The law allowing civil commitment of "sexually dangerous" federal inmates intrudes on police powers that the Constitution reserves for states, many of which have their own similar statutes, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

Civil commitment power "is among the most severe wielded by any government," Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote. "The Framers, distrustful of such authority, reposed such broad powers in the states, limiting the national government to specific and enumerated powers."

In upholding a decision by U.S. District Judge W. Earl Britt of Raleigh, N.C., the 4th Circuit became the first federal appeals court to rule on an issue that has divided courts nationwide. A judge in Minnesota reached the same conclusion as Britt, while courts in Hawaii, Oklahoma and Massachusetts upheld the measure.

Thursday's ruling is binding only in the states included in the 4th Circuit: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Maryland.

U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller said it was too early to comment on what steps the government might take next. The department could appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court or seek a rehearing before the full federal appeals court.

The Blackwater guards are scheduled to appear for arraignment Tuesday afternoon in U.S. District Court on manslaughter and weapons charges in the shootings.

Expected to enter not guilty pleas are former Marines Donald Ball of West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard of Knoxville, Tenn.; Evan Liberty of Rochester, N.H.; and Army veterans Nick Slatten of Sparta, Tenn., and Paul Slough of Keller, Texas.

A sixth guard — Jeremy Ridgeway of California — has pleaded guilty to one count each of manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, and aiding and abetting. He has agreed to cooperate with investigators.

Prosecutors said the men unleashed a gruesome attack on unarmed Iraqis, including women, children and people trying to escape. But defendants contend they opened fire after coming under attack when a car in a State Department convoy they were escorting broke down.

Blackwater radio logs made available to The Associated Press by a defense attorney in the case last month raised questions about prosecutors' claims that the guards' shooting was unprovoked. The log transcripts describe a hectic eight minutes in which the guards repeatedly reported incoming gunfire from insurgents and Iraqi police.

The North Carolina-based Blackwater is the largest contractor providing security in Iraq. Most of its work for the State Department is in protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The company has not been charged in connection with the shooting.

Michigan law bars felons from serving on a jury.

But the high court voted 5-2 to uphold the conviction, ruling there was no evidence the juror was biased in the trial of Michael Allen Miller in Ottawa County.

Miller, now 31, was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in 2006 for forcing the 7-year-old daughter of his girlfriend at the time to perform a sex act on him.

Before his sentencing, Miller learned that a juror had concealed that he was convicted of assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct in 1991 and 1999 for assaulting his sister and a child.

Justice Stephen Markman wrote that defendants have a constitutional right to an impartial jury but don't have a constitutional right to be tried by a jury without felons. The ruling reversed a decision by the Michigan Court of Appeals, which in January ordered a new trial.

"There is simply no evidence that this juror improperly affected any other jurors," Markman said.

Dissenting Justice Marilyn Kelly called the majority's opinion "unworkable" and "unjust," arguing that jurors' honesty is essential to picking a fair jury.

Gary Kohut, Miller's court-appointed appellate attorney, said he doesn't know yet whether a federal appeal will be filed.

"It's dangerous to say a fair and impartial jury can exist with a convicted felony on the jury," Kohut said. "It really is a fraud on the court for that (juror) to have done what he did."

Lawyers ended a testy public negotiation session convened by the secretary of state's office without agreement on which ballots to open or how many should be under consideration.

That leaves the heavy lifting to a series of regional meetings that begin Tuesday. The ballots that make the cut at those meetings will be opened in St. Paul by Monday.

Those ballots are important because Franken leads Coleman by just 47 votes after the manual review of more than 2.9 million ballots.

The absentee ballots in question were incorrectly rejected by poll judges on or before Election Day, mostly because of clerical errors outside the four legal reasons for rejection.

The state board overseeing the recount ordered that the ballots be counted, and the state Supreme Court agreed — although justices added a few wrinkles. A majority ruled that either campaign can keep any ballot out of the mix with a written objection, leaving spurned voters the option of going to court to reinstate their ballot.

Local officials identified some 1,350 rejected ballots they now say should count, but Coleman's campaign suggested there are an additional 650 that should be added.

Attorney Ed Genson told the Chicago Sun-Times on Sunday the report would support Blagojevich's claims that he hasn't done anything wrong in his handling of Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat.

Earlier in the week, Obama released the internal report supporting his insistence that there had been no inappropriate contact with the governor's office by Obama or his staff.

State Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, chairwoman of the committee, said Sunday that Genson's request to submit the report would probably be approved. But she expressed skepticism that the report would prove the governor's innocence.

"Maybe in this particular instance someone didn't run a stop sign, but it doesn't say they didn't run a different stop sign," she said.

In a case dealing with the government's search-and-seizure power in the digital age, an 11-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals must decide whether prosecutors legally seized the names and urine samples of 104 players during a raid in April 2004.

"There has to be limits when the government seizes vast amount of information on a computer," Major League Baseball Players Association lawyer Elliot Peters said.

The federal agents who took the material from the Long Beach-based Comprehensive Drug Testing Inc. had a search warrant for the test results of just 10 players, but discovered on a computer spreadsheet the test results of additional players.

The players' association went to court, and lower-court judges ruled the additional names were seized illegally. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit reversed those decisions twice in 2-1 votes, but the entire 9th Circuit set the reversal aside and decided to hear the case en banc.