Kagan gave the keynote address at the daylong event that also included a lunchtime speech by retiring Justice David Souter.

Wood, who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago said she had long planned to attend the conference, but she would not answer any questions about the court.

She declined to say whether she was visiting the White House during her stay in Washington.

Wood and Kagan are among the candidates the president is considering to replace Souter, according to officials familiar with President Barack Obama's thinking.

Also attending the day's panel discussions at Georgetown University Law Center were Justice Stephen Breyer and retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has led the annual event since her retirement from the court in 2006.

She noted that Souter is "going to join me in that now very exclusive group of retired Supreme Court justices. His presence will double the membership."

The former Democratic congressman has argued that prosecutors trampled on his constitutional privileges as a lawmaker. But the high court refused to hear Jefferson's appeal to throw out the indictment against him.

Jefferson was indicted in 2007 on multiple counts, including soliciting bribes and racketeering. Investigators raided Jefferson's home and found $90,000 in cash stuffed in a freezer.

A federal judge has set a June 2 trial date in Alexandria, Va.

Jefferson represented parts of New Orleans in Congress, but lost his re-election last year to Republican Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao.

Last year, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., rejected Jefferson's claims that a federal grand jury received evidence that violated his constitutional right to legislative immunity.

The justices said they will hear an appeal filed by prosecutors in Pennsylvania after the federal appeals court in Philadelphia upheld a lower court order throwing out the death sentence against Joseph Kindler for killing one-time accomplice David Bernstein in 1982.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Kindler's lawyer was ineffective at the sentencing phase of his trial and also found problems with the instructions given to the jury.

State courts had never decided on Kindler's claims. Instead, those courts said Kindler forfeited the right to be heard on those issues because of his escapes.

Bernstein agreed to testify against Kindler about their roles in robbing a store. Kindler beat Bernstein with a baseball bat and an accomplice jabbed him with an electric prod. The two men dumped Bernstein in the Delaware River, but after discovering he was still alive, they managed to fill his lungs with water and tied a cinder block around his neck.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent was sentenced to 33 months Monday. He was also fined $1,000 and ordered to pay $6,550 in restitution to the two women whose complaints resulted in the first sex abuse case against a sitting federal judge.

Kent could have received up to 20 years in prison after admitting to obstruction of justice, but prosecutors said they wouldn't seek more than three years under a plea agreement.

"Your wrongful conduct is a huge black X ... a stain on the judicial system itself, a matter of concern in the federal courts," U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said as he imposed the sentence. Vinson is a visiting senior judge called in from Pensacola, Fla.

Kent pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in February as jury selection for his trial was about to begin. He had been charged with obstruction and five sex-crime counts alleging that he groped his secretary and his former case manager. Conviction on the most serious of those charges could have sent him to prison for life.

The Supreme Court didn't say when or if it would rule. The appeal goes first to Justice John Paul Stevens, who can decide the request on his own or refer it to the full court.

The arrest warrant in Germany accuses Demjanjuk of being a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. Demjanjuk, a native Ukrainian, maintains he was a prisoner of war, not a camp guard. Evidence the U.S. government has used against him includes a Nazi document, an identification card placing him at a training camp and then at various death or forced-labor camps, including Sobibor.

A German court on Wednesday rejected an attempt to block his deportation, saying the issue would have to be decided by American courts.

The U.S. Department of Justice would "respond in court as appropriate," spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said Wednesday.v

This came as the high court on Wednesday upheld the conviction and sentence of Christopher Michael Dean, who was arrested for trying to rob a bank in Rome, Georgia, in 2004.

A gun went off accidentally during the attempted robbery when Dean tried to switch the weapon from one hand to the other. The discharge brought an automatic 10-year sentence for firing a weapon during a crime. Dean appealed, saying the automatic sentence shouldn't count since the firing of the gun was accidental.

Federal prosecutors said the law doesn't care why the gun went off, and the high court agreed.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who called it "the case of the bungling bank robber" in his bench statement, said the law "does not require that the discharge be done knowingly or intentionally."

If criminals want to avoid the penalty for accidental gunfire, they can "lock or unload the firearm, handle it with care during the underlying violent or drug trafficking crime, leave the gun at home or — best yet — avoid committing the felony in the first place," Roberts said.

Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer dissented, saying Congress intended the automatic sentence to only apply to intentional discharges of weapons.