Three people charged with bilking the state's recycling program out of $7 million by importing cans from Arizona pleaded not guilty Wednesday.
Howard Leveson, 68, the owner of Perris Valley Recycling, and two of his employees entered their pleas to a total of 18 counts including recycling fraud, grand theft and conspiracy, the Riverside Press-Enterprise said.

Attorney General Jerry Brown said the center used containers not eligible for state funds.

"These people pretended to be recycling California aluminum cans when they were really importing tons of cans from Arizona," Brown said in a statement issued Wednesday. "They brazenly defrauded the state's successful recycling program."

The center raised suspicion because it was collecting about 10,000 pounds of cans per day starting in early 2009 while similar facilities average only about 500, and special agents from the Attorney General's office began an investigation.

Officials estimate the center brought in 4.4 million pounds in cans from Arizona, worth about $7 million in state funds.

An Innocence Project attorney is questioning the impartiality of the prosecutor leading a Texas science panel's probe of an arson investigation that led to the execution of a Texas man.

Stephen Saloom of the Innocence Project said Friday at a panel meeting in Austin that prosecutor John Bradley shows "a lack of objectivity" in the Cameron Todd Willingham case.

Bradley has publicly called Willingham a "guilty monster."

Bradley is the chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which is investigating whether investigators committed professional misconduct in determining arson caused a 1991 fire that killed Willingham's three daughters. Willingham was executed in 2004.

A former associate professor at Rochester Institute of Technology admitted Wednesday that he strangled his wife last year and took her body to a suburban Rochester park because it was her favorite place.

Timothy Wells, 58, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Monroe County Court while friends of the couple looked on.

Prosecutors said Wells strangled Christine Sevilla, 58, on Nov. 30 at their home in suburban Perinton. Police said he put her body in the trunk of his car and drove to a park in the nearby town of Mendon, just south of Rochester.

Wells later called 911 and said he had killed his wife, authorities said.

Wells taught computing and information sciences courses at RIT. Sevilla was a photographer and environmental activist who had also taught at the institute.

The Supreme Court won't stop Utah from enacting a tax that hits only adult-oriented businesses.

The high court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal from Denali, LLC, which wanted to overturn a decision by the Utah Supreme Court.

That court upheld a 2004 decision by the Utah Legislature to enact a 10 percent tax on sexually explicit businesses in an effort to pay for sex offender treatment. The tax covered everything a sexually explicitly business sold — admission, T-shirts and hamburgers included.

A group of strip clubs challenged the constitutionality of the law, saying it was overly broad and violated their First Amendment rights. But the state's Supreme Court upheld the tax.

The Utah Supreme Court ruled that the Sexually Explicit Business and Escort Services tax is not a violation of First Amendment rights.

Denali runs an exotic club featuring full frontal nudity, while another company, American Bush, Inc., wants to introduce nudity into its performances.

Other states have been waiting to see the outcome of this case before trying to enact their own taxes.

A former engineer for a New York commuter railroad has pleaded guilty to official misconduct after admitting he allowed a passenger into the control booth.

Ronald Cabrera entered the guilty plea Tuesday in Nassau County Court. He was fined $500 and ordered to perform 50 hours of community service.

The Long Island Rail Road fired Cabrera.

Officials say he allowed passenger William Kutsch drive a train carrying nearly 400 riders during rush hour in July 2009.

Cabrera was initially charged with reckless endangerment. His lawyer tells Newsday his client only admitted to the misconduct charge and does not concede that he let the passenger get behind the controls.

The Supreme Court will decide whether an anti-terrorism law should have been used to prosecute a jealous woman who tried to harm her husband's mistress with deadly chemicals.

The high court on Tuesday agreed to hear an appeal from Carol Anne Bond of Lansdale, Pa. She was sentenced to six years in prison after admitting to trying to harm her husband's mistress, Myrlinda Haynes, with toxic chemicals that she stole from her workplace.

Bond has been in prison since her arrest in June 2007.

Prosecutors charged her with a federal chemical weapons violation, a law that Bond's lawyers said was intended to deal with rogue states and terrorists, not a woman in a love triangle. They want the court to throw out her conviction, saying Bond should have been prosecuted under state law instead of in federal court.

Bond, a laboratory technician, had stolen the chemical potassium dichromate — which is potentially deadly if ingested — from the company where she worked. Bond said she put the chemicals on Haynes' door handle and in the tailpipe of Haynes' car.

Haynes was not injured.

Bond's husband, Clifford, had a child with Haynes while married to Bond. Haynes had contacted police and postal authorities after finding the chemicals at her home.