The justices said they will hear an appeal filed by prosecutors in Pennsylvania after the federal appeals court in Philadelphia upheld a lower court order throwing out the death sentence against Joseph Kindler for killing one-time accomplice David Bernstein in 1982.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Kindler's lawyer was ineffective at the sentencing phase of his trial and also found problems with the instructions given to the jury.

State courts had never decided on Kindler's claims. Instead, those courts said Kindler forfeited the right to be heard on those issues because of his escapes.

Bernstein agreed to testify against Kindler about their roles in robbing a store. Kindler beat Bernstein with a baseball bat and an accomplice jabbed him with an electric prod. The two men dumped Bernstein in the Delaware River, but after discovering he was still alive, they managed to fill his lungs with water and tied a cinder block around his neck.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent was sentenced to 33 months Monday. He was also fined $1,000 and ordered to pay $6,550 in restitution to the two women whose complaints resulted in the first sex abuse case against a sitting federal judge.

Kent could have received up to 20 years in prison after admitting to obstruction of justice, but prosecutors said they wouldn't seek more than three years under a plea agreement.

"Your wrongful conduct is a huge black X ... a stain on the judicial system itself, a matter of concern in the federal courts," U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said as he imposed the sentence. Vinson is a visiting senior judge called in from Pensacola, Fla.

Kent pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in February as jury selection for his trial was about to begin. He had been charged with obstruction and five sex-crime counts alleging that he groped his secretary and his former case manager. Conviction on the most serious of those charges could have sent him to prison for life.

The Supreme Court didn't say when or if it would rule. The appeal goes first to Justice John Paul Stevens, who can decide the request on his own or refer it to the full court.

The arrest warrant in Germany accuses Demjanjuk of being a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. Demjanjuk, a native Ukrainian, maintains he was a prisoner of war, not a camp guard. Evidence the U.S. government has used against him includes a Nazi document, an identification card placing him at a training camp and then at various death or forced-labor camps, including Sobibor.

A German court on Wednesday rejected an attempt to block his deportation, saying the issue would have to be decided by American courts.

The U.S. Department of Justice would "respond in court as appropriate," spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said Wednesday.v

This came as the high court on Wednesday upheld the conviction and sentence of Christopher Michael Dean, who was arrested for trying to rob a bank in Rome, Georgia, in 2004.

A gun went off accidentally during the attempted robbery when Dean tried to switch the weapon from one hand to the other. The discharge brought an automatic 10-year sentence for firing a weapon during a crime. Dean appealed, saying the automatic sentence shouldn't count since the firing of the gun was accidental.

Federal prosecutors said the law doesn't care why the gun went off, and the high court agreed.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who called it "the case of the bungling bank robber" in his bench statement, said the law "does not require that the discharge be done knowingly or intentionally."

If criminals want to avoid the penalty for accidental gunfire, they can "lock or unload the firearm, handle it with care during the underlying violent or drug trafficking crime, leave the gun at home or — best yet — avoid committing the felony in the first place," Roberts said.

Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer dissented, saying Congress intended the automatic sentence to only apply to intentional discharges of weapons.

It is the second major race case heard by the justices after Barack Obama became the nation's first black president.

The justices seemed split along conservative and liberal lines in considering a provision applying to all or parts of 16 states, mostly in the South. It requires them to get federal government approval before changing their voting procedures.

Congress adopted the Voting Rights Act, an historic piece of U.S. civil rights legislation, to make it easier for millions of blacks and other minorities to exercise their right to vote.

Congress extended it in 2006 for 25 years, with then-President George W. Bush signing it into law.

Last week the justices considered whether race still can be used as a factor for job promotions and hirings, an issue that could affect millions of employers nationwide.

Opponents of the voting rights law argue that the protections for minority voters are no longer needed after more than 40 years of progress, and they cite Obama's election as evidence of how America has changed since 1965.

That is the top recommendation in "Minor Crimes, Massive Waste: The Terrible Toll of America's Misdemeanor Courts," a report released Tuesday by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Researchers with the Defender Initiative at the Seattle University School of Law reviewed statistics and visited misdemeanor courts in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington state.

They reported that cases per public defender ranged from 360 a year in Benton County, Wash., and 380 in Seattle, both set limits, to 2,403 in Chicago, 2,502 in Utah and 18,720 in New Orleans.

The National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice recommends a maximum of 400 cases a year per defender.

John Wesley Hall Jr., a lawyer from Little Rock, Ark., and president of the association, said he looked forward to presenting the findings to the House Judiciary Committee in a congressional hearing June 4.