Frederick J. Lewis, a founding partner of Lewis Fisher, said he feels the joining of the two firms will add tremendous opportunities for Lewis Fisher as well as the Memphis business community. "I think (the combination will help Memphis companies) in the same way we see our firm as benefiting - it gives the resource of having a firm with 365 lawyers and 30 different offices across the country," Lewis said. "We serve clients across the country, but this obviously increases our ability to do that. It gives us depth.

"As far as the Memphis market, it gives clients in Memphis an opportunity to call on the resources of a nationwide firm when they have a case that calls for that."

Southern presence

The attorneys of Lewis Fisher will have the benefit of Ogletree Deakins' reputation that comes from representing more than half of the Fortune 50 companies in the United States, entities such as Home Depot, Dillard's, Nissan, Dollar General and Dell Corp.

Twelve attorneys from Lewis Fisher's Memphis office and seven from its Jackson, Miss., office will make up the first Ogletree Deakins offices in each city. Lewis, Thomas L. Henderson, Whitney King Fogerty, Charles V. Holmes, O. John Norris III and Craig A. Cowart will open the Memphis office as shareholders of Ogletree Deakins. Donna K. Fisher, a founding partner of Lewis Fisher, will join in an of counsel position.

Lewis Fisher, which began operating in 1998 in its current form, already had two attorneys operating out of an office in Los Angeles, so those attorneys will move into the L.A. office of Ogletree Deakins.

The Memphis office will become Ogletree Deakins' second office in Tennessee. The firm opened an office in Nashville in 1986.

Firm shareholder Kevin Frazier, who works out of Ogletree Deakins' Nashville office, said the firm was interested in Lewis Fisher for a number of reasons.

"The first attraction was the quality of the lawyers. When we are looking at cities, that is the first thing we look for," said Frazier, who is on the executive committee of Ogletree Deakins.

The marriage of the two firms also gives Ogletree Deakins a presence in a region that it would otherwise not have had access to before. Offices in Memphis and Jackson, Miss., offer exactly that for Ogletree Deakins, Frazier said.

"I have known Tom (Henderson) and Fred (Lewis) for probably 10 years, and have always been interested in doing something with them, and the opportunity just presented itself," Frazier said.

Only a matter of time

For Ogletree Deakins, combining with Lewis Fisher was part of the firm's overall strategy to address some of the current trends in the area of labor and employment law, Frazier added.

While Lewis Fisher attorneys had crossed paths with attorneys at Ogletree Deakins for years on various cases, Lewis said it was not until recently that the two firms began to talk about combining their resources.

Lewis and Henderson, who is a partner at Lewis Fisher, were in Nashville working on a case that also involved some Ogletree Deakins attorneys. They went to lunch one day after court and discussed the possibility of working together.

"We obviously had a productive lunch," Lewis said of that February meeting. "It has been a quick courtship."

One of the main reasons Lewis said his firm was interested in working with a firm as large as Ogletree Deakins was the trend in labor and employment law for cases to be filed as class actions. That trend opens companies such as the ones Ogletree Deakins represents to more liability than before.

Another trend in labor and employment that makes the combination of firms work well is that major corporations have begun to severely restrict the number of law firms they use, meaning companies that might have at one time used 20 law firms around the country, might only use two or three firms now.

"What that does for Lewis Fisher and their client base is it gives them an opportunity to say, 'We can do your work at 30 different locations with quality lawyers we know at one firm,'" Frazier said.

Ogletree Deakins already has begun to see the benefits since news of the combination became public earlier this month. The firm has picked up three lawsuits through Ogletree Deakins contacts in Memphis that it would not have been able to get without the office here, Frazier said.

A teenager has pleaded guilty to a murder that sent a mob of the victim's relatives on a search for the killer, ending in the fatal beating of another man they thought was involved.

Leonard Staton, 19, pleaded guilty Thursday to killing Patrick McClendon, 20. Staton faces a minimum of 24 years in prison for second-degree murder, kidnapping, robbery and possession of a stolen firearm.

Staton called police last summer to confess to killing McClendon, his one-time friend, over 2 ounces of marijuana.

Hours before that call, a search party of McClendon's family and friends came across the victim's car, hidden among pine trees on property that belonged to the family of Tony Blakeney, 40.

The search party then turned on Blakeney, who lived at the house and was part of the search party, authorities said. Sheriff's deputies found Blakeney lying on the ground, and he died at a hospital.

Eleven men - most of them relatives of McClendon's, and all under 30 - face murder charges in Blakeney's death.

Investigators have said Blakeney had no part in McClendon's killing.

Schultz-Reineke, a German citizen living in Manhattan, faces up to 85 years in prison on the charges. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 28.

