In addition, he ordered officials in Maine, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and Missouri to halt their investigations of the telecommunication companies for their alleged participation in the once-secret surveillance programs.

U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker also deferred a decision on whether to sanction the government for refusing to turn over a top secret document in one of the few wiretapping cases still pending.

The judge's dismissals of most of the lawsuits were widely expected after Congress in July agreed on new surveillance rules that included protection from legal liability for telecommunications companies that allegedly helped the U.S. spy on Americans without warrants.

Walker upheld the constitutionality of the new surveillance rules in a written ruling Wednesday. Lawyers representing the telecom customers said they would appeal the judge's ruling.

The judge said congressional actions didn't prohibit telephone and e-mail customers who believe they were targets of warrantless wiretaps from suing federal government officials, whom he called "the primary actors in the alleged wiretapping activities."

He noted that several lawsuits that directly accuse the government, rather than the companies, of wrongdoing are still pending.

It wasn't the brightest decision she'd ever made. She admits that. But if she'd had enough money to hire a lawyer she might not have lost six months of her life.

Kimberly Hurrell-Harring, a certified nursing assistant and mother of two, had driven 7 1/2 hours to visit her husband and then secreted a small amount of marijuana in her private parts. He'd pleaded with her on the phone to bring it, saying he needed to get high in this awful place.

He was calling from a maximum-security prison, and someone must have been listening because when she walked into the Great Meadows Correctional Facility in upstate New York, guards immediately yanked her to the side.

They told her things would go easier if she handed over the dope without a fuss. She did, and things immediately got worse.

With a swiftness that made her head spin, she was handcuffed and hauled to jail. At her arraignment, there was no public defender available. Standing alone, she was charged with one felony count of bringing dangerous contraband into a prison.

And so she tumbled headlong into the Alice-in-Wonderland chaos of court-appointed lawyers, where even those lawyers say there is little time for clients. There are simply too many and not enough hours in the day.

"If you can't afford an attorney, and you fall into the criminal justice system, you are really, really screwed," said Demetrius Thomas of the New York American Civil Liberties Union.

Especially now. The spiraling recession and overwhelmed public defenders, some of whom have rebelled by filing lawsuits to reduce caseloads, pose one of the greatest challenges to the system since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963 overturned the petty larceny and breaking-and-entering convictions of Clarence Gideon, a poor Florida man tried without a lawyer. In a landmark, unanimous ruling, justices said state courts must provide attorneys to every criminal defendant unable to afford counsel.

After her arraignment, Hurrell-Harring went back to jail because she couldn't afford bail, either. Three weeks passed before a public defender appeared, and she says she spent a total of 15 to 20 minutes with him before her sentencing hearing.

He told her not to fight the district attorney's recommended punishment — six months behind bars and five years of probation. It was the best she could hope for, he said. But she had no criminal record. Surely, she begged, couldn't possession of less than an ounce of pot, a misdemeanor under other circumstances, be bargained down to probation?

"It was like he had no time for me," she says now, still unemployed 17 months after her release because she lost her nursing license when she became a convicted felon. "He told me to plead guilty."

The accused, their lawyers, and even prosecutors agree that courts increasingly neglect their constitutional duties. In a series of Capitol Hill hearings, the latest scheduled for this week, Congress members are struggling to grasp the enormity of the crisis. But the options are far from clear, particularly when virtually every state and local government is crying poor.

Darryl Littlejohn looked straight ahead as the jury verdict was read Wednesday.

The 44-year-old parolee faces up to life in prison in the 2006 death of criminal justice student Imette St. Guillen (ih-MET' saynt GEE'-yen) of Boston. His sentencing is set for July 8.

Littlejohn is already serving 25 years to life for kidnapping another woman.

The defense said Littlejohn was framed in the St. Guillen case, which stirred memories of New York's notorious "preppie killer" slaying and spurred a city crackdown on nightlife security.

A federal court has awarded TiVo $103 million plus interest in its long-running patent dispute with EchoStar Communications and ordered EchoStar to disable infringing features found on its subscribers' digital video recorders.

U.S. District Judge David Folsom on Tuesday also found EchoStar, which is now part of Dish Network, in contempt of court for violating a permanent injunction by reprogramming millions of DVRs with a new "workaround."

"The harm caused to TiVo by EchoStar's contempt is substantial," Folsom wrote. "EchoStar has gained millions of customers since this court's injunction was issued, customers that are now potentially unreachable by TiVo."

Englewood, Colo.-based Dish, which has roughly 13.6 million subscribers, said in a statement it would appeal the contempt ruling and file a motion to stay an order that requires it to disable the disputed DVR features within 30 days.

"Our engineers spent close to a year designing around TiVo's patent and removed the very features that TiVo said infringed at trial," the company said. "Existing Dish Network customers with DVRs are not immediately impacted by these recent developments."

The Alviso, Calif.-based maker of set-top boxes applauded the decision.

"We are extremely gratified by the court's well reasoned and thorough decision, in which it rejected EchoStar's attempted workaround claim regarding the TiVo patent, found EchoStar to be in contempt of court, and ordered the permanent injunction fully enforced," TiVo said in a statement. "EchoStar may attempt to further delay this case but we are very pleased the court has made it clear that there are major ramifications for continued infringement."

The three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday the Second Amendment guaranteeing the right to bear arms is not an adequate basis for lawsuits attacking local gun ordinances.

The National Rifle Associated argued the Second Amendment makes such ordinances unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court has ruled in a District of Columbia case that the Second Amendment entitles people to keep handguns at home for self protection. The appeals court upheld dismissal of the lawsuit on the ground that the District of Columbia, unlike Chicago and Oak Park, is a federal jurisdiction.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will hear arguments in the case Friday afternoon in New York, according to the Indiana treasurer's office. Chrysler LLC had hoped to close the sale by the end of week, pending regulatory approval.

"We are pleased the Court of Appeals has agreed to hear our arguments," Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock said in a statement. "As we have stated from the beginning, Indiana retirees and Indiana taxpayers have suffered losses because of unprecedented and illegal acts of the federal government."

Chrysler has maintained that the deal with Fiat Group SpA is its only hope of avoiding selling itself off piece by piece. If the sale doesn't close by June 15, Fiat has the option of pulling out of the deal.

But the funds, which include the Indiana State Police Pension Fund, the Indiana Teacher's Retirement Fund, and the state's Major Moves Construction Fund, claimed that the deal as structured unfairly favors the interests of the company's unsecured stakeholders ahead of those of secured debtholders such as themselves.

The Navy was justified in 1991 when it opted to terminate the $4 billion contract with McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics to build a stealth aircraft, the court said.

Chicago-based Boeing, which acquired McDonnell Douglas in 1997, said it will appeal the ruling.

The aircraft project was ended for being substantially over budget and behind schedule, according to the Justice Department. Both contractors were under a fixed-price contract to develop the A-12, a carrier-based attack aircraft.

But because of serious technical difficulties, the Pentagon refused to approve additional funding, leading the Navy to cancel the program.

In a 29-page opinion, the court explained the contractor's performance history showed that "the government was justifiably insecure about the contract's timely completion."

Both contractors are now required to repay the government more than $1.35 billion, plus interest of $1.45 billion.

Boeing had questioned whether the government owed money to both companies for work in progress when the contract was terminated.

In a statement, Boeing called for an immediate appeal of the court's ruling. Falls Church, Va.-based General Dynamics issued a statement saying it disagrees with the ruling and continues to believe that the government's default termination was not justified. The company intends to seek a re-hearing in the Federal Circuit.