A tour bus driver who caused a crash that killed three Japanese tourists last year was spared a lengthy prison term Friday when a judge sentenced him to less than a year in jail for his role in the wreck.

Yasushi Mikuni was facing the prospect of 15 years behind bars, but instead got just under a year in jail and three years of probation. Judge Michael Westfall also ordered the 26-year-old Japanese student to pay restitution to each of the crash victims and court fines.

"I think this was a great outcome," Mikuni's Las Vegas-based defense attorney Garrett Ogata said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I think the judge saw how Yasushi presented himself at each and every court hearing and even said that he handles himself with remorse."

Ogata said Mikuni, who sobbed through Friday's hearing, was so deeply affected by the accident that he went to the crash site with his father and brother to pray for the victims and their families.

The 26-year-old driver originally was charged with 10 felonies but pleaded guilty in May to three felony counts of operating a vehicle negligently, causing serious injury or death.

Utah Highway Patrol investigators said that on the day of the crash, Mikuni, a Japanese citizen living in Las Vegas on a U.S. work and education visa, was driving on little sleep after a long work day the day before.

Tests showed he also had marijuana in his system. Investigators said they didn't believe Mikuni was impaired while driving, but that he was sleep-deprived.

The bus carrying 14 Japanese tourists was headed from Nevada to national parks in Utah and Arizona on Aug. 9, 2010, when it rolled on Interstate 15. Three died and 11 others were injured, including Mikuni.

Judge Michael Westfall sentenced Mikuni to 15 years in prison Friday but then suspended most of the sentence. Court records show Mikuni will spend 363 days in the Iron County Jail.

An Oregon sheriff who lost a state legal battle to deny a concealed handgun license for a medical marijuana patient has decided to take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters has argued that issuing the license would violate federal law, specifically the Gun Control Act of 1968.

That argument was rejected by a trial court, the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Oregon Supreme Court in rulings that say state law on concealed handgun permits does not pre-empt federal law, the Mail Tribune reported Wednesday.

Cynthia Willis of Gold Hill acknowledged using medical marijuana when she filed her permit application with Winters in 2008, setting off the legal battle. She was issued a concealed handgun license after the sheriff lost in the Oregon Court of Appeals.

"I was hoping that it was over, but apparently it is not," Willis said. "I'm just so surprised that there would be a further use of tax dollars in this way."

So far, the case has cost the county $13,000 in outside legal fees plus the equivalent of $20,000 in time spent by the county's internal legal team.

Washington County, which lost a similar case, also has decided to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ryan Kirchoff, an attorney for Jackson County, said the Gun Control Act is designed to keep guns out of the hands of people Congress considered potentially dangerous or irresponsible, such as those who use a controlled substance.

Attorneys for John Demjanjuk want an American court in Cleveland to set aside the ruling that led to his deportation to Germany and his conviction on Nazi war crimes charges.

The request for a new hearing on the retired autoworker's denaturalization could bring the decades-old case back to the United States.

Demjanjuk's attorneys charge that the government failed to disclose important evidence, namely a 1985 secret FBI report uncovered by The Associated Press that indicates the FBI believed a Nazi ID card purportedly showing Demjanjuk served as a death camp guard was a Soviet-made fake.

"The government has kept these materials hidden from view," according to the motion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Cleveland.

Demjanjuk, 91, was convicted in a German court on May 12 of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder, finding that he served as a guard at the Nazi's Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was a Soviet Red Army soldier captured by the Germans in 1942. The Munich court found he agreed to serve the Nazis as a guard at Sobibor.

Demjanjuk denies serving as a guard at any camp and is currently free pending his appeal. He's been in poor health for years and has been in and out of a hospital since his conviction.

He currently cannot leave Germany because he has no passport, but he could get a U.S. passport if the denaturalization ruling is overturned.