Former Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona has asked an appeals court to reverse his 2009 conviction for witness tampering.

A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Wednesday in Pasadena.

The former sheriff was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison for trying to persuade ex-assistant sheriff Don Haidl to lie during a grand jury probe.

Carona's lawyers argued that prosecutors broke an ethical rule when they arranged for Haidl to secretly record an August 2007 conversation despite knowing Carona had retained a criminal defense attorney.

A federal attorney argued that the government used what he called "permissible decoys."

Carona was acquitted in January of conspiracy, mail fraud and a second witness tampering count in a sweeping public corruption case.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said Tuesday it is "within the realm of possibility" that the state will sue BP PLC over any damage the Gulf oil spill causes.

Crist made the comment after meeting with workers at the Escambia County emergency operations center. He said a decision would come soon. BP announced Tuesday that it was giving the state an initial $25 million to cover costs its incurred preparing for the oil's arrival.

Crist said that while it remains unclear when the spill might reach Florida or what its affect would be, the state needs to be prepared. The state Department of Environmental Protection says no landfall is expected in Florida through Thursday. The department is taking air and water samples and about 20 miles of boom has been laid off the Panhandle coast to protect environmentally sensitive areas.

Crist has declared a state of emergency in 19 counties from Escambia in the Panhandle to Sarasota in southwest Florida.

The justices denied Delaware's petition for judicial review without comment, leaving in place a ruling by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that limits sports betting in Delaware to multi-game, or parlay, bets on National Football League games.

The appeals court heard arguments last August on a request by the NFL and other sports leagues for an injunction to prevent Delaware from starting sports betting with the launch of the NFL season. But instead of ruling on the injunction, the appeals court turned directly to the leagues' claim that Delaware's proposal to allow single-game bets on a variety of professional and collegiate sports would violate a 1992 federal ban on sports wagering.

The court declared that the state's new sports betting lottery had to be similar to the betting scheme used in a failed 1976 National Football League lottery that allowed Delaware to be one of only four states to receive grandfathered exemptions from the federal ban.

The ruling stunned attorneys for the state, who were not given the opportunity to defend the merits of the sports betting proposal. Gov. Jack Markell subsequently approved an appeal to the Supreme Court that was funded by Delaware's three slot-machine casinos, which have exclusive rights to offer sports betting.

The Supreme Court has refused to review the case of a British woman on death row in Texas for killing a young mother.

The justices on Monday rejected an appeal from Linda Carty, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing a woman whose child she also snatched in Houston in 2001. Carty has complained that her trial lawyers were deficient.

The British government and human rights groups have aided Carty's cause.

Carty is one of 10 condemned women in Texas. She is a former teacher from St. Kitts in the British Virgin Islands.

In September, a taped voice recording of Carty begging Britons to help save her life was broadcast into London's Trafalgar Square.

A woman on Thursday admitted having her antique dealer husband killed 20 years ago in front of his girlfriend's Manhattan home, then collecting millions in life insurance after his death.

Barbara Kogan pleaded guilty in Manhattan state Supreme Court to first-degree manslaughter, conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and grand larceny. She faces up to 25 years in prison on each count at her May 19 sentencing.

Kogan, 67, was charged two years ago with murder in the Oct. 23, 1990, death of her husband, George, who was shot three times in front of his girlfriend's Upper East Side apartment building.

Prosecutors say she got her lawyer, Manuel Martinez, to hire a hitman to kill Kogan during their bitter divorce fight, then collected $4.3 million in her husband's life insurance.

Kogan's attorney, Barry Levin, said she entered the plea to spare her two sons from being forced to testify against her at trial.

"It had been weighing heavy on her mind," Levin said. "She decided she wanted to put this behind her."

Though long suspected, Kogan wasn't charged until 2008, after information implicating her emerged at Martinez' trial. His prosecution was delayed for years while he was held on unrelated charges in Mexico. Martinez is serving a 25-year-to-life term for the killing.

A hearing resumed for the last of five lawyers accused of ethical violations in the handling of Kwame Kilpatrick's text messages Wednesday with testimony from the former mayor's lawyer Samuel McCargo.

McCargo, who was among the first of the lawyers cited for ethical violations, told the Attorney Discipline Board that Assistant Corporation Counsel Valerie Colbert Osamuede never was shown documents that detailed what the text messages purportedly said. He also said she never saw copies of the actual messages before they were delivered in secret to another of Kilpatrick's lawyers.

McCargo, who has yet to receive his punishment for being found guilty in March on five counts of professional misconduct, also said Colbert Osamuede probably didn't violate the state's Freedom of Information Act by withholding requested documents that showed how the text messages were kept a secret part of an $8.4 million whistle-blower lawsuit settlement in 2007.