The Justice Department says it needs time and the freedom to probe the destruction of hundreds of hours of recordings of two suspected terrorists. After Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused congressional demands for information Friday, the Justice Department filed late-night court documents urging a federal judge not to begin his own inquiry.

The administration argued it was not obligated to preserve the videotapes and told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy that demanding information about them "could potentially complicate the ongoing efforts to arrive at a full factual understanding of the matter."

The documents represent the first time the government has addressed the issue in court. In the papers, acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey S. Bucholtz said Kennedy lacked jurisdiction and he expressed concern that the judge might order CIA officials to testify.

Congressional inquiries and criminal investigations frequently overlap and it is not uncommon for the Justice Department to ask lawmakers to ease off. The request for the court to stand down is more unusual. Judges take seriously even the suggestion that evidence was destroyed, but they also are reluctant to wade into political debates.

Legal experts say it will be up to Mukasey, a former judge who only recently took over as the nation's chief law enforcer, to reassure Congress and the courts during his first high-profile test.

"We're going to find out if the trust Congress put in Attorney General Mukasey was well placed," said Pepperdine Law professor Douglas W. Kmiec, who served in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration. "It's hard to know on the surface whether this is obstruction or an advancement of a legitimate inquiry."

Kennedy ordered the administration in June 2005 to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos, which involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

Bucholtz argued that the tapes were not covered by Kennedy's court order because Zubaydah and al-Nashiri were not at the Guantanamo military prison in Cuba. The men were being held overseas in a network of secret CIA prisons. By the time President Bush acknowledged the existence of those prisons and the prisoners were transferred to Guantanamo, the tapes had been destroyed.

Lawmakers had reacted angrily to Mukasey's refusal Friday to give Congress details of the administration's investigation. He explained that doing so could raise questions about whether the inquiry was vulnerable to political pressure and said his department generally does not release information on pending cases.

"It's clear that there's more to this story than we have been told, and it is unfortunate that we are being prevented from learning the facts. The executive branch can't be trusted to oversee itself," according to a statement by the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, Reps. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, and Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.

They said "parallel investigations occur all of the time, and there is no basis upon which the attorney general can stand in the way of our work." Mukasey's decision, lawmakers said, blocks congressional oversight of his department.

David Remes, a lawyer who represents a Yemeni national and other detainees, has called for a court hearing. He says the government was required to keep the tapes and he wants to be sure other evidence is not being destroyed.

Even if Kennedy agrees that the government did not violate his order, he still could schedule a hearing. He could raise questions about obstruction or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in "pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation."

Those are serious matters, but Kennedy does not necessarily have to hold a hearing right away, said K. Lee Blalack, a Washington defense lawyer and former counsel to a Senate investigative committee.

"If the department takes six months on this and reports back, nothing prevents the judge from taking up the issue then," Blalack said.

Kmiec said much will depend on how much confidence Kennedy has in the Justice Department. The judge also might order a private hearing to protect national security, Kmiec said.

Zubaydah was the first high-value detainee taken by the CIA in 2002. He told his interrogators about alleged Sept. 11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, and the two men's confessions also led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the U.S. government said was the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks.

Al-Nashiri is the alleged coordinator of the 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors. Like Zubaydah, he is now at Guantanamo.

After 10 days of deliberations, the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charges against Alexander Pring-Wilson, 29, who was being tried for a second time.

Pring-Wilson said he acted in self-defense after he was attacked by 18-year-old Michael Colono and his cousin, Samuel Rodriguez, outside a Cambridge pizza parlor as he walked home from a bar on April 12, 2003.

Rodriguez testified that Pring-Wilson became enraged when Colono ridiculed him for stumbling home drunk.

The case attracted widespread media attention because of long-standing tensions between Ivy Leaguers and working-class Cambridge residents.

Pring-Wilson, the son of Colorado lawyers, was studying for his master's degree in Russian and Eurasian studies at Harvard. Colono, a high school dropout, had fathered a child at 15. He had earned his high-school equivalency diploma and was working as a cook at a Boston hotel when he was killed.

Pring-Wilson will remain free on bail. Prosecutors said they will put him on trial a third time.

"We will honor the memory of Michael Colono by continuing to fight for justice on behalf of him, his family, and the commonwealth," Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said in a statement.

Pring-Wilson was convicted of manslaughter in 2004, but won a new trial eight months later when the state's highest court ruled in another case that juries should be allowed to consider a victim's violent history if it is relevant to a claim of self-defense.

During the second trial, jurors were given details about Colono's criminal record, including a 2001 episode in which he threw money in the face of a cashier at a pizza restaurant, then kicked in the front door and shattered the glass.

Pring-Wilson testified Colono and Rodriguez both pounded him relentlessly in the head, and he pulled out his folding knife because he was afraid they would kill him.

The fight between Pring-Wilson and Colono broke out as Pring-Wilson walked by a car Rodriguez and Colono were sitting in as they waited for a pizza order. Pring-Wilson said he approached the car because he heard someone call to him and thought they needed directions.

But Rodriguez said Pring-Wilson pulled open the car door and started the fight after Colono ridiculed him. Colono was stabbed five times in the chest and abdomen.

The prosecution focused on the lies Pring-Wilson acknowledged telling police during a 911 call he made seconds after the fight ended, and during police interviews the next morning. He initially said he had witnessed a young man being stabbed, but described himself as a bystander.

Pring-Wilson's attorney, E. Peter Parker, said the deadlock showed that at least some jurors rejected the prosecution's claim that Pring-Wilson was the aggressor.

"We are thrilled that a number of jurors at this trial saw the commonwealth's case for what it was, and found that Alex's conduct was a justified act of self-defense," Parker said.

