North Carolina's appeals court has temporarily blocked the release of two convicted murderers sentenced under a 1970s law that limited life terms.

The court clerk issued an order Monday afternoon approving a request to halt the case, but he gave no explanation. The decision gives state attorneys another chance to argue the inmates should not be set free.

Superior Court Judge Ripley Rand had ordered convicted murderers Alford Jones and Faye Brown freed earlier Monday. Their attorneys convinced Rand that sentence-reduction credits have shortened their life terms, which were defined as only 80 years when they were sentenced.

Rand had set a 5 p.m. deadline for the Department of Correction to release Jones and Brown.

A teen who pleaded guilty to gang raping a South Florida woman and beating her young son has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Seventeen-year-old Avion Lawson pleaded guilty in August and testified against three other suspects in the 2007 attack. The others have all received life in prison.

Lawson, who was sentenced Monday, had faced a maximum 11 life sentences plus 50 years.

Lawson and the three other defendants were all teenagers when police say they barged into a 35-year-old woman's apartment, raped her repeatedly, beat her 12-year-old son and then forced her to perform oral sex on the boy.

The victims were doused in chemicals to clean the crime scene, and police say their attackers discussed setting them on fire before fleeing.

Florida's judges and lawyers should no longer "friend" each other on Facebook, the popular social networking site, according to a ruling from the state's Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee.

At least one South Florida judge warned her pals with a Facebook status update that they could be "unfriended," and the ruling has prompted others to do the same. The committee ruled Nov. 17 that online "friendships" could create the impression that lawyers are in a special position to influence their judge friends.

The committee did conclude that a judge can post comments on another judge's site and that during judicial elections, a judge's campaign can have "fans" that include lawyers. And the ruling doesn't single out Facebook.

The Supreme Court has turned away a new challenge to a 2005 law that gives gun manufacturers immunity from lawsuits by shooting victims.

The justices on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Hector Adames Jr. to revive his lawsuit against the Beretta U.S.A. Corp. over the accidental shooting death of his 13-year-old son.

The Illinois Supreme Court threw out the lawsuit, citing the federal 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

Adames' son, Josh, was shot and killed by 13-year-old Billy Swan, who found his father's Beretta and removed the magazine containing the ammunition. He pointed the gun at Josh and pulled the trigger, not knowing that a bullet remained in the chamber.

Adames sued Beretta, saying the gun did not have the proper warnings or a safety mechanism that stops the gun from being fired without the magazine in place.

he Supreme Court said Monday it will decide how much privacy workers have when they send text messages from company accounts.

The justices said they will review a federal appeals court ruling that sided with Ontario, Calif., police officers who complained that the department improperly snooped on their electronic exchanges. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco also faulted the text-messaging service for turning over transcripts of the messages without the officers' consent.

Users of text-messaging services "have a reasonable expectation of privacy" regarding messages stored on the service provider's network, 9th Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw said. Both the city and USA Mobility Wireless, Inc., which bought the text-messaging service involved in the case, appealed the 9th Circuit ruling.

The justices turned down the company's appeal, but said they would hear arguments in the spring in the city's case.

The appeals court ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Ontario police Sgt. Jeff Quon and three others after Arch Wireless gave their department transcripts of Quon's text messages in 2002. Police officials read the messages to determine whether department-issued pagers were being used solely for work purposes.

The city said it discovered that Quon sent and received hundreds of personal messages, including many that were sexually explicit.

Quon and the others said the police force had an informal policy of not monitoring the usage as long as employees paid for messages in excess of monthly character limits.

The Supreme Court has declined to take another look at Chrysler's bankruptcy.

The justices on Monday turned down an appeal from the state of Indiana pension funds that earlier challenged the automaker's bankruptcy proceedings. The bulk of Chrysler LLC's assets were sold to Italy's Fiat.

The court previously rejected the pension funds' effort to block the sale.

In the latest appeal, the funds argued that the arrangement worked out with Fiat, and approved by federal courts, violated federal bankruptcy law. The pension funds said they were not trying to reverse the bankruptcy sale, but instead wanted to recover money for themselves and other Chrysler creditors.