A former UBS banker and an adviser from Liechtenstein have been charged with helping clients, including California real-estate billionaire Igor Olenicoff, avoid paying taxes, according to a published report.

Bradley Birkenfeld, who worked at UBS from 2001 to 2006, appeared in court Tuesday. He is alleged to have helped clients use secret bank accounts and file false tax returns, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. See story in WSJ.com

The case could lead to other U.S. clients as Birkenfeld and Mario Staggl, who owns a trust company called New Haven Trust in Liechenstein, courted rich Americans, the newspaper reported.

The indictment against the pair doesn't mention UBS by name, referring only to a Swiss bank, according to the Journal.

Brian Gegner, of Fairfield, was sentenced last week to 180 days in jail for contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a minor.

He was ordered months ago to make sure his 18-year-old daughter Brittany Gegner, who has a history of truancy, received her GED — something that hasn't happened yet.

Brittany Gegner, who said Monday that she plans to take a required GED test this month, said her father shouldn't be blamed for her failure because she has been living with her mother.

"It was my wrongdoing, not his," said Brittany Gegner, whose fiance and 18-month-old daughter also live at her mother's home in nearby Hamilton. "He shouldn't have to go to jail for something I did."

Her mother agrees.

"Brittany is almost 19 years old now and I think it's unfair to put her father in jail," said Shana Roach. "She's an adult now, and it's not right to rip an innocent man from his home."

Butler County Juvenile Court administrator Rob Clevenger Jr. said Monday that the court still has jurisdiction in the case because Brittany Gegner was a juvenile when the truancy problems began and when the charge against Brian Gegner was filed in 2007.

A hearing on a motion filed by Brian Gegner's attorney to reconsider the sentence is scheduled for Friday. Messages seeking comment were not returned Monday at the offices of defense attorney Tamara Sack and the Butler County prosecutor.

Brian Gegner's wife, Stephanie Gegner, said she and her husband are afraid he will lose his job if he remains in jail. She said they tried to keep his daughter in school.

"You'd take her to school and she'd go out the other door," Stephanie Gegner said.

The court couldn't take up an apartheid dispute involving some of the nation's largest companies because too many of the justices had investments or other ties with those corporate giants.

It appeared to be the first time in at least a quarter-century that the justices' financial holdings prevented them from taking a case.

The result is that a lawsuit will go forward accusing dozens of corporations of violating international law by assisting South Africa's former apartheid government. The companies and the Bush administration had asked the court to intervene, arguing that the lawsuit was damaging international relations, threatening to hurt South Africa's economic development and punishing the companies using a fuzzy legal concept.

Four of the nine justices sat out the court's consideration of the case. Federal law calls for at least six to hear any case.

Short of the required number, the court took the only path available to it and upheld an appeals court ruling allowing the lawsuit to proceed.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy provided no explanation for their decision not to take part in the case.

But those justices have ties to Bank of America Corp., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Colgate-Palmolive Co., Credit Suisse, Exxon Mobil Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Nestle SA, among nearly three dozen companies that asked the high court to step in.

In a similar ruling Monday, the court also reinstated a prosecutor who was taken off a rape case after she published a crime novel about a similar case.

In the "Alpha Dog" case, an appeals court had removed Santa Barbara County Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen after he turned over probation reports, police files and other sensitive materials to director Nick Cassavetes. "Alpha Dog," a fictionalized account of the killing of a Southern California teen starring Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone and Justin Timberlake, was released last year.

Prosecutors accuse Jesse James Hollywood of masterminding a plot to kidnap and murder 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz in 2000 because the teenager's older half brother owed Hollywood a $1,200 drug debt. Four people have already been convicted in the case, including triggerman Ryan Hoyt, who was sentenced to death.

Zonen said in court documents he aided Cassavetes with "Alpha Dog" to help publicize the hunt for Hollywood, who was captured in 2005 in Brazil after spending nearly five years on the lam.

The court didn't consider arguments on behalf of 31-year-old Mark Downs Jr. of Dunbar, saying his attorney missed a filing deadline by two weeks.

Downs has been sentenced to one-to-six years in prison, but has remained free on bond pending appeal.

Downs was convicted of corruption of minors and simple assault for offering an 8-year-old player money to hit a mildly autistic teammate with a ball during warmups before a June 2005 playoff game. Prosecutors say Downs wanted the autistic boy to be hurt and unable to play in the game.

In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said federal law allows the practice and that "this is not a case where the magistrate judge is asked to preside or make determinations after the trial has commenced." Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying, "Whatever their virtues, magistrate judges are no substitute" for U.S. District Court judges.

U.S. District judges are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, have life tenure and their salaries cannot be reduced. Magistrates, appointed by U.S. District judges, have no such protection.

A Mexican citizen, Gonzalez does not speak fluent English and did not have an interpreter at the bench conference where his attorney consented to designating the magistrate for the task.

Ordinarily, U.S. District Court judges participate in selecting juries for criminal and civil trials, a process known as voir dire.

Lawyers regard voir dire as one of the most important parts of a case because it often uncovers biases, leading to excluding members of the group of citizens from which a jury is selected.

There are more than 500 federal magistrate judges, who serve eight-year terms and are recommended by a citizen's merit screening committee. The magistrate setup was begun by Congress in 1968, expanding on a system that is 175 years old.

Faced with increasing caseloads, the federal judiciary assigns an array of duties to magistrates. Those include initial proceedings in criminal cases, presiding over some minor criminal trials and trials of civil cases with the consent of both sides.