The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed likely to rule against three Kansas men who challenged their death sentences in what one justice called "some of the most horrendous murders" he's ever seen from the bench.

The justices were critical of the Kansas Supreme Court, which overturned the sentences of the men, including two brothers convicted in a murderous crime spree known as the "Wichita massacre."

It was the first high court hearing on death penalty cases since a bitter clash over lethal injection procedures exposed deep divisions among the justices last term.

The debate this time was over the sentencing process for Jonathan and Reginald Carr and for Sidney Gleason, who was convicted in a separate case of killing a couple to stop them from implicating him in a robbery.

The Kansas Supreme Court overturned death sentences in both cases, saying the juries should have been told that evidence of the men's troubled childhoods and other factors weighing against a death sentence did not have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

The state court also ruled that the Carr brothers should have had separate sentencing hearings instead of a joint one. It said Reginald Carr's sentence may have been unfairly tainted because Jonathan Carr blamed Reginald for being a bad influence during their childhoods.

While the attorneys on both sides focused on the legal technicalities, several of the justices couldn't help but dwell on the sordid facts of the Carr case during two hours of oral argument.

Justice Samuel Alito said it involves "some of the most horrendous murders that I have ever seen in my 10 years here. And we see practically every death penalty case that comes up anywhere in the country."

At one point, Justice Antonin Scalia recounted at length the brutal details. Authorities said the brothers broke into a Wichita, Kansas, home in December 2000, where they forced the three men and two women inside to have sex with each other while they watched, then repeatedly raped the women. The brothers then forced the victims to withdraw money from ATMs before taking them to a soccer field, forcing them to kneel, and shooting each one in the head.

The Connecticut Supreme Court on Thursday stood by its decision to eliminate the state's death penalty, but the fate of capital punishment in the Constitution State technically remains unsettled.
 
The state's highest court rejected a request by prosecutors to reconsider its landmark August ruling, but prosecutors have filed a motion in another case to make the arguments they would have made if the court had granted the reconsideration motion.

Lawyers who have argued before the court say it would be highly unusual and surprising for the court to reverse itself on such an important issue in a short period of time, but they say it is possible because the makeup of the court is different. Justice Flemming Norcott Jr., who was in the 4-3 majority to abolish the death penalty, reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 and was succeeded by Justice Richard Robinson.

In the August decision, the court ruled that a 2012 state law abolishing capital punishment for future crimes must be applied to the 11 men who still faced execution for killings committed before the law took effect. The decision came in the case of Eduardo Santiago, who was facing