The mistake, made when the Harris County district attorney's office extended the grand jury's term in November, invalidated all indictments issued after that point, District Judge Jim Wallace ruled. That includes last week's tampering-with-evidence charge against Justice David Medina, and an arson charge against his wife, in connection with a fire at their home in June.

District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal had quickly dropped the charges, saying there was insufficient evidence. Angry grand jurors said the move was politically motivated, and their foreman, Robert Ryan, said he had planned to reconvene the panel Wednesday to issue another indictment.

Those plans were scuttled by Wallace's ruling, said Ryan, who has served on five grand juries.

Ryan said he and several other grand jurors were outraged by the judge's decision over what he described as a "boilerplate" order routinely issued by the district attorney's office to extend grand jury terms.

"That just shows you the sheer incompetence of the district attorney's office of Harris County, Texas," Ryan said.

Prosecutors have said they are continuing to investigate the June 28 fire that destroyed the Medinas' home, damaged two other houses and caused nearly $1 million in damage in the Houston suburb of Spring. But the couple's attorney Terry Yates expressed hope that the case was over.

"It's been a roller coaster for them. Obviously, they're very pleased," Yates said. "We hope this is a final chapter in this case and that it effectively ends the prosecution of David Medina."

The fire marshal's office has said the fire was not electrical or accidental. A dog detected an accelerant at the scene.

Investigators became suspicious after discovering a mortgage company sued in June 2006 to foreclose on the $300,000 home. The lawsuit, filed after the family missed payments for five months, was settled in December 2006.

Yates has acknowledged the family had financial problems. They owed nearly $1,900 in fees to a homeowners association and let the insurance policy on the house lapse, meaning losses from the fire were not covered.

Medina was appointed by the governor to the state's highest civil court in 2004 and elected to a full term two years later. He and the district attorney are Republicans.

Rosenthal dropped out of his re-election campaign but has refused calls for his resignation after the embarrassing release of dozens of pornographic, racist and political e-mails on his office computer.

The case heard Wednesday pits coroners against parents of a 30-year-old man who discovered years after his death that they had buried him without his brain.

During oral arguments Wednesday, Justice Paul Pfeifer at one point called "totally lame" an argument by coroners' attorneys that coroners would be less likely to do thorough autopsies if property rights were involved.

At another moment, another justice, Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, asked an attorney for the family to cite the Constitution to bolster his legal argument, asking where guarantees of liberty or property fit into the case.

Christopher Albrecht died in December 2001 when he suddenly plunged his vehicle into a pond. The coroner determined that an epileptic seizure prompted his accident, but that his death was caused by drowning.

Albrecht's parents learned years later that they had buried him without a brain. They filed a lawsuit against coroners and commissioners in 87 of Ohio's 88 counties.

The case has drawn attention because of its possible impact on coroners, crime investigators, emergency medical technicians, funeral directors and followers of religions that espouse the importance of burying the whole body.

Coroners' attorneys say guaranteeing families the right to the organs, tissue, blood and other fluids extracted during an autopsy could jeopardize criminal evidence.

"Plaintiffs would have you believe that you can do an autopsy and still return all of the body," Mark Landes, a lawyer representing the coroners, told the judges. "That's a definitional impossibility."

Brains are particularly difficult to reunite with a body in time for burial, because it takes three to 14 days to prepare them for examination.

In a brief, the Medical Examiners Association said material from a dead body is almost always lost. Bodies lose fluids at accident scenes and parts of some bodies are never found, the group said.

Under Ohio law, brains, hearts and other body parts and fluids removed during an autopsy are classified as medical waste, which generally means they are incinerated after use.

Justice Maureen O'Connor suggested to attorneys for the family that allowing their legal argument to prevail would have a sweeping impact on the entire medical profession.

Attorneys for the family have been taken to task by the court for making a legal question too emotional. Some briefs have contained references to Achilles' slaying of Hector in "The Iliad," the drowning of Shakespeare's Ophelia and poet Walt Whitman's "I Sing The Body Electric."

Lawyers for the coroners at one point tried and failed to get one particularly verbose submission — which traced the history of death from ancient to modern times — stricken from the record.

A: No, you cannot deduct as theft losses the amount you invested in Enron stock that is not covered by the reimbursement.

