The Supreme Court will now examine whether a fatal three-drug cocktail most of the states use to execute inmates may violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Among the four key questions the justices will consider is whether states can execute an inmate if there is a "substantial risk" of pain and suffering through lethal injection.

By taking the Kentucky case, the justices are expected to provide a road map for judges across the country, including in California, where a San Jose federal judge has been reviewing the issue for more than a year.

"They decided to take the bull by the horns," said Ronald Matthias, a senior assistant attorney general in charge of California's death penalty appeals. "It is a very significant development, and we expect a very far-reaching and important decision which we'll obviously be bound by."

The Supreme Court review is likely to further delay California's effort to resume executing death row inmates.

Matthias would not speculate whether the court's intervention would halt the ongoing challenge in California by death row inmate Michael Morales, whose case has prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to overhaul the state's lethal injection procedures.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel is scheduled to hold additional hearings on the Morales case in December and to tour a newly constructed death chamber in November. But some legal experts now expect the case may wait until the Supreme Court makes its ruling.

California has put executions on hold since early 2006 while Fogel has been reviewing Morales' lawsuit, which maintains the state's lethal injection method poses an undue risk of an inhumane execution for the more than 650 inmates on the state's death row.

John Grele, one of Morales' lawyers, said he would need to review the Kentucky case more closely to determine its effect on the California litigation.

But legal experts agreed the decision to hear the Kentucky case would have broad implications for states across the country, particularly given the scattershot results that have come from different courts asked to review the arguments of death row inmates.

In some states, executions have been put on hold, whereas other states have kept executing people despite nearly identical challenges pending in their courts.

The Supreme Court's decision to take the Kentucky case is "huge news" that should lead to a "de facto moratorium" on executions nationwide, Douglas Berman, an Ohio State University law professor and leading expert on the issue, said on his law blog. Berman does not expect a ruling until the end of the court's next term, in June.

Elisabeth Semel, head of the death penalty clinic at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, said the case is crucial to settling questions surrounding lethal injection but cautioned that the justices do not necessarily have to settle them all.

"The court is taking a bite of the apple," she said. "But how big a bite is not known."

"It puts Judge Fogel and other judges in the middle of this process in a position where they have to step back," she added.

A Supreme Court review of lethal injection has been brewing for years. Most states with a death penalty have turned to the method after similar legal challenges of alternatives, such as the gas chamber and the electric chair.

A federal appeals court declared California's gas chamber unconstitutional in the mid-1990s, prompting the switch to lethal injection.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has been repeatedly asked to review challenges to various states' lethal injection procedures but has steered clear of the central constitutional issue. The justices did make it easier for condemned inmates to file challenges, prompting a number of cases to unfold in states such as Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky.

A federal judge in Tennessee recently put executions on hold there after concluding that the state's lethal injection method was too flawed. Fogel, in the California case, called this state's execution procedures "broken" but fixable.

In the Kentucky case, the state courts rejected challenges from death row inmates Ralph Baze and Clyde Bowling Jr. after a trial was held in 2005 to review Kentucky's execution method. It was the Baze and Bowling case the Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear.

Kentucky uses the same three drugs to put an inmate to death as California -- sodium thiopental to sedate the inmate, pancurium bromide to paralyze the muscles in breathing and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Lawyers for death row inmates say pancurium bromide conceals an inmate's suffering and masks the potential of the third drug, causing a searingly painful death.

One of the four issues the Supreme Court may address is whether it is unconstitutional to use those three drugs if other chemicals are available that pose "less risk of pain and suffering."

But legal experts say the court's ultimate ruling may focus more on how a state administers those drugs, rather than what drugs are used.

The Supreme Court, experts say, can instead clarify the standard for what amounts to a cruel and unusual execution and the obligations of states to administer the fatal drugs with proper safeguards.

Here're some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Vonage will have to pay some $69.5 billion in damages to Sprint. In addition, since spring, it's placed into escrow or issued a bond for some $90 million related to a patent-infringement case it lost to Verizon (a decision on an appeal is expected any day now). That adds up to $159.5 million. Plus, Vonage is obviously paying lots of legal fees. And Vonage is still losing money: It lost $34 million in the second quarter alone.

So, let's look at Vonage's cash. At the end of the second quarter, the company's cash and equivalents totaled $344 million, which included $66 million of restricted cash used as collateral for the Verizon bond. If we subtract from that the various royalty payments and jury awards/restructed cash, Vonage has about $184.5 million in cash and equivalents to work with.

Assuming Vonage continues to lose money at the current rate of $34 million per quarter, the company can last for a little over five more quarters.

This is a very rough estimate, of course: Vonage's expenses will rise as it starts making royalty payments to Sprint. The outcome of the Verizon case can tip the scales one way or another. Thanks to recent staff cuts, overall expenses may fall. But one thing is clear: Vonage will have less financial flexibility now, after the Sprint loss.

