The appeals court granted the request of Toni Locy, who had been ordered by a federal judge to pay the fines out of her own pocket while she appeals an order finding her in contempt of court.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton is demanding that Locy provide the names of all dozen or so Justice Department and FBI sources who provided her information for stories on the probe into the anthrax attacks.

The order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia means Locy will not have to pay the fines or face further sanctions including possibly being sent to jail while her lawyers fight Walton's contempt ruling.

Locy says she cannot recall which of her FBI and Justice Department sources provided her information for two stories about scientist Steven Hatfill. Hatfill has been under scrutiny in the probe and is suing the government for dragging his name into the investigation.

Starting at midnight Tuesday, Locy was to have paid out of her own funds $500 a day for seven days, $1,000 a day for seven days and $5,000 a day thereafter until she was to have appeared in court April 3. At that time, the judge could have ordered further fines or directed that she be sent to jail if she continued to defy him.

Locy says that enforcing the contempt order could have a chilling effect by calling into question the enforceability of reporters' secrecy agreements with public officials.

"I am relieved and thankful that the court of appeals has found that my legal arguments are worthy of consideration," said Locy, a former reporter with The Associated Press who wrote the anthrax stories while at USA Today. She now teaches journalism at West Virginia University.

Appeals court judges Douglas Ginsburg, Judith Rogers and Brett Kavanaugh granted the reporter's request. Ginsburg was appointed by President Reagan, Rogers by President Clinton and Kavanaugh by the current President Bush.

Hatfill's lawyers had asked the appeals court to allow the penalties against the reporter to start immediately.

"There was no whistle-blowing here, no use of an anonymity agreement by a reporter to allow a courageous federal official to expose wrongdoing without fear of retaliation," Hatfill's lawyers wrote.

"The 'leaks' at issue here are disclosures from investigative files about one innocent and uncharged man, designed to convey through cooperative members of the media the false story that the government had made progress in the anthrax investigation," the court filing by Hatfill's lawyers added.

Five people were killed and 17 sickened when anthrax was mailed to Capitol Hill lawmakers and members of the media just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Subsequently, Attorney General John Ashcroft called Hatfill "a person of interest" in the investigation and stories by various reporters including Locy followed. Hatfill had worked at the Army's infectious diseases laboratory from 1997 to 1999. The anthrax attacks remain unsolved.

Benetta Buell-Wilson was driving on an interstate east of San Diego in January 2002 when she swerved to avoid a metal object and lost control of her 1997 Explorer, which rolled 4 1/2 times. The mother of two was paralyzed from the waist down when the roof collapsed on her neck, severing her spine.

A jury initially awarded Buell-Wilson $369 million, including $246 million in punitive damages but courts twice cut the size of the award.

The $82.6 million approved by the appeals court Monday includes punitive damages of $55 million.

The Supreme Court wanted the appeals court to determine if its ruling was in line with an earlier Supreme Court decision overturning a $79.5 million punitive damages award in a tobacco case.

The trial was suspended during jury selection in October because of problems funding Nichols' defense. Those problems have not been completely resolved, but Judge James Bodiford has sought to move the case along.

The case will resume with the same jury pool on a date roughly midway between what prosecutors and defense attorneys had sought. At the hearing Monday, prosecutors asked that the trial resume June 16 while the defense wanted a Sept. 8 date.

"This case needs a start date, a real start date," Bodiford said. Now, the question is where to hold the trial.

Up until now, the plan was to hold the trial in the Fulton County Courthouse complex, where the March 11, 2005, shooting spree began.

Defense lawyers had previously asked that the trial be moved to another location in the county, but that request was denied by the previous judge overseeing the case because no other courthouse was suitable or was willing to host the trial.

A state court security officer on Friday admitted taking cash payments from bail bondsmen, the latest development in a continuing investigation of the Connecticut bail bond industry.

Jill D'Antona, a judicial marshal employed at the Superior Court on Elm Street in New Haven, pleaded guilty in federal court to soliciting and accepting a gratuity. In her position, which her superiors said she is in the process of resigning, D'Antona, 37, of Seymour, was assigned to courthouse security and prisoner transportation duties.

D'Antona is accused of taking thousands of dollars over at least five years from Robert and Philip Jacobs, two of the three principals in a family-owned bail bond business operating in greater New Haven. The Jacobses, who were charged earlier in connection with the same investigation, have admitted paying D'Antona for using her official position to get them business.

Sandlin, 56, of Sherman, Texas, was released without bail after his arraignment in U.S. District Court in Tucson. He and his lawyer declined to comment.

Renzi pleaded not guilty to the charges on Tuesday. Both are due back in court April 29.

The indictment accuses Renzi of telling groups seeking to get the surface rights to an Arizona copper deposit that they would have to buy land owned by Sandlin to win required congressional approval for the land exchange.

After an investment group agreed to buy the land, Renzi received $733,000 from Sandlin, the indictment said. Sandlin had owed Renzi money from a previous land deal.

Renzi and another co-defendant are also charged with eight other counts.

Renzi will stay in office, his lawyer Reid Weingarten said. Renzi, a three-term Republican whose 1st Congressional District covers most of northeastern Arizona, announced last year that he would not seek re-election.

The group asked the judge on Thursday to demand an explanation regarding alleged inconsistencies between testimony at a congressional hearing last week and what the White House told a federal court in January.

"This evidence demonstrates defendants' blatant disregard for the truth and the processes of this court," Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy in court papers.

CREW wants the judge to compel the Executive Office of the President to explain why it should not be held in contempt of court.

In a sworn declaration, White House official Theresa Payton told the court on Jan. 16 that "substantially all" e-mails from 2003 to 2005 should be contained on back-up computer tapes.

However, at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Feb. 26, the panel's Democrats released a White House document that called that claim into question.

E-mail was missing from a White House archive for the period of Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 2003 from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House document states. The backup tape covering that seven-day period was not created until Oct. 21, 2003, raising the possibility that e-mail was missing from the earlier period. That time span was in the earliest days of the Justice Department's probe into whether anyone at the White House leaked the CIA identity of Valerie Plame. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was eventually convicted by a jury of four felonies in the leak probe.

The congressional panel also released written statements by a former White House technical supervisor saying that a 15-person team conducted an extensive multi-phase assessment that resulted in a final 250-page analysis on the problem of missing White House e-mail.

In her sworn declaration to the federal court in January, the White House official said she was aware of a chart created by a former employee regarding missing e-mails, but said nothing about the 250-page analysis.