The Internal Revenue Service stated in an April 19, 2004, notice that it would "disallow such deductions and may impose penalties" on taxpayers who claimed theft loss deductions for "the decline in market value of their stock caused by disclosure of accounting fraud or other illegal misconduct of the officers or directors of the corporation that issued the stock."

The tax code limits losses for individuals to:

• Losses incurred in a trade or business.

• Losses incurred in any transaction entered into for profit outside of a trade or business, which are called capital losses.

• Losses of property not connected with a trade or business or a transaction entered into for profit, if such losses arise from theft or casualties, such as fire, storm and shipwreck, which are called theft or casualty losses.

In its notice, the IRS cites several judicial rulings that have found that capital losses do not become theft losses, even when a stock becomes worthless because of "corporate officers misrepresenting the financial condition of the corporation, even when the officers were indicted for securities fraud or other criminal violations."

You can challenge that determination by filing a lawsuit and proving in court that the "loss resulted from a taking of property that is illegal under the law of the state where it occurred and that the taking was done with criminal intent."

Otherwise, claim a capital loss.

Capital losses are deducted first from capital gains, and then again up to $3,000 of other income. Any amounts of the loss remaining can be carried over into future tax years. A carry-over loss may be deducted from capital gains in later years plus up to $3,000 of ordinary income.

Ryan's lawyers said in a petition to the court that the trial judge replaced two jurors with alternates after deliberations in the case had already begun.

"The manipulation of the jury's composition deprived the petitioners of the fundamental right to a fair trial by an impartial jury," Ryan's petition said.

The jurors' opinions on the case were already known when trial Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer replaced two of them for omitting mention of their police records on pretrial questionnaires, the petition says.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Ryan's conviction, erred in not seeing that the jury irregularities ruined any chance the trial would be fair, the petition read.

The petition asks the Supreme Court, which turns away most appeals, to consider the case.

A message left at the office of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald on Wednesday night was not immediately returned.

The Supreme Court may be the last stop in the long quest by the former governor to get out from under his conviction and the 6 1/2-year sentence he is serving in a federal prison.

Ryan, who turns 74 next month, was convicted of steering lucrative leases and contracts to lobbyists and cronies in exchange for valuables ranging from vacations in Jamaica and Mexico to a free golf bag. He was also convicted of using state workers and money to run his campaigns and of quashing an investigation into bribes paid in the secretary of state's office in exchange for drivers licenses.

Joining Ryan in the petition was businessman Larry Warner, who made millions of dollars in state leases and contracts from the secretary of state office Ryan held before being elected governor.

Law firm Stinson Morrison Hecker has marshaled some of its lawyers from different specialties to form the Climate Change Practice Group.

The group's members include David Bengtson, Stinson's Wichita managing partner, as well as 29 other lawyers in five of Stinson's eight offices across the country.

Mark Johnson, practice leader of the climate change group and a lawyer practicing in environmental law, said several factors led the Kansas City, Mo.-based firm to form the practice group. Those include client needs and an increasing focus at the state and federal levels on climate change legislation.

The idea solidified when Johnson attended a seminar on the Clean Air Act last year in Washington, D.C.

"It seemed like the discussions were dominated by climate change," he said.

Legislation in Congress, such as the America's Climate Security Act, whichaims to cut greenhouse gas emissions, will likely have an impact on business, Johnson said.

A bill has been introduced in the Missouri Legislature that would require greenhouse gas emissions reporting and also calls for greenhouse gas reductions.

And in Kansas, Sunflower Electric Power Corp., which wants to build two coal-fired power plants, is battling state regulators over the potential of carbon dioxide emissions.

"I think it's really a reaction to the changing legal environment... in which all of our clients operate," Bengtson said of the creation of the practice group.

Johnson and Bengtson, who specialize in the oil and gas industry, said the lawyers in the practice group specialize in several areas, including securities law, corporate law and real estate.

Bengtson and Johnson think Stinson is the first firm in Kansas and Missouri to create a practice group representing businesses affected by climate change issues.

Local law firm officials said they are not aware of other firms forming similar practice groups, though there are lawyers in the Wichita area who specialize in environmental law.

Nationally, there are firms that have similar environment-focused practice groups, including Hogan & Hartson in Washington, D.C., and Perkins Coie in Seattle.