"It was a tragic day for him," said Roland Riopelle, Schultz-Reineke's lawyer. "We look forward to completing the proceedings. He looks forward, at some point, to going home to Germany."

Prosecutors alleged that Schultz-Reineke and others engaged in a scheme to defraud clients of Results Securities and Signature Investments. Many of the investors were German, prosecutors said.

Schultz-Reineke and others would secretly pay significantly more than publicized in its fee schedule to individuals employed by the companies to induce clients to invest, the government said.

Prosecutors said Schultz-Reineke and others also caused to be created customer account statements and trade confirmations that falsely represented purchases and sales of securities, as well as profits and losses incurred on those trades.

Schultz-Reineke and others directed a substantial portion of the investors' money be used for purposes other than trading securities, including for the firms' operating expenses and for their personal use.

The Democratic chairmen of the two committees seeking the documents accused Bush of stonewalling and disdain for the law, and said they would press forward with enforcing the subpoenas.

"With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path which we sought to avoid by finding grounds for mutual accommodation,'' White House counsel Fred Fielding said in a letter to the chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. "We had hoped this matter could conclude with your committees receiving information in lieu of having to invoke executive privilege. Instead, we are at this conclusion.''

Thursday was the deadline for surrendering the documents. The White House also made clear that Miers and Taylor would not testify next month, as directed by the subpoenas, which were issued June 13. The stalemate could end up with House and Senate contempt citations and a battle in federal court over separation of powers.

"Increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law,'' said Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. He portrayed the president's actions as "Nixonian stonewalling.''

His House counterpart, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said Bush's assertion of executive privilege was "unprecedented in its breadth and scope'' and displayed "an appalling disregard for the right of the people to know what is going on in their government.''

In his letter, Fielding said Bush had "attempted to chart a course of cooperation'' by releasing more than 8,500 pages of documents and sending Gonzales and other senior officials to testify before Congress. The White House also had offered a compromise in which Miers, Taylor, White House political strategist Karl Rove and their deputies would be interviewed by Judiciary Committee aides in closed-door sessions, without transcripts.

Leahy and Conyers rejected that offer. Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said the Democrats should have accepted it.

"We would be much farther ahead in finding out whether there's any real impropriety here or not,'' said Hatch, a former chairman of the committee. He also said presidents have legitimate reasons to protect the confidentiality of the advice they get.

In his letter, Fielding explained Bush's position on executive privilege this way: "For the President to perform his constitutional duties, it is imperative that he receive candid and unfettered advice and that free and open discussions and deliberations occur among his advisors and between those advisors and others within and outside the Executive Branch.''

This "bedrock presidential prerogative'' exists, in part, to protect the president from being compelled to disclose such communications to Congress, Fielding argued. And he questioned whether the documents and testimony the committees seeking are critically important to their investigations.

It was the second time in his administration that Bush has exerted executive privilege, said White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto. The first instance was in December, 2001, to rebuff Congress' demands for Clinton administration documents.

Tensions between the administration and the Democratic-run Congress have been building for months as the House and Senate Judiciary panels have sought to probe the firings of eight federal prosecutors and the administration's program of warrantless eavesdropping. The investigations are part of the Democrats' efforts to hold the administration to account for the way it has conducted the war on terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Democrats say the firings of the prosecutors over the winter was an example of improper political influence. The White House says U.S. attorneys are political appointees who can be hired and fired for almost any reason.

Democrats and even some key Republicans have said that Gonzales should resign over the U.S. attorney dismissals, but he has steadfastly held his ground and Bush has backed him.

Just Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, demanding documents pertaining to terrorism-era warrant-free eavesdropping.

Separately, that panel also is summoning Gonzales to discuss the program and an array of other matters - including the prosecutor firings - that have cost a half-dozen top Justice Department officials their jobs.

The Judiciary panels also subpoenaed the National Security Council. Leahy added that, like Conyers, he would consider pursuing contempt citations against those who refuse.

The case posed the issue of how insane a person must be before a death sentence becomes unconstitutional, and the ruling came at the end of the Supreme Court's term.

At trial, Mr. Panetti, now 49, insisted on representing himself. He wore a purple cowboy costume, tried to subpoena Jesus, the pope and John F. Kennedy, and testified in the persona of his alter ego "Sarge." He'd been hospitalized 14 times for mental illness in the decade before the murders, at his in-laws' Fredericksburg home.

Lawyers handling his appeal argued few, if any, death row inmates are as mentally incompetent and that putting him to death would amount to "mindless vengeance" with no retributive purpose.

Four lower courts did find him competent to stand trial, and a jury rejected his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

But Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a 5-4 majority, found that Mr. Panetti's mental illness is so severe that it should have been considered.

