"I want to be treated equally," said Michael Newdow, who argued the cases consecutively to a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday. He added that supporters of the phrases "want to have their religious views espoused by the government."

Newdow, a Sacramento doctor and lawyer, sued his daughter's school district in 2000 for forcing public school children to recite the pledge, saying it was unconstitutional.

The 9th Circuit ruled in Newdow's favor in 2002, but two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he lacked standing to sue because he didn't have custody of the daughter on whose behalf he brought the case. He immediately filed a second lawsuit on behalf of three unidentified parents and their children in another district.

In 2005, a federal judge in Sacramento again found in favor of Newdow, ruling the pledge was unconstitutional. The judge said he was following the precedent set by the 9th Circuit's ruling in Newdow's first case.

Terence Cassidy, a lawyer for the school district, argued Tuesday that reciting the pledge is simply a "patriotic exercise" and a reminder of the traditions of the U.S.

"How is pledging allegiance to a nation under God not a religious act?" Judge Dorothy W. Nelson asked. Cassidy said the pledge has religious elements but is not a religious exercise.

Newdow said the pledge has "tons of religious significance. That's why everyone gets so angry when we talk about ... taking it out."

Nelson asked Cassidy whether removing the words "under God" would make the pledge any less patriotic.

"Not necessarily," he replied, arguing it provided a historical context, not a religious one.

Congress added the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and passed a law requiring all U.S. currency to carry the motto "In God We Trust" a year later. Congress first authorized a reference to God on money in 1864.

In describing the historical context for use of the word "God," the government cited the Declaration of Independence, which states that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

In 2005, Newdow sued Congress and several federal officials, arguing the motto's presence on coins and currency violated his First Amendment rights. A federal judge in Sacramento ruled against him last year, and Newdow appealed.

On Tuesday, Justice Department lawyer Lowell Sturgill Jr. said "In God We Trust" is not an endorsement of a particular faith, but simply a patriotic or ceremonial message.

Judge Stephen Reinhardt indicated support for Newdow's position.

The "In God We Trust" motto "affects Mr. Newdow every moment of his life," Reinhardt said. "The government has no compelling interest to put a slogan on a dollar bill."

Newdow said he didn't advocate hostility toward God or religion and respected people's right to their own beliefs. He said he wanted equal respect for atheists.

About 20 Newdow supporters in the courtroom and outside the courthouse wore T-shirts touting evolution and atheism and carried signs supporting the separation of church and state.

Prosecutor James Williams said the "perpetrator" in that famous California case "got away with it."

Allen Snyder, who was then sentenced to die for killing his estranged wife's friend, claims the prosecutor unconstitutionally excluded prospective black jurors. Snyder said the prosecutor's reference during the 1996 trial to Simpson, who a year earlier was acquitted of killing his ex-wife and her friend, helped reveal his biased intent.

The justices appeared divided over the case, which could clarify standards for defendants who claim racial bias in jury selection. An overriding question is how deeply appeals courts should scrutinize the circumstances when a prosecutor purges blacks from a jury and a judge accepts the reasons as race-neutral, for example, that a potential juror seemed nervous.

A 1986 case, Batson v. Kentucky, bars prosecutors from using their allotted "peremptory," or discretionary, challenges during jury selection to strike someone because of race. The justices have emphasized in recent rulings that the exclusion of minorities undermines the integrity of the justice system.

When the Supreme Court hears arguments today about the rights of suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, the role of the courts in the fight against terrorism will be as much an issue as the fate of the prisoners.

The president and Congress have already made their opinions clear: The courts may not "hear or consider" challenges from foreigners held as enemy combatants at the U.S. facility in Cuba.

But in what some scholars say is a critical separation-of-powers case, the nine justices will have the final word on whether such a court-stripping prohibition is constitutional, and on how deferential the judicial branch should be in the prosecution of a war unlike any the country has ever faced.

The court has been critical of Bush administration policies over the past three years, but "this case is probably more important than the other ones because it's a direct conflict between the political branches that have traditionally run wars and the courts," said John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who helped design the Bush administration's legal strategies for the terrorism fight.

