A Florida businessman who once factored in the Smurfs cartoon empire lost a bid Tuesday to withdraw his guilty plea in an $11 million shakedown plot targeting his financier son-in-law.

With that, Stuart R. Ross was sentenced to the five years' probation he was promised when he pleaded guilty in August to attempted grand larceny. But his lawyer said he now plans to ask an appeals court to let Ross take back the plea, which he says Ross entered while pressured by medical problems.

In his plea, Ross admitted threatening to destroy son-in-law David S. Blitzer's professional reputation if not paid $5.5 million. Ross also acknowledged offering to give up any rights to see his grandchildren for another $5.5 million.

Ross, 74, agreed to plead guilty while jailed on $200,000 bond awaiting trial. He was contending with pneumonia, cancer and other health woes that weren't getting adequate care behind bars, and he took the plea deal to gain his freedom, lawyer Matthew Myers said outside court Tuesday.

"He was under tremendous duress," Myers said. "It's the only reason why he pled."

But state Supreme Court Justice Bonnie Wittner rebuffed Ross' request to withdraw his plea. Defendants pleading guilty are routinely warned they can't revisit the decision and are asked to acknowledge they are indeed guilty.

A contractor doing business with the Army has pleaded guilty to providing an illegal gratuity to the former director of construction at Fort Carson.

Wendel P. Torres, a registered agent with a Colorado Springs-based company, faces up to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Torres pleaded guilty to a charge that in May 2007 he delivered $3,500 in construction materials to a home owned by William T. Armstrong, former construction division chief at the posts' Directorate of Contracting.

Armstrong was sentenced earlier this month to a year of probation and fined $5,000 for failing to disclose the illegal gratuity.

The charges are part of the Justice Department's ongoing investigation into contracts awarded at Fort Carson.

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the U.S. government to pay more than $2.5 million in attorney fees and damages after he concluded investigators wiretapped the phones of a suspected terrorist organization without a warrant.

U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker said the attorneys for the Ashland, Ore., chapter of the now-defunct Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation should receive $2.5 million for waging its nearly five-year legal challenge to the Bush administration's so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program.

Walker also awarded $20,400 each to Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, two of the foundation's Washington D.C.-based lawyers. They had their phone conversations with Al-Haramain principals monitored, the judge said.

"The system worked," Ghafoor said. "And we really hope that the government lets this stand and writes it off as a bad program from a previous administration.."

Earlier this year the judge found that investigators illegally intercepted the electronic communications without warrants. Government lawyers have refused throughout the litigation to disclose whether investigators eavesdropped, "although the fact of such surveillance is not in doubt," the judge concluded.

The Department of Justice lawyer who defended the program in court for the Bush administration and then the Obama administration, Anthony J. Coppolino, didn't return a phone call late Tuesday.

The judge refused to award any punitive damages, saying the investigators didn't act in bad faith in following the guidelines of the controversial program exposed by the New York Times in 2005.

Attorneys general in Arizona and Nevada filed civil lawsuits Friday against Bank of America Corp., alleging that the lender is misleading and deceiving homeowners who have tried to modify mortgages in two of the nation's most foreclosure-damaged states.

Bank of America violated Arizona's consumer fraud law by misleading consumers who tried to reduce their monthly payments to keep their homes, state Attorney General Terry Goddard said. The bank also violated the terms of a 2009 consent agreement requiring its Countrywide mortgage subsidiary to implement a loan modification program, the Arizona lawsuit alleges.

Hundreds of homeowners kept making their mortgage payments because Bank of America repeatedly assured them that their loans were being modified, Goddard said. Instead, many lost their homes anyway.

"Those people could have used that money for something else," Goddard told The Associated Press. "They were deceived into continuing to make mortgage payments when they had no hope of saving their homes."

Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto told the AP that the Silver State's lawsuit was a last resort to try to get the bank to change its ways. It was filed after several discussions with bank managers led to assurances but little more.

"Clearly there is a disconnect between what Bank of America tells me at the management level and what's happening on the front line," Masto said.

The retention vote in which three Iowa Supreme Court justices were ousted was illegal, according to a lawsuit seeking to keep the three justices from being tossed from the bench.

The lawsuit claims the vote violated the Iowa Constitution, which requires judicial retention votes to be held on a separate ballot.

Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and justices Michael Streit and David Baker were voted off following a campaign by groups opposed to the court's unanimous decision to legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa.

The Des Moines Register reported that the lawsuit, filed by attorneys Thomas W. George, John P. Roehrick and Carlton Salmons, asks for a temporary judicial order that would prohibit the judges from leaving the court when their terms expire at the end of December.

Members of a rock band that performed on a Los Angeles freeway and blocked traffic for hours have pleaded not guilty to various charges.
Christopher Wright, David Hale and Keith Yackey entered pleas Wednesday to conspiracy, creating a public nuisance and other crimes. They face up to three years in prison if convicted.

The judge doubled their bail to $20,000 each. Prosecutors say the members of the Orange County band Imperial Stars climbed atop a truck that deliberately stopped on U.S. 101 near Sunset Boulevard in October. The trio performed a song called "Traffic Jam 101."

Outside court, band members told City News Service that the stunt raised awareness for their charitable goal of helping homeless children.