Colono's brother, Marcos, and mother, Ada, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The 43-year-old former construction worker was convicted in September of 19 counts, including sexual assault and kidnapping, for assaulting the sisters in 2005 as they walked home from a park.

The sisters told the jury how Goudeau forced them into the bushes near a road and told them to strip, then raped the younger victim while pointing the gun at the other.

"My daughter was in danger before she was even born," said the woman who had been pregnant when the attack occurred. Speaking through an interpreter, she said she still wakes up crying sometimes.

"I will hope for him to never get out," she said.

DNA evidence linked Goudeau to the rape, but he maintained that he was innocent.

"What happened to those two girls was indeed horrible," he told the judge, "but I had nothing to do with it."

"This is just another freak show of a hearing where they convicted an innocent man," Goudeau's wife, Wendy Carr, said outside the courthouse.

Klein said before handing down the sentence that Goudeau must have two "diametrically opposed" personalities, one calm and respectful in court and the other sociopathic and brutal.

Maricopa County Prosecutors had said earlier that Goudeau faced a maximum of 285 years in prison. But Deputy County Attorney Suzanne Cohen proved a prior violent record in court Friday that made him eligible for the higher sentences.

Goudeau still faces trial on 74 other criminal charges, including nine murder counts, from a crime spree police have attributed to the Baseline Killer, named for the south Phoenix street where many of the early attacks took place. He has pleaded not guilty.

If Goudeau is convicted of murder, County Attorney Andrew Thomas has said he will pursue the death penalty.

Goudeau is the first of three suspects in serial killing to go on trial for a rash of random attacks that terrorized the Phoenix area for more than a year in 2005 and 2006. All three were arrested last year.

Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman were arrested in the so-called "Serial Shooter" case in August 2006 and are expected to go on trial next year. Hausner faces seven murder counts and Dieteman is charged with two. Their trial is expect to begin next year.

The Internal Revenue Service has settled a claim against the founders of Houston's Kid-Care for about $1,000 — a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott claimed the couple had stolen from the charity.

The agreement, dated Nov. 7, says Carol Porter owes $938.93 in unpaid taxes from 2001 and 2002, while her husband, Hurt Porter, owes $37 from 2002. The document stipulates that the Porters have not acknowledged any improper expenditures.

In a lawsuit filed in April 2003, Abbott said the Porters had used some of the charity's funds for personal expenses such as airline trips and lavish meals.

Abbott settled the case with the Porters' insurance company for $495,000 in August 2004.

Abbott's investigation identified almost $500,000 in questionable expenses the Porters billed to Kid-Care's credit cards from 1999 through 2002. The IRS case involves the Porters' tax returns from 2001, 2002 and 2003.

"The expenses laid out by the attorney general seemed to be the same expenses that the IRS was questioning," said Juan Vasquez, a tax attorney who represented the Porters.

New Jersey Nets star Jason Kidd is being sued by a 23-year-old model who accused him of groping and threatening her at a Manhattan nightclub two months ago.

An attorney for Kidd called the allegations "false" and "defamatory" and the lawsuit an attempt to get money from the All-Star guard, who earns almost $20 million a year.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan's state Supreme Court, says Kidd "battered and assaulted" the woman in the Lower West Side club Tenjune on Oct. 10 when he "grabbed her buttocks and crotch on multiple occasions."

"He kept staring at her and then went over and grabbed her butt," the woman's lawyer, Russell S. Adler, said yesterday. He said, "She told him 'Get off me! Get away from me!'" before bouncers pulled Kidd away.

Words were exchanged and Kidd grabbed the woman again, pushing her against a wall and putting his hand under her dress, Adler said.

A spokesman for the New York City Police Department confirmed Oct. 17 that the woman had filed a criminal complaint against Kidd, accusing him of the acts alleged in the lawsuit that was filed Thursday.

But Adler said officials from the district attorney's office told him late yesterday that prosecutors would not pursue charges against Kidd.

The woman is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Kidd's lawyer Paul Grand said, "This lawsuit is nothing more than a brazen and defamatory search for a payout."

A Nets spokesman said the team had no comment because the claims involve a pending legal matter.

DoubleClick and the FTC have denied that Jones Day has represented the company before the FTC.

But on Thursday, EPIC and CDD filed a second complaint with the FTC, showing a cached Web page claiming that Jones Day is advising DoubleClick "on the international and U.S. antitrust and competition law aspects of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition by Google Inc." The Jones Day Web page was later changed, the groups said.

EPIC and CDD said Thursday they were filing a Freedom of Information Act request seeking all records on the relationship between Jones Day and DoubleClick.

One conclusion to draw is that "Jones Day has sought to conceal the nature, scope, and duration of the relationship with its client DoubleClick by altering web pages," said a letter signed by executive directors of both organizations. FTC spokespeople who denied the relationship were "either misinformed or willfully misled the public," the letter says.

An FTC spokeswoman declined to comment on the new complaint. Representatives of Jones Day and DoubleClick weren't immediately available for comment.

The FTC and DoubleClick downplayed the connection Wednesday, saying Jones Day has not advised DoubleClick on matters before the FTC. Instead, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett has been DoubleClick's outside counsel since July of 2005 and has advised it in matters before the FTC, DoubleClick said in a statement.

"Jones Day was not engaged to represent, and has not represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission or appeared before the commission on DoubleClick’s behalf," the company said.

In April, EPIC, CDD, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) asked the FTC to block Google's acquisition of DoubleClick unless the combined company made changes to its privacy practices. The combined company would hold a vast amount of private information on Web users, the groups said.