Craig on Tuesday said he won't resign until "legal determinations" are made. A political source involved in discussions about the case said Craig has made it clear he wants to find a way to stay in office.

A court ruling on Craig's appeal could take longer than the four days before September 30.

In his petition to vacate the plea, Craig's attorney maintained the senator's "panic" over the possibility that the allegations would be made public drove him to accept a guilty plea without seeking legal advice and that he had been assured by the arresting officer that the matter would remain private.

The petition also claims that because Craig submitted his guilty plea by mail, he did not have the benefit of a judge explaining the exact consequences of the plea before accepting it.

No class has yet been certified in the above action. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. If you purchased this stock during the above referenced class period you have certain rights. To be a member of the class you need not take any action at this time, and you may retain counsel of your choice.

Francis, though, upheld a separate law the Legislature passed as a part of a two-pronged effort to cut property taxes.

The law, which does not need voter approval, requires cities and counties, but not school districts, to roll back and cap taxes for all types of property.

The proposed amendment was touted as offering even greater tax reductions -- almost entirely to homeowners -- through a "super exemption," and would have affected all local governments including school districts.

Gov. Charlie Crist and legislative leaders issued statements saying their efforts to cut taxes are not over. No decision, though, yet has been made on whether the ruling will be appealed, said Jill Chamberlin, spokeswoman for House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Besides appealing, the options include rewriting the ballot summary to meet the judge's objections or deferring the issue to the constitutional Taxation and Budget Reform Commission.

A suburban South Florida mayor who challenged both measures said he hoped lawmakers will leave it to the commission, which can make recommendations to the Legislature and put amendments directly on the November 2008 ballot.

"I'm hoping that they will look at this as an opportunity to fix something," said Weston Mayor Eric Hersh. "Hopefully that's the tactic they will take instead of looking at this as a defeat."

Hersh said he has not yet decided whether to appeal the tax rollback decision. He said he would be more inclined to do so, though, if the state appeals the amendment ruling.

"Not only was it misleading, but it was terrible legislation," Hersh said.

The Republican-controlled Legislature approved both tax-cutting measures during as special session in June. The law passed with bipartisan support, but Democrats opposed the amendment.

That proposal is designed to eventually get rid of the existing Save Our Homes Amendment, which limits assessment increases on primary homes, known as homesteads, to no more than 3 percent a year.

While it protected existing homesteaders, it shifted tax burden to new buyers and owners of other properties including second homes and businesses. Rapidly rising real estate values in recent years made the discrepancy even greater leading to an outcry for tax cuts.

The amendment would have offered homesteaders the one-time choice of keeping their existing benefits or accepting the super exemption -- 75 percent off first $200,000 of a home's value and 15 percent off the next $300,000.

Save Our Homes benefits, though, cannot be transferred to new owners, so they eventually would disappear as those properties change hands.

The ballot summary, though, refers to "preserving application of Save Our Homes provision."

"The summary is just not correct," Francis wrote. Nowhere in the ballot summary is the voter alerted to the elimination of these constitutional protections on homestead assessments. They are simply led to believe that they are preserved or revised."

"With the Illinois Act, the state ... is attempting to indirectly regulate the U.S. government by imposing state standards on a federal program that must be satisfied before Illinois employers are permitted to enroll," the 12-page complaint states. "Congress also made it clear its objective and purpose to encourage broad participation in the Basic Pilot Program by instructing DHS to expand the program to all 50 states."

The suit asks for the state law to be declared invalid and seeks an injunction on the ban. Employers using the program submit job applicants' identification information into Social Security Administration and Homeland Security databases on the Internet to confirm their work eligibility. In most cases, the check takes a few seconds, according to Homeland Security. If the program cannot confirm the work eligibility of an applicant, it issues a "tentative nonconfirmation" notice that can take days or weeks to resolve.

Supporters say the program helps employers keep illegal immigrants off employee rolls, but critics note it has an accuracy rate of between 80 percent and 95 percent, which they say marks it as too unreliable and results in some applicants being wrongly dismissed. The Illinois ban was to remain in effect until the program results were 99 percent accurate. The ban also exempts employers who undergo training in the program and receive "anti-discrimination notices" from the U.S. Department of Justice and Illinois Department of Human Rights. About 750 Illinois businesses used E-Verify before the ban took effect, according to the complaint.

The Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a Chicago-based advocacy group, said they thought Homeland Security was wrong in considering the voluntary E-Verify program a federal mandate.

"The verification program is voluntary for nearly all private employers; they are not required to participate in these verification programs to begin with," the statement reads. "The law does not interfere with any federal obligation because for most employers no such obligation exists."

But the department's actions may already have had an effect, as some state lawmakers started backing away from the amendment after learning of the lawsuit.

"We should take a second look at that bill," said Rep. Ruth Munson, R-Elgin, who was one of 76 state House members who voted to pass the amendment in April. "If DHS thinks it's an important tool, the state ought to step back and look at what it does. Maybe the law needs to be repealed or changed."