A bounced check for $40 tipped off a Chicago law firm to a trusted employee's scheme that, over nearly seven years, drained more than $880,000 from the firm's bank account, Cook County prosecutors said Wednesday.

Joan M. Sanchez, 52, 10445 Linder Ave., Oak Lawn, spent nearly $48,000 of the stolen money on lunches, State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said.

Sanchez had spent 24 years with the downtown firm of Kelly Olson Michod Dehann & Richter, including 21 years as office manager.

"It's a terrible breach of trust," said Stephen Cohen, an attorney with the firm.

Chicago police arrested Sanchez on Tuesday at her home, and Circuit Judge Maria Kuriakos-Ciesil set bail Wednesday at $100,000.

Alvarez said the thefts began in October 2002 and continued through April 2009. During that time, Sanchez wrote 234 unauthorized checks from the firm's business account, Alvarez said.

She said Sanchez forged the signature of one of the firm's partners on the checks, created fake entries in the firm's ledger to make it look as though the checks were issued to legitimate vendors and then voided the checks.

Prosecutors allege that Sanchez wrote 176 checks, totaling $836,500 and made payable to herself, and deposited them in her personal checking account at a Chicago bank.

Another 58 checks totaling $47,799 were written by Sanchez and made payable to a lunch club at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where she often dined with her mother, Alvarez said.

The scheme came to light while Sanchez was vacationing in Hawaii and a $40 reimbursement check drawn on the firm's bank account bounced, even though the ledger showed ample funds in the account, prosecutors said.

Cohen said the firm had little to say about the matter.

"The matter is in the hands of the state's attorney, and our position is they're handling it, and we don't want to do anything to jeopardize their case," he said.

Ohio executed a hitchhiker Thursday who admitted to killing one motorist who gave him a ride and shooting two others during a three-week string of shootings that terrorized the Cincinnati area in 1983.

Michael Beuke, 48, died by lethal injection at 10:53 a.m. EDT at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, about 90 minutes after the Ohio Supreme Court turned down his final appeal.

While on the gurney, Beuke recited the Roman Catholic rosary for 17 minutes before he died, choking back tears as he repeatedly said the Hail Mary. He also expressed his sorrow to the families of his three victims.

Beuke, dubbed by the media as the "homicidal hitchhiker," spend a quarter century on death row, where he said he had a spiritual conversion. He expressed remorse for his crimes and said in an unsuccessful request for clemency that he accepted responsibility and prayed "that God will ease the pain I have caused my victims."

Beuke was emotional as the hour of his death neared, crying frequently in his cell at the Lucasville prison, said Julie Walburn, an Ohio prisons spokeswoman.

He was convicted Oct. 5, 1983, of aggravated murder for the death of Robert Craig, 27, of Cincinnati and was sentenced to death. He also was found guilty of the attempted slayings of Gregory Wahoff of Cincinnati and Bruce Graham, then from West Harrison, Ind.

Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade will be in a different kind of court as he faces trial in a $25 million lawsuit filed by his former partners in a failed restaurant venture.

Jury selection was set to begin Wednesday in the case over the defunct D. Wade's Place chain. Wade's former partners claim he broke a contract by demanding higher compensation and then abandoning the deal in 2008.

Wade contends in court documents he had every right to end the business relationship. His lawyer says the all-NBA guard plans to attend the two-week trial and is likely to testify.

Wade is also involved in a messy divorce and faces two other lawsuits over business dealings. One of them involves Miami-based charter schools that were supposed to bear his name.

A judge says an elderly Connecticut woman doesn't have to share her half of a $500,000 lottery windfall with the sister who sued her over it.

Eighty-seven-year-old Rose Bakaysa and her 84-year-old sister, Theresa Sokaitis, have been fighting over the money in court since 2005. That was shortly after Bakaysa and their brother won the Powerball jackpot.

Sokaitis says they signed a notarized contract a decade earlier to split all gambling profits. Bakaysa says that deal ended in 2004 during a spat over a few hundred dollars.

New Britain Superior Court Judge Cynthia Swienton on Wednesday agreed with Bakaysa, ruling the contract ended during the argument.

A New Jersey court has found that records of settlements reached by insurance companies on behalf of government entities should be open to the public.

In 2008, lawyer Mark Cimino asked used the state's Open Public Records Act to request copies of legal settlements involving Gloucester County government.

The county argued that the settlements were made by insurance companies and that records of them were stored with the firms.

A lower court judge agreed that those factors meant the documents in question were not covered by the open records law.

But today, a three-judge appeals panel reversed the ruling, sending it back to a lower court.

A federal judge agreed Monday that a lawyer for Denver-based band The Fray might face liability in the band's ongoing court battle with a former manager.

The band alleges its former manager, Gregg Latterman, failed to disclose that his company obtained ownership to a portion of the band's music when a publishing agreement was signed in 2005.

In a hearing Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Boyd Boland agreed to consider Latterman's claim that the band's lawyer, J. Reid Hunter of New York, was aware of the publishing agreement and failed to inform the band. Hunter didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

The band's hits include 2006's "How to Save a Life" and 2009's "You Found Me."

Latterman filed counterclaims alleging breach of contract. He says The Fray owes his company more than $750,000 in commission and expenses.

Latterman claims The Fray tried to end his management contract early and pressured him to accept concessions, including smaller commissions, as the band's popularity grew.