The Supreme Court won't hear a Maryland man's argument that the Second Amendment allows him to carry a gun outside of his home for self-defense.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Charles F. Williams Jr., who was arrested in 2007 for having his legally-purchased handgun outside his home without a state permit.

The high court has ruled there is a right to keep a gun in the home for protection. But gun advocates say people also have the constitutional right to carry their guns outside the house for self-protection.

Maryland courts say if the Supreme Court agrees with that theory "it will need to say so more plainly." The high court refused the opportunity on Monday.

A U.S. soldier has been found not guilty by reason of lack of mental responsibility in the killing of a Hungarian civilian contractor in Iraq, military officials said Saturday.

Pfc. Carl T. Stovall had pleaded not guilty in the March 2009 shooting of Hungarian laborer Tibor Bogdan near Camp Taji, just north of Baghdad. Bogdan was shot while digging a hole at the camp.

The shooting came less than a month into Stovall's third deployment to the Middle East.

He opted to be tried by a military judge at Fort Hood instead of a jury. Testimony was heard this past week.

In a statement Saturday, officials with the military post said the court ordered Stovall to receive a psychiatric/psychological evaluation before a post-trial hearing is conducted on Nov. 10. Stovall faced a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Stovall had allegedly once told investigators he believed Bogdan, who worked for a contractor specializing in trash and waste removal, was a terrorist planting a roadside bomb. Prosecutors, however, said Stovall, now 28, has changed his story multiple times, allegedly denying any involvement in one version.

The Supreme Court appeared likely Tuesday to order a new court hearing for an Alabama death row inmate who lost the chance to appeal his death sentence because of a mailroom mix-up at a venerable New York law firm.

Both conservative and liberal justices indicated they would throw out a federal appeals court ruling that relied on the missed deadline to refuse to consider Cory Maples' claims that he received inadequate legal representation, dating back to his trial on charges he gunned down two friends in 1995.

Justice Samuel Alito, a former federal prosecutor, said he did not understand why Alabama fought so hard to deny Maples the right to appeal when the deadline passed "though no fault of his own."

Justice Antonin Scalia was the only member of the court who appeared to agree with the state's argument that Maples' protests are overblown because he was never left without a lawyer. The state also says the role of Maples' lawyers in missing the deadline is unfortunate but nothing the court should correct under its earlier rulings.

Gregory Garre, a former solicitor general who is representing Maples in the Supreme Court, said the earlier legal work for Maples was so bad that it violated the Constitution.

Whatever the shortcomings of Maples' trial lawyers, he appeared to "win the lottery" when two lawyers at Sullivan and Cromwell agreed to represent him for free in his appeals, Garre said. The New York-based firm has 800 lawyers and offices in a dozen cities.

Mortgage giant Fannie Mae knew about allegations of improper foreclosure practices by law firms in 2003 but did not act to stop them, a government watchdog says.

Similar allegations are the subject of a probe by state attorneys general into how lenders and law firms ignored proper procedures to handle a crush of foreclosure paperwork.

An unnamed shareholder warned Fannie Mae of alleged foreclosure abuses in 2003, the inspector general for the agency that regulates Fannie says in a report being released Tuesday.

Fannie Mae responded by hiring a law firm to investigate the claims in 2005. The law firm reported in 2006 that it had found foreclosure attorneys in Florida "routinely filing false pleadings and affidavits."

Fannie officials said they told a government official about the law firm's findings in 2006. That unnamed official, who now works for Fannie's regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said he couldn't recall the conversation, the report says.

Fannie began using a network of attorneys in 1997 to help handle foreclosures, evictions and bankruptcies. In 2008, the network grew to 140 law firms. And the number of foreclosures in Fannie's portfolio reached historic highs. Foreclosures more than doubled from 2007 to 2008. They grew 50% in 2009.