A New Jersey appeals court reversed a lower court ruling requiring the e-mails be made public and authorizing a judge to inspect the communications.

The Democratic governor has been fighting to keep the correspondence between himself, his staff and Carla Katz private since the e-mails were requested by a Republican leader and several news organizations, including The Associated Press.

A three-judge appeals panel said the e-mails are covered by executive privilege, which allows officials to withhold certain information in the interest of governing.

An appeal to the state Supreme Court is anticipated.

Attorney General Anne Milgram argued that Corzine would not be able to govern effectively if his private communications were open to the public. A lawyer for the GOP, Mark Sheridan, argued that the public has a right to view e-mails the governor's office and Katz exchanged during state worker contract talks.

Tom Wilson, the Republican state committee chairman, sought disclosure of all e-mails that were not strictly personal or concerning general state business. He questioned whether the state worker contract negotiations were tainted by the relationship between Corzine and Katz.

The two dated before Corzine became governor. She is president of the largest state worker local, Communications Workers of America Local 1034.

The justices are hearing arguments on whether an Alaska gold mine can dump metal waste into a nearby lake.

A ruling in favor of the mining company could allow the Clean Water Act to be interpreted to allow mining waste to be dumped into waterways throughout the United States, said Tom Waldo, a lawyer with the environmental group Earthjustice.

"The whole reason Congress passed the Clean Water Act was to stop turning our lakes and rivers into industrial waste dumps," Waldo said. "The Bush administration selected the Kensington mine to test the limits of the Clean Water Act."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit for waste disposal at the proposed Kensington mine north of Juneau in 2005. Under the plan, tailings — waste left after metals are extracted from ore — would be dumped into Lower Slate Lake.

Environmentalists sued to halt the practice, saying it would kill fish. A federal appeals court blocked the permit, saying the dumping is barred by stringent Environmental Protection Agency requirements under the Clean Water Act of 1972. The EPA had agreed to a regulatory change in the case defining "fill" as "tailings or similar mining-related materials."

The mine's owner, Coeur Alaska Inc., said tailings are inert sandy material, and that almost half of the tailings created by the mine would be recycled back into mine operations. The remaining tailings would be placed in a small unproductive lake, which the company called the best option for disposal.

The delays paid off — for Brillon: A Vermont court threw out his conviction and freed him from prison last spring, saying his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial had been violated.

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up the case this week, trying to decide if delays caused by public defenders can deprive a criminal defendant of that right. In particular: Whether governments can be blamed for such delays since they're the ones who assign and pay the lawyers for indigent defendants.

Forty states and 15 organizations — state governments, county governments, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a victim's rights' group — are backing the Vermont prosecutor's appeal of the ruling, worried that if it stands criminal suspects will try to game the system and get the result Brillon did.

"You're greasing that slippery slope," said David Parkhurst, an attorney with the National Governors Association, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the prosecutor's appeal. "That's the big concern here."

Brillon, a 46-year-old construction worker whose criminal past includes convictions for sexual assault on a minor, felony obstruction of justice and cocaine possession, was charged with aggravated domestic assault over the 2001 incident with his girlfriend, who was the mother of his child.

Wisuth Setsawat, the owner of Santika Club, and club manager Suriya Ritrabue have been charged with negligence resulting in the death and injuries of others, Deputy National Police Commissioner Gen. Jongrak Jutanont said.

"More than 1,000 people were allowed into the building, which has a capacity for only 500 people," Jongrak said. "The safety measures were also dysfunctional. Fire exits were not clearly marked. Automatic fire extinguishers were not present."

Police have said the fire was likely sparked by a fireworks display on the nightclub's stage.

The two have also been charged with allowing in underage customers. A 17-year-old was found among the dead.

The maximum penalty for negligence is 10 years in prison and a fine of not more than 20,000 baht ($573). Allowing in underage customers carries a fine of 50,000 baht ($1,433).

The fire raced through the two-story building shortly after the New Year's countdown, sending hundreds of panicked guests running for the main entrance. Victims were killed by the blaze, smoke inhalation and crushed in the stampede to get out.

Among the dead were three Singaporeans, one Japanese and one Myanmar national.

Jongrak said several other people were being sought for questioning in the case, including staffers of the company hired to put on the fireworks display.

Prosecutors say the grandmother set a fire that killed five people, including three young girls, because she was allegedly angry her son's ex-girlfriend wouldn't let him see his two kids.

Her trial is set to begin Tuesday on murder and arson charges after an extraordinary delay while her lawyer fought to keep the jury from hearing an alleged confession she made after the Feb. 24, 1999, blaze in a Lynn triple-decker.

Her grandchildren survived, but the blaze killed another family in the building.

Hilton, now 62, has spent most of the last decade at MCI-Framingham, a medium-security women's prison where she works in the kitchen and watches television, said her attorney, Michael Natola.

In Massachusetts, it usually takes one to two years for murder cases to go to trial.

"Ten years is aberrational," said Michael Cassidy, a professor at Boston College Law School. "Sometimes, complex murder cases can take two or three years to get to trial but 10 years is well beyond the average."

Natola said he had to push for the statements to be suppressed — no matter how long it took. The case twice went to the Supreme Judicial Court.

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.

Citing separation of powers, the state's 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento ruled Wednesday it could not intervene because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had not signed the bill into law.

The lawsuit was filed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, with support from most Republican state lawmakers. It argued that the Democratic majority acted illegally when it passed the tax increases because it did so with a simple majority vote.

The state Constitution requires a two-thirds majority for tax increases.

John Coupal, president of the taxpayers association, said the group was considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court and a new lawsuit in federal court because the vote violated the constitutional rights of the Republican minority members.

"We are still looking at this case for potential appeals because we believe this issue needs to be resolved," he said.

Schwarzenegger vetoed the $18 billion proposal, which included a mix of tax increases and spending cuts as a way to start closing California's $42 billion budget deficit. The governor said the package didn't make enough labor and environmental concessions.