Yoo denounced the court's involvement and said that it has never received such an unequivocal message that the "joint wishes of the president and Congress" are to "push the courts out" of the process.

Attorneys for the detainees and a host of international and domestic interest groups supporting them say that is precisely when the courts are most needed.

The libertarian Cato Institute, in a brief filed by lawyer Timothy Lynch, said it is "imperative that this Court eschew a deferential posture and stand, in words of James Madison, as an 'impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the Legislative or Executive.' "

Two cases, Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, have been consolidated into one and brought on behalf of 37 foreigners who remain among the approximately 300 detainees at Guantanamo Bay. All were captured on foreign soil and have been designated enemy combatants. They proclaim their innocence and for years have asked federal courts for a writ of habeas corpus, the ancient right allowing prisoners to challenge their detentions.

Some have been imprisoned since soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and while they have won at the Supreme Court before, none has had a full hearing before a federal judge.

The court has confronted the issue before, ruling in 2004 in Rasul v. Bush that federal habeas corpus statutes extended to Guantanamo Bay detainees because of the unique control that the U.S. government has over the land.

The Republican-led Congress responded by changing the law, and after another adverse court ruling and at the urging of the Bush administration, it passed the Military Commissions Act in October 2006. The legislation endorsed a military system for designating detainees as enemy combatants and for trying those charged with crimes, and it strictly limited judicial oversight.

"The detainees now enjoy greater procedural protections and statutory rights to challenge their wartime detentions than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of war," Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said in his brief to the court. "Yet they claim an entitlement to more."

Specifically, attorneys contend that Guantanamo Bay detainees have a constitutional guarantee of habeas, a right that Congress may suspend only in times of "rebellion or invasion."

The government disputes that, but says that even if it were so, previous court rulings allow an adequate substitute for habeas proceedings.

But detainees who appear before the military Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which determine whether they can be held indefinitely as enemy combatants, have fewer rights than they would in habeas proceedings. They are not represented by counsel, do not have access to all evidence used against them and cannot prevail on a judge to release them if the case against them is not made.

"Habeas is a judicial remedy," former solicitor general Seth P. Waxman, who will argue for the detainees, said in a brief. "It cannot be replaced by a process that (like the CSRT) is ultimately controlled by the jailer."

The position is supported by a long list of organizations that have filed briefs with the court on behalf of the detainees: Israeli leaders, who say that terrorism suspects in their country receive a detention hearing within 14 days; a group of 383 European parliamentarians; former U.S. diplomats; law professors; retired military leaders; and even Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who voted for the Military Commissions Act and said at the time that the court could "clean up" the parts of the law he thought were unconstitutional.

"To avoid an incongruous legal 'black hole' at Guantanamo, this Court should strike down the MCA's illegal suspension of the Great Writ and allow Congress to establish procedures consistent with what national security and the Constitution require," Specter wrote.

Four conservative legal organizations support the Bush administration, urging the court not to use what the Washington Legal Foundation calls its "raw power" to overturn the work of Congress and the president.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was the deciding vote last year in the court's most controversial cases, appears to be in the spotlight again; Kathleen M. Sullivan, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford University, jokingly referred to the carefully tailored briefs in the case as "love letters to Justice Kennedy."

Kennedy is believed to have provided the key fifth vote required for the court to consider the latest detainee case. In his concurring opinion in the 2004 Rasul, he acknowledged the difficulty the court faces in times of war.

"There is a realm of political authority over military affairs where the judicial power may not enter. The existence of this realm acknowledges the power of the President as Commander in Chief, and the joint role of the President and the Congress, in the conduct of military affairs," Kennedy wrote.

But he added that the "necessary corollary" is when courts "maintain the power and the responsibility to protect persons from unlawful detention even where military affairs are implicated."

Zachariah Blanton, 18, of Gaston, had been scheduled to stand trial next week on charges of murder, attempted murder and criminal recklessness. He pleaded guilty in Jackson Circuit Court to lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter with a deadly weapon and criminal recklessness.

