A Lansing man has admitted to the 2008 strangulation of the 77-year-old woman who had raised him since he was 2.

Anthony Duane Thomas pleaded guilty but mentally ill to a second-degree murder charge in the killing of Ruby Thomas.

The 21-year-old said during the hearing Wednesday in Ingham County Circuit Court that he strangled his adoptive mother in her home on Aug. 4, 2008.

As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Thomas is expected to be sentenced to 13{ to 23 years in prison.

A lawyer who is suing the Iowa Judicial Nominating Commission for some Iowa clients has been named to the commission by Gov. Terry Branstad.

In their lawsuit, the clients of William Gustoff (GUHS'-tahf) allege that the makeup of the commission is biased against nonlawyers because they have no say in the selection of half the commission.

The Des Moines Register says that half the commission is lawyers, elected by lawyers; the other half traditionally is made up of nonlawyers appointed by the governor. Gustoff's appointment is a departure, but it is not barred by Iowa law.

The impeached former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, asked a judge on Wednesday to cancel his retrial and promptly sentence him on the sole conviction from his first trial, arguing that money woes prevent him from mounting an ample defense.

A five-page motion filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago says Mr. Blagojevich isn't conceding guilt, including on the conviction of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That is the lone count jurors agreed on at his otherwise deadlocked trial last year.

The motion says the former governor, whose legal bills are supposed to be paid by the government, wants to forgo a retrial on grounds that none of his lawyers have been paid for months of pretrial preparations.

"Should this motion be granted...funds for the second trial would no longer be necessary," the motion says. An added bonus, it continues, would be "no further cost to taxpayers."

Mr. Blagojevich, 54, faces a maximum five-year prison term for the lying count. It was widely expected that a sentencing date for that conviction would only be set after the retrial was over.

At that trial do-over, currently scheduled to start on April 20, Mr. Blagojevich faces 20 charges, including that he sought to sell or trade an appointment to President Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat in exchange for a top job or campaign cash.

An appeals court says a man hit by a New York City bus shouldn't get a $1.8 million jury award because he stepped into a street without looking.

Tuesday's ruling orders a new trial in Claude Williams' case. His lawyer didn't immediately return a telephone call Tuesday evening. New York City Transit declined to comment.

Williams suffered a concussion and other injuries in the September 2003 incident in Harlem. He said the bus ran a red light and was traveling too close to the curb.

The appeals panel noted that no witness testified that the bus went through a red light. But the judges said evidence did show Williams stepped into the bus' path without looking and wasn't in a crosswalk.

A man boasted of his parenting skills to a judge more than two years before being investigated in the killings of two young children whose bodies were found stuffed in luggage and dumped into a canal and in the death of their mother.

Clem Beauchamp's testimony and that of his then-girlfriend, whose body was found months before those of her son and daughter, was enough to convince a judge to allow his children from a previous relationship to live with him, before changing his mind a year later.

Now those children are in the state's hands as authorities work toward charging Beauchamp in the deaths of 25-year-old Felicia Brown, and her children, 10-year-old Jermaine McNeil and 6-year-old Ju'tyra Allen.

He was due in court Wednesday on an unrelated firearms charge, which authorities are using to keep him in custody while they wrap up their investigation into the slayings.

The children's bodies were found in separate bags in a Delray Beach canal last week. Their mother's body was found last August in a landfill, but was unidentified until last week.

Years before, in an Aug. 26, 2008, hearing in West Palm Beach, Beauchamp, now 34, described himself as a hard-working, involved father who dropped his children off at school and helped them with their education.

The chairman of the Legislature's Contract Review Committee said an opinion from the executive director of the State Ethics Commission clears a senator to work for a law firm that does business with the state.

The chairman, Republican Sen. Bill Holtzclaw of Madison said the opinion settled the issue of whether Republican Sen. Bryan Taylor of Prattville was in compliance when he joined the law firm of Capell & Howard.

The Huntsville Times reported that the opinion from Executive Director Jim Sum-ner said changes made in the state ethics law in December had very little, if any, impact of state contracting.

The committee had sought the advice last month when Capell & Howard got a $100,000 contract from the state Department of Corrections.