A jury convicted Mark Jensen last week of killing Julie Jensen on Dec. 3, 1998, in their Pleasant Prairie home. Some jurors cited the letter as a key piece of evidence.

Julie Jensen left the note with a neighbor to give to police if something happened to her.

"I pray that I am wrong and nothing happens, but I am suspicious of Mark's suspicious behaviors and fear for my early demise," Julie Jensen wrote in the letter. She said she refused to leave because of their two young sons.

Mark Jensen, her husband of 14 years, claimed she was depressed, committed suicide and framed him. At the time, Mark Jensen was having an affair with a woman he has since married.

He faces a mandatory penalty of life in prison during sentencing, set for Wednesday. The judge was to determine if he should ever be eligible for parole.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a California case with similar elements in April. Legal experts say if the court overturns that conviction, it could pave the way for Mark Jensen to get a new trial.

"It would surprise me if he didn't get a new trial based on that," said Phillip A. Koss, a University of Wisconsin-Madison adjunct professor and Walworth County district attorney.

Mark Jensen, now 48, was charged with first-degree murder in 2002, but legal wrangling over evidence delayed the trial repeatedly.

The evidence included the letter, as well as Julie Jensen's statements to police, a neighbor and her son's teacher about her suspicions.

A federal jury in Kansas City, Kan., ruled against Mendelsohn after a judge excluded the testimony of five ex-employees from other departments at Sprint headquarters who claimed they had been released because of their age. Lawyers refer to such testimony as "me, too" evidence.

Sprint let Mendelsohn go in 2002 amid companywide layoffs that eventually numbered more than 14,000. She was part of the company's business development strategy group, which was scaled back from 75 employees to 57.

The supervisor who laid off Mendelsohn said she was the weakest performer in his unit.

Sprint's lawyers argued in Supreme Court that if a different supervisor at a company harbors bias, that's unfortunate, but it is not relevant to the claim by the person who filed the lawsuit. Sprint argued that such information unfairly prejudices a jury against a company.

The Bush administration took a middle ground between Sprint and Mendelsohn, saying evidence of age bias is sometimes admissible when it is committed by other supervisors at the same company. It cited as an example another supervisor dismissing an employee, saying the company is on a youth campaign.

In Mendelsohn's case, none of the five employees who would have testified on her behalf was laid off by Mendelsohn's supervisor and none worked in her business development group. The five were laid off as many as nine months before Mendelsohn and as many as three months after.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver sent the case back for a new trial, saying the testimony of the five ex-employees supported an alleged companywide age discriminatory scheme.

The state argued that a 1934 federal law prevents the government from taking land into trust for tribes recognized after the law took effect, unless Congress specifically authorized it. The Narragansetts became a federally recognized tribe in 1983.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston rejected the state's claim.

At issue is whether a 31-acre lot in Charlestown purchased by the Narragansetts should be subject to Rhode Island law, including a prohibition on casino gambling, or whether the parcel should be governed by tribal and federal law.

The dispute dates to 1991, when the Narragansetts purchased the land to build an elderly housing complex, which remains incomplete.

The state objected when the tribe asked the U.S. Department of the Interior to take the land into federal trust, which would place it largely under tribal and federal control.

Sean Bell, who had been spending his last night as a single man partying, was killed in a barrage of 50 police bullets outside a strip club.

The three police officers indicted in the shooting were to go on trial Monday in a case that has sparked protests and debate over excessive force and police conduct in New York City.

Bell's fiancee was expected to be the first witness at the trial, and she has said she plans to be in court every day.

"I feel like I need to know. I need to know why this happened," said Paultre Bell, who had her maiden name legally changed after her fiance's death. "I wake up one day and my world is turned upside down. I have to know why this happened; my family deserves to know."

Sean Bell, 23, was killed Nov. 25, 2006, hours before he was to marry the mother of his two children. He and two friends were confronted by undercover officers investigating reports of drugs and prostitution.

Detective Michael Oliver fired 31 shots, including the one that killed Bell. Detective Gescard Isnora squeezed off 11 rounds, and Detective Marc Cooper fired four times. Oliver and Isnora have pleaded not guilty to manslaughter; Cooper has pleaded not guilty to reckless endangerment.

Police union officials and defense lawyers have said the detectives believed Bell and his friends were going to get a gun, though no weapon was found. The officers opened fire after the car the three men were in lurched forward, bumped Isnora and slammed into an unmarked police minivan, authorities said.

"It is significant that plaintiffs nowhere allege that the government intended to harm human beings through its use of Agent Orange," the three-judge panel said.

Jonathan C. Moore, a lawyer for the Vietnamese plaintiffs, said he was deeply disappointed.

"It's both an unjust and an immoral outcome," he said, and promised to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A lawyer for the companies did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

Monsanto, Dow Chemical and more than a dozen other companies, including Hercules Inc., Occidental Chemical Corp, Thompson Hayward Chemical Co., Harcros Chemicals Inc. and Uniroyal Chemical Co. Inc., were named in the case.

In November 1961, President Kennedy approved the launch of Operation Trail Dust, a campaign of military herbicide operations in Vietnam designed to prevent the enemy from using vegetation for cover and sustenance.

Lawyers for Vietnamese people sued U.S. companies, saying the program caused miscarriages, birth defects, breast cancer, ovarian tumors, lung cancer, Hodgkin's disease and prostate tumors.

They said the military's use of Agent Orange violated international, domestic and Vietnamese law and that companies aided the violations or committed their own by helping the military. They sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and an environmental cleanup program.

Lawyers for the companies and the U.S. government had argued that there was no evil intent when Agent Orange was used to clear the Vietnamese landscape for troops.

Agent Orange has been linked to cancer, diabetes and birth defects among Vietnamese soldiers and civilians and American veterans.

In 2002, the United States and Vietnam signed a memorandum of understanding providing for scientists from both governments to work together to determine the effects of Agent Orange on people and ecosystems, along with methods and costs of treatment and environmental remediation.

The United States, though, has never agreed it has a legal duty to provide funds or assistance to remediate harms allegedly caused by Agent Orange.

In a separate opinion, the appellate court also said companies are protected from lawsuits brought by U.S. military veterans or their relatives because the law protects government contractors in certain circumstances who provide defective products.

"It's disgusting, judge," chief defense counsel Joseph Duffy told U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve.

Rezko, 52, a millionaire developer and formerly a fundraiser for both Sen. Barack Obama and Gov. Rod Blagojevich, is being held without bail awaiting the scheduled March 3 start of his political corruption trial. He is accused of joining with millionaire lawyer Stuart Levine in a scheme to use political influence to shake down companies.

Duffy told St. Eve that Rezko's living conditions at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center are so horrible that some means must be found to get him out.

"It's a very degrading way for people to even try to serve time," Duffy said.

He said that while general population inmates have their own supplies of underwear, Rezko and others held in solitary must share.

Rezko, who was born in Syria and has extensive connections in the Mideast, had been free on $2 million bail but St. Eve revoked his bail and ordered him jailed Jan. 28 after prosecutors disclosed he had received $3.5 million from an overseas businessman without informing the court.

Duffy said that if Rezko is released, the defense will pay a security firm to put guards in Rezko's Wilmette mansion 24 hours a day to make certain he doesn't try to flee.

"They will physically deliver him to the courtroom every single day," Duffy said.

The judge said she already had asked the correctional center about Rezko's living conditions and said she was told he was not being singled out. She noted he was being held on a floor where high-profile defendants are kept while authorities assess any risk to them from being in the lockup's general population.

Levine has pleaded guilty and is expected to be the government's star witness at Rezko's trial.