A South Korean woman who worked as an escrow agent at a Seattle law firm for 16 months has been charged with 114 counts of theft after authorities said she embezzled more than $825,000 from her employer.

Heather "Veronica" Pak, 41, was arrested by Seattle police last week and has since been charged with the felonies. She is being held at the King County Jail in lieu of $300,000 bail.

According to police, Pak embezzled funds designated for the Shim Law Firm via checks, credit cards and real-estate transactions.

As the law firm's escrow agent, Pak had signing authority on the firm's trust accounts at Pacific International Bank and Bank of America, court papers said. She was authorized to write business checks and had access to a company credit card, which authorities say she used for personal spending, charging documents said.

Pak also collected insurance money for the firm's personal-injury clients. In one case, she allegedly forged the signature of a client so she could intercept a $7,500 payment, court charging papers said.

Pak wrote a series of checks that conveyed $20,000 to her sister, $161,799 to her brother, $98,500 to herself and $78,891 to a man who turned what he received back over to Pak, court charging papers said.

Torn is scheduled to appear in Litchfield Superior Court on Tuesday morning.

State police say the 79-year-old actor was so intoxicated on the night of Jan. 29 that he broke into a bank with a loaded gun thinking it was his home in Salisbury in northwestern Connecticut.

Torn went into an alcohol rehabilitation program after his arrest.

Torn had received probation last year as part of a Connecticut DUI case and also had alcohol-related arrests in New York in the past.

On Friday, Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered Snyder to pay $16,510 to Fred Phelps. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, which conducted protests at Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder's funeral in 2006.

The two-page decision supplied by attorneys for Albert Snyder of York, Pa., offered no details on how the court came to its decision.

Attorneys also said Snyder is struggling to come up with fees associated with filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision adds "insult to injury," said Sean Summers, one of Snyder's lawyers.

The high court agreed to consider whether the protesters' message is protected by the First Amendment or limited by the competing privacy and religious rights of the mourners.

San Francisco police thought the same with a father and son team they suspected of abusing the state's medical marijuana law by allegedly operating an illegal trafficking operation.

But both cases were tossed out along with many other marijuana possession cases in recent weeks because of a California Supreme Court ruling that has police, prosecutors and defense attorneys scrambling to make sense of a gray legal area: What is the maximum amount of cannabis a medical marijuana patient can possess?

No one can say for sure how many dismissals and acquittals have been prompted by the ruling, but the numbers are stacking up since the Supreme Court on Jan. 21 tossed out Patrick Kelly's marijuana possession conviction.

The high court struck down a 7-year-old state law that imposed an 8-ounce limit on the amount of pot medical users of marijuana could possess. The court said patients are entitled to a "reasonable" amount of the drug to treat their ailments.

Law enforcement officials say the ruling has made the murky legal landscape of marijuana policy in California even more challenging to enforce.

Since California voters legalized medical marijuana in 1996, there has been tension between local law enforcement officials and federal authorities, who view marijuana as absolutely illegal.

That tension is expected to become even more pronounced if the state's voters approve a November ballot measure legalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Lawyers for Billy Joe Magwood want to argue that Alabama law was changed to make Magwood's crime a capital offense after it had already been committed.

Defendants aren't allowed to appeal using arguments that could have been brought in the original case, but Magwood's lawyers say that since he was sentenced to die a second time, he should be able to use a new argument in his second round of appeals.

"If it's the second time around, then it's just barred," Justice Anthony Kennedy said.

"Well, it shouldn't be barred. Because it's a new judgment, the defendant should be able to get relief the second time around," said Jeffrey L. Fisher, Magwood's lawyer.

Magwood, 58, has been on Death Row since 1981 for the shooting death of Coffee County Sheriff Neil Grantham in 1979. He got that death sentence thrown out, but then was resentenced to death.

Lawyers for Bobby Cutts Jr. filed an appeal with the nation's highest court earlier this month. The Ohio Supreme Court declined to review Cutts' case.

The former Canton patrolman is serving a life sentence in the killings of Jessie Davis and the nearly full-term fetus she was carrying. Her disappearance in 2007 prompted a huge search that drew national attention.

Cutts' attorneys say the trial should have been moved because of all the publicity. Defense lawyer Fernando Mack says the Supreme Court should review the case because it has "uniqueness."