The justices rejected without comment Ebbers' bid for review of his 2005 conviction based on his contention that he was denied a fair trial.

Hearing the news, Thomas Harris of Brandon, a former WorldCom accountant, who at one time thought he might be able to retire at age 40, said, "I don't harbor any ill feelings against Bernie, but when we make decisions we have to live by them."

Harris, a 13-year employee, left the company, then known as MCI, to open a business with his wife when it appeared he would have to move to stay with the company.

"Hopefully all of this will be a deterrent to other executives making decisions not good for a company," Harris said.

Ebbers began serving his sentence in the Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale, La., in September, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons Web site lists July 4, 2028, as the 65-year-old Ebbers' projected release date.

Absent a presidential pardon -which was less likely than Supreme Court intervention - Ebbers will serve his sentence, said Matt Steffey, a professor at Mississippi College School of Law.

Steffey said he wasn't surprised the Supreme Court rejected Ebbers' appeal.

"Other than Mr. Ebbers' status as a businessman, there was nothing noteworthy from a legal perspective," he said. "It seems he got a fair trial, he was ably represented and he had his conviction reviewed by the Court of Appeals. Everything went according to form.

"Cases like this rarely get reviewed by the Supreme Court. If Mr. Ebbers weren't famous, there would be little public interest."

Ebbers argued in court papers the trial judge improperly allowed prosecutors to use testimony from witnesses who had been given immunity but denied immunity to potential defense witnesses.

The judge also instructed jurors they could find Ebbers guilty if they believed he suspected a crime was being committed but intentionally looked the other way.

A federal appeals court upheld the conviction last year while acknowledging Ebbers' sentence for a white-collar crime was longer than sentences routinely imposed by many states for violent crimes. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Ebbers' actions to hide WorldCom's financial problems were substantial and had cost investors dearly.

Stacey Wall, president and chief executive officer at Pinnacle Trust Wealth Management in Ridgeland, said he sympathizes with investors who lost money but thinks Ebbers' sentence was too harsh. "Relative to other corporate scandals and executives involved, he got very unfair treatment," he said.

Ebbers was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in March 2005 for his role in the scheme that drove the former telecommunications giant into bankruptcy in 2002.

Investigators uncovered $11 billion in fraud, much of it because accountants were classifying regular expenses as long-term capital expenditures. The company re-emerged under the name MCI and moved the headquarters to Virginia. Verizon later bought MCI.

A New Jersey superior court judge Monday upheld a Friday jury verdict  for Merck & Co, finding that the company had given adequate warning to physicians of the risks associated with its painkiller Vioxx. Judge Carol Higbee rejected a motion by plaintiffs attorney Mark Lanier disputing a finding that the drug company had warned doctors prescribing Vioxx that a 2004 study showed the drug doubled the risk of heart attack or stroke in patients who took it for longer than 18 months; Lanier represents the estate of a deceased man whose fatal heart attack is alleged to have been caused by the drug.

Merck faces more than 27,000 lawsuits from people who say they were harmed by the once $2.5 billion-a-year drug before it was pulled from the market in September of 2004. Merck has set aside $1 billion to fight every Vioxx court challenge. In November 2006, a federal judge declined to certify a national class action suit, ruling that it made more sense to try the cases in their respective states of origin.

In a unanimous decision, the justices said that the four Republicans were not entitled to sue in an effort to replace a redistricting plan ordered by a court with one passed by a Republican-controlled state legislature.

A Democratic state judge drew up the first redistricting plan in 2002, while the Republican Legislature drew one up in 2003.

The court plan had been put in place when a divided Colorado General Assembly was unable to agree on one in time for the 2002 election.

In their lawsuit, the Republican voters say the court-imposed map violates a right of citizens under the U.S. Constitution to vote for congressional candidates in districts created by state legislatures.

In an unsigned opinion, the justices said that the only injury the Republican voters allege is that the Elections Clause had not been followed.

"This injury is precisely the kind of undifferentiated, generalized grievance about the conduct of government that we have refused to countenance in the past," the court stated.

Citing earlier rulings, the justices said the Republicans must have more than a general interest common to all members of the public in order to pursue the case.

Last year, a U.S. District Court in Colorado had ruled that the Republicans could proceed with their lawsuit asserting an Elections Clause violation.

The Colorado case is the Supreme Court's latest foray into congressional redistricting battles. Last year, the justices addressed a messy redistricting fight in Texas, ruling that the Constitution does not bar states from redrawing political lines in mid-decade when one party or the other senses an advantage.

The decision grew out of a court review of a Texas redistricting plan orchestrated in 2003 by Tom DeLay, who was a Republican congressional leader at the time.

The Colorado dispute also involved a lawsuit brought by the Democratic state attorney general. It led to a Colorado Supreme Court decision against the Republican legislative plan in 2003. The Colorado Supreme Court said the state constitution restricts congressional redistricting to once per decade and that the legislature's plan was the second plan.

A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit threw out a lawsuit challenging Ohio's death penalty procedure Friday on the grounds that the claim was filed too late. In the 2-1 opinion, judges Richard Fred Suhrheinrich and Edward Eugene Siler decided that the statute of limitations on the inmate's 42 USC 1983 method of execution challenge would have run at the latest two years following the 2001 decision that made lethal injection Ohio's only form of execution. Plaintiff Cooey did not file his challenge until December of 2004.

Last year Ohio executed its first prisoner using modified lethal injection procedures aimed at preventing extreme pain during an execution. The procedures were changed last June following a difficult May execution where staff struggled to find a vein to administer the lethal injection cocktail, and the one they did use collapsed before injection.

A disbarred lawyer indicted on charges of stealing about $750,000 from former clients pleaded not guilty at his arraignment yesterday.

Peter L. Schofield, 54, of 52 North St., Grafton, was arraigned in Worcester Superior Court on nine counts of larceny of more than $250, crimes he allegedly committed on various dates from Aug. 1, 2002, to March 13 of last year. He was indicted last month.

The Lithuanian War Veterans Organization alleges Mr. Schofield stole more than $500,000. 

Judge John S. McCann set bail of $5,000 cash, as requested by Assistant District Attorney Herbert F. Travers III, and continued Mr. Schofield’s case to March 20. Mr. Schofield’s lawyer, Sean R. Holland, did not object to the prosecutor’s bail request, and Mr. Schofield was released after posting the $5,000.

Mr. Schofield and Mr. Holland declined to comment on the charges after the arraignment.

Mr. Schofield, a real estate lawyer who was admitted to the bar in 1985, was disbarred May 25 based on a New York couple’s allegations that he stole more than $84,000 from them in the sale of property they owned in Grafton. Checks totaling $84,274 that Mr. Schofield sent from his trustee account to the husband and wife, Brian and Deborah Larsen, bounced, according to a Board of Bar Overseers’ summary of the allegations that led to Mr. Schofield’s disbarment.

The Larsens are listed as victims in two of the indictments against Mr. Schofield. The indictments were returned by a grand jury Feb. 16.

Another of his alleged victims is the Lithuanian War Veterans Organization Inc., which filed a civil lawsuit against Mr. Schofield last year. The suit alleges that Mr. Schofield stole some of the proceeds from the $560,000 sale of the organization’s headquarters on South Quinsigamond Avenue in Shrewsbury to Adelphi Inc. of Shrewsbury, a branch of the Knights of Columbus.

The veterans group, which hired Mr. Schofield to complete the 2004 sale and resolve related legal matters, is seeking $600,000 in damages in its civil action.

The indictments list eight other alleged larceny victims, all former clients of Mr. Schofield.