"Someone who is condemned to death for an atrocious murder may be so callous as to be unrepentant; so self-centered and devoid of Compassion as to lack all sense of guilt; so adept in transferring blame to others as to be considered, at least in the colloquial sense, to be out of touch with reality," Justice Kennedy wrote, but Mr. Panetti's problem isn't merely "a misanthropic personality or an amoral character. It is a psychotic disorder."

At oral arguments in April, justices wrestled with the puzzling situation of an inmate who knows he's been convicted, knows what he's convicted for, knows the state plans to punish him – but suffers from a delusion that makes him ascribe satanic motives to the authorities.

Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, arguing for the prosecution, urged justices to focus on the central fact – essential to a legal finding of mental competence -- that Mr. Panetti understands that he is guilty of murder and that he faces execution for that murder.

The American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the National Alliance on Mental Illness had all urged the Supreme Court to spare Mr. Panetti, arguing that regardless of current legal definitions, if a person has a mental disorder that "significantly impairs his or her capacity to understand the nature and purpose of the punishment," that person isn't competent to be executed.

Gregory Wiercioch, an attorney with Texas Defender Service who argued Mr. Panetti's case, lauded the ruling.

"The Supreme Court recognized that executing Scott Panetti would be a mindless, meaningless, and miserable spectacle," he said. "The Supreme Court today reaffirms the wisdom of a legal principle nearly a thousand years old – that the execution of persons like Scott Panetti serves no purpose and offends our sense of decency and common humanity."

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the four dissenters, criticized the majority's refusal to defer to lower courts regarding Mr. Panetti's mental competence, especially in the absence of evidence that his condition has worsened since his conviction – a contention Mr. Panetti's lawyers dispute.

Justice Thomas accused the court's majority of offering a "half-baked holding" that doesn't clarify standards for findings of legal insanity – leaving, instead, muddled guidelines for lower courts to sort through.

He argued that the only workable standard would be the one offered 20 years ago by Justice Lewis Powell, in a concurring in another mental competency case that left the court even more badly divided. Justice Powell wrote that no one should be executed unless they perceive "the connection between his crime and his punishment" – the standard Mr. Cruz had urged on the court.

The Panetti case is one of a number of Texas death row cases the Supreme Court has scrutinized this term.

In April, a 5-4 court threw out sentences for three killers whose juries, in choosing between execution and life in prison, weren't explicitly allowed to weigh mitigating factors such as childhood abuse.

The court's finding that meant a reprieve for three Texans, including LaRoyce Smith, who killed the night manager at a Dallas Taco Bell where he'd worked. He was a 19-year-old ninth-grader with an IQ of 78.

At the time of trial, Texas law gave juries a two-part test: if the conduct was deliberate, and the defendant posed an ongoing threat to society, the sentence would be death. Those rules were in use during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Legislature added a third test in 1991, asking juries to explicitly consider mitigating factors.

The Supreme Court threw out the Smith sentence on a 7-2 vote in 2004, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals defied the justices, asserting as it had previously that the lack of a the third jury instruction was harmless. The Supreme Court rejected that snub in April. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, caustically asserting that the Texas court suffered "confusion" and an inability to follow directions.

At the same time it threw out the Smith death penalty, the Supreme Court gave reprieves to two other Texas inmates whose appeals on the grounds had come up through the federal courts: Brent Ray Brewer, who stabbed a 66-year-old man and robbed him of $140, and Jalil Abdul-Kabir, who robbed a 66-year-old man who was walking his dog in San Angelo in 1988, strangled him with the leash and got $20.

Fifty Texas inmates were sent to death row under the flawed jury instructions, and within a week of the Smith ruling, the Supreme Court gave a near last-minute reprieve to another of them, Ronald Chambers, a Dallas man who has spent 31 years awaiting execution for a 1975 abduction-murder of a college student. He'd been convicted and sentenced to death three times.

The cases led many legal experts to view a growing sense of dissatisfaction on the Supreme Court over the way Texas has handled the death row process.

Brockway made no opening statement, called no witnesses, presented no evidence and did not cross-examine several witnesses in the May 2006 trial that ended with Huang being sentenced to 12 months in prison, her current lawyer Ronald O. Kaye said. Huang has been free on bail since the conviction.

Brockway said in a declaration filed as part of prosecutors' arguments opposing a new trial for Huang that he didn't cross-examine every government witness because he didn't "believe that significant points could be scored."

He also acknowledged in the filings that he lost a box of documents from Huang's previous lawyer, whom she had dismissed after he advised her to plead guilty to the federal felony charges against her.

Brockway appeared in court to represent Huang the day after the State Bar Court said he should be suspended for five years for allegedly taking thousands of dollars from four Asian immigrant clients who spoke little or no English and failing to do any work for them. The court found him culpable of 14 counts of misconduct against the four clients.