A judge must still approve Blanton's deal with prosecutors. Sentencing is set for Dec. 27, and Blanton could receive anything between 20 years and 50 years in prison.

Prosecutors say Blanton fired his hunting rifle into highway traffic from an overpass about 60 miles south of Indianapolis on July 23, 2006.

One of the shots went through a pickup truck's windshield and killed 40-year-old Jerry L. Ross. An Iowa man traveling in another pickup truck was injured.

Police say Blanton later shot at cars along another highway northeast of Indianapolis, but no one was injured. Blanton, who was 17 at the time, was arrested at his home two days later.

Blanton's defense attorney did not publicly comment after court and did not immediately return a phone call.

Blanton confessed to the shooting and provided police with details, police have said. Blanton told police he fired the shots to relieve pressure after he argued with fellow participants in a southern Indiana hunting trip. Blanton confirmed the motive in court Monday.

Ross's relatives, wearing "Justice for Jerry" buttons outside the courthouse, said they were unhappy with the deal.

His father, 70-year-old Jesse Ross, said a jury should decide Blanton's fate.

"Twelve people would be about as fair as it could be, it couldn't get no better than that," he said. "I don't think this is right, the way they're doing it. All we want is a fair trial because you can't bring nothing back."

Blanton "committed those crimes, he should be standing trial for them," said Jerry's twin brother, Terry Ross, who was in the truck with his brother when he was shot. "He didn't give Jerry any kind of a deal."

Prosecutor Rick Poynter said he had to make the deal based on the strength of his case. He noted that the judge had ruled that statements Blanton gave police were inadmissible.

If Blanton had been convicted of murder, he could have faced 45 to 65 years in prison. But Poynter said the jury also could have acquitted him or found him guilty of reckless homicide, a lesser crime punishable by two to eight years in prison.

Poynter said that although he understood the family's reaction, "I think they would be a lot more emotional if the killer of their loved one walked out of jail in four years."

Prosecutors accused Mark Serrano, 30, and Charles Gilleo Jr., 32, of killing Tina and Manuel "Tony" Morey and their three young sons in the early hours of Jan. 19, setting the family's house on fire and stealing cocaine from Tony Morey. Prosecutors said Serrano and Gilleo had previously bought drugs from Manuel Morey.

A Dutchess County jury deliberated for five hours before returning its guilty verdict against Serrano on all charges except first degree arson. Serrano was found guilty of 20 counts of first-degree murder, 11 counts of second-degree murder, six counts of robbery, one count of third-degree arson, two counts of conspiracy and one count of perjury.

Gilleo has pleaded not guilty to the same 42 charges Serrano faced and is set to be tried early next year.

According to an autopsy, Manuel Morey died of a gunshot wound to the neck. Tina Morey, 30, died of gunshot wounds to the chest and head. Manuel "Tony Jr." Morey, 13, and Adam, 10, died of multiple stab wounds. Ryan, 6, died from blunt-force trauma to the head.

A state district court jury in Amite on Monday convicted Austin "Trey" Bernard III in the rape of his daughter as well as the rape of a 12-year-old boy, prosecutor Scott Perrilloux said.

Bernard, 39, denied the charges, but three earlier confessions and a journal that seemed to detail the practices of the group were too much to overcome, said Al Bensabat, the public defender who represented him.

"Once the jury read that it was all over," Bensabat said Tuesday.

Bernard, who faces a mandatory life prison term without parole when he is sentenced on Jan. 12, was being held in jail on Tuesday.

No trial date has been set for the remaining six defendants. Perrilloux said he anticipates bringing the former minister of Hosanna Church, Louis Lamonica, to trial in early 2008. Lamonica has pleaded not guilty.

The allegations have rocked the small town of Ponchatoula, about 40 miles northwest of New Orleans.

The activities at the church became known when Lamonica walked into the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Department and asked to speak with a detective in 2005, Chief of Detectives Stan Carpenter said.

For almost two hours, Lamonica, 49, told investigators how he and other church members had molested children, and taught them to have sex with each other, as well as with a dog, authorities said.

Lamonica told the detectives that he drank cat blood and poured it on the bodies of his young victims.