New York's top court will hear arguments whether a New York Police Department sergeant's failure to get statements from two witnesses to a stabbing in a Times Square theater means a man's assault conviction should be overturned.

The trial judge refused to let defense lawyers cross-examine the sergeant about the unknown bystanders, who he overheard saying the injured man pulled the knife — not suspect Kenneth Hayes — but did not question because he was busy securing the scene.

The judge also ruled the police failure to get their contact information didn't violate the Brady requirement that prosecutors disclose information to the defense that could prove their client innocent.

A midlevel court divided 3-2 in rejecting Hayes' appeal.

He was also found guilty of weapon possession in the scuffle with Charles Shell, although Hayes claimed self-defense.

The Supreme Court will decide whether government officials who testify falsely while acting as a complaining witness have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits.

The high court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from Charles Rehberg, who sent faxes criticizing the Phoebe Putney Health System, an influential Georgia hospital system. Rehberg was arrested after investigator James Paulk of the Dougherty County District Attorney's office testified to a grand jury that the accountant had harassed doctors.

Paulk, who started the investigation as a favor to hospital officials, later admitted he had no evidence and had not talked to any witnesses. The charges were dismissed.

Rehberg sued, but Paulk says he is protected by immunity because the claims took place while he was working as a government official.

A judge has denied a court-appointed attorney for a Texas man accused of torturing a woman for two weeks on a device used for skinning deer.

The judge said Monday during Jeffrey Allan Maxwell's initial court appearance that the 58-year-old wasn't indigent because he had listed his net worth as about $200,000.

Maxwell told state District Judge Trey Loftin that he didn't have access to most of his assets and hadn't contacted an attorney. Loftin urged Maxwell to hire one.

Maxwell remains jailed in Parker County on aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault charges.

Authorities say he abducted his former neighbor from her Parker County home and drove some 100 miles to his Corsicana house. He was arrested there March 12 and the woman was rescued.

An employee at a yoga clothing shop in Bethesda makes her first court appearance since being charged in the death of a co-worker.

Brittany Norwood was arrested Friday and charged with first-degree murder in the death of 30-year-old Jayna Murray, her co-worker at the Lululemon Athletica shop. She's due in court in Montgomery County on Monday.

Norwood initially told police that two masked men entered the store on the night of March 11 and sexually assaulted her and Murray during a robbery attempt. But police say they've concluded that story was a lie and that Norwood killed Murray during a dispute.

A Florida millionaire accused of walking out on a $1.2 million gambling debt is fighting Mohegan Sun in court, arguing that the state judicial system cannot decide the case because the casino is run by a sovereign American Indian tribe.

Jerome Powers, chief executive of the cable television network Plum TV, asked the state Appellate Court this week to throw out a lower court's ruling that would allow Mohegan Sun to seize his assets ahead of a potential final judgment against him. It's not clear when the Appellate Court will take up the case.

Powers, 64, of Miami Beach, Fla., gambled away $1.2 million in credit that Mohegan Sun loaned him in May 2009, according to a lawsuit the casino filed against Powers in November 2009. Court documents filed by Powers say the casino solicited him to open a line of credit and to travel to the facility in Uncasville in eastern Connecticut, where he played blackjack.

Powers wrote six checks to the casino to pay his debt, but they were not honored by his bank, court documents say. Payment was stopped on a $465,000 check, and the others were returned because the accounts were closed, according to copies of the returned checks.

In fighting the casino's lawsuit, Powers contends that the credit agreement was an illegal gambling contract under state law and that state courts have no jurisdiction because the casino is run by the sovereign Mohegan Tribe.

A federal court in Mississippi has permanently dismissed a 1971 lawsuit filed against the state over prison conditions.

The case found that a range of corporal punishment practices used against prisoners at Parchman violated the Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment.

"Conditions for confinement were atrocious in 1970 and that was especially true of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman," Mississippi corrections commissioner Christopher Epps said in a news release Wednesday. "The MDOC has worked for 40 years to alleviate these conditions with a special emphasis during the last nine years."

The court said that Mississippi has reformed its prison system to make facilities more humane and to protect inmates from such systemic abuses, according to a March 10 order.

"The final dismissal of the suit is the result of 40 years of improvements within the culture of the state prison system and good faith cooperation among the state, the federal government, and plaintiffs," Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, said Wednesday.