitat...

LAS VEGAS, (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled that Nevada can shut off water needed for bore hole drilling at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. In a strongly worded order focusing on federal "credibility and good faith," U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Las Vegas said the Department of Energy could not ignore state limitations and continue using water for drilling test holes near the repository site. "This entire 'crisis' is self-imposed and self-created," Hunt said in his 24-page order, dated Friday but distributed among the parties on Tuesday. "The only argument the DOE makes is that...

Environmentalists still hoped for more as judge orders cutbacks to protect fish; rationing may be considered next year -- FRESNO -- California's water supply suffered a historic blow Friday when a federal judge ordered a series of cutbacks and other measures meant to protect a tiny Delta fish from going extinct. The order is expected to force water agencies up and down the state to consider water rationing next year and could force San Joaquin Valley farmers to fallow hundreds of thousands of acres, water officials said. The momentous decision did not go as far as environmentalists hoped nor as...

The Bush administration has violated a 2004 congressional deadline for presenting the latest scientific research about global warming to lawmakers and the public and must submit its report by next spring, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. Federal officials have "unlawfully withheld action they are required to take," preparing a new scientific assessment by November 2004 and a research plan by July 2006, said U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of Oakland. "Congress has imposed clear-cut, unambiguous deadlines for compliance." A 1990 federal law requires the government to produce a scientific report every four years on climate change and its effects...