Long before teacher Tetyana Nikitina was shot to death Friday, she said she feared for her life.

In fact, according to divorce records filed in 2005, the 34-year-old Ukranian immigrant also said she was terrified her then-husband would kill their two children.

Nikitina was gunned down Friday afternoon as she left the Salt Lake Head Start school where she worked. Police say she was fatally shot by her former mother-in-law, 70-year-old Mary Nance Hanson.

Unified Police executed a search warrant Monday on the Taylorsville home of Nikitina's ex-husband and Hanson's son, Dale Jankowski. Police said they hoped they could piece together the circumstances that led to Nikitina's death.

For his part, Jankowski said in voluminous divorce records filed in 3rd District Court that Nikitina was trying to set him up with false accusations of domestic abuse, and he was deeply afraid that she would flee the United States with their children — which resulted in a battle over the children's passports.

"There is no label for him (such as person of interest)," Unified Police Lt. Don Hutson said. "He is just a relative of the suspect." Hutson said investigators are interested in the relationship Nikitina had with Hanson, who called 911 after the shooting.

Delaware's death penalty was upheld as constitutional on Monday, paving the way for executions -- on hold since May 2006 -- to resume.

Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden said Monday he was pleased the court ruled that Delaware is meeting its constitutional obligations and that his office will be working with Superior Court to begin "scheduling executions as appropriate."

Biden said the three-year delay "caused uncertainty, and I'm glad this has resolved that uncertainty
."
In its 47-page opinion, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals warned Delaware about "the worrisome course it appears to have taken at times" in executions.

"The record before us reflects an occasional blitheness on Delaware's part that, while perhaps not unconstitutional, gives us great pause. We remind Delaware not only of its constitutional obligation ... but also of its moral obligation to carry out executions with the degree of seriousness and respect that the state-administered termination of human life demands," Circuit Judge D. Michael Fisher wrote on behalf of the panel.

Attorney Michael Wiseman of the Federal Community Defender's office in Philadelphia -- which represents Delaware's 18 death-row inmates in the class-action lawsuit -- declined to comment Monday, saying he was still reviewing the opinion.

In court papers, attorneys for Delaware's condemned inmates detailed problems during executions, including inadequate qualifications and training of execution team members, improper dosages of the lethal injection drugs and odd procedures such as the execution team mixing drugs in the dark.

Attorneys for Delaware inmates essentially charged that because of the state's history of mistakes and because it didn't follow its own rules in past executions, there was significant doubt that the state could properly follow new court-approved rules to execute inmates without unnecessary suffering.

A man who authorities say had a cache of weapons and a map of an Army base in a New Jersey motel room is due in court on Friday.

Lloyd Woodson was arrested Monday after a convenience store clerk in Branchburg called police to report he was acting strangely.

Police say Woodson was wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying an assault rifle. Officers found weapons including a grenade launcher and a map of New York's Fort Drum in his motel room.

Woodson is charged with state and federal weapons violations.

Authorities have not said whether they think he was planning an attack. The FBI said Woodson has no known terrorist connections.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Thursday put a dent in the state budget by rejecting the state's claim to $110 million in surplus from a fund that underwrites medical malpractice insurance.

In a 3-2 decision, the court upheld policyholders' claim they had a constitutionally protected contractual right to the money. The court said the state could not change its law to apply retrospectively to contracts with policyholders.

"I'm disappointed. I thought it was going to be a close call to begin with," said Gov. John Lynch. "We'll manage through it."

Lynch said the decision means the state will have to find $45 million over the next 17 months. He was not specific on what he will do.

Republicans, who are in the minority in the Legislature, have repeatedly called the state's claim an attempt to "steal" money from doctors and health care providers.

A conservative legal foundation on Wednesday asked federal regulators to give a green light to corporations and unions to begin spending their treasuries to influence this year's congressional elections.

The James Madison Center for Free Speech asked the Federal Election Commission to formally throw out its rules that restrict corporate and union spending on politics, saying the step is needed to implement last week's Supreme Court decision that freed such groups to get more directly involved in election campaigns.

"This is an election year," said James Bopp, the center's attorney. "Speakers will want to exercise the First Amendment rights to political speech" outlined in last week's decision, he said, "so the FEC should adopt these regulations quickly."

Without a formal declaration by the FEC, Bopp said, advocacy groups will be hesitant to take full advantage of the new leeway the Supreme Court granted in last week's controversial 5-4 ruling, fearing they might be subject to enforcement action.

The California Supreme Court on Thursday questioned the constitutionality of a provision of "Jessica's Law" that lets authorities indefinitely confine sexually violent predators.
It's the first of two decisions the court is expected to issue in the coming days over the legality of the law that was passed as Proposition 82 by 70 percent of voters in 2006.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule Monday on a separate legal challenge to a provision prohibiting released predators from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park.

On Thursday, the court dealt with the issue of whether sexually violent predators can be treated differently than other violent felons, who can only be held for defined terms in mental health facilities after prison.

In a 5-2 decision written by Justice Carlos Moreno, the Supreme Court offered suggestions about how government lawyers should approach the case.

Moreno said it could be that mental disorders make it likely that sexually violent predators will re-offend. Or, they could "pose a greater risk to a particularly vulnerable class of victims, such as children," Moreno noted.

Nonetheless, Moreno concluded the government had not produced any evidence to distinguish sexual predators from other violent offenders. California Deputy Attorney General Bradley A. Weinreb, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, didn't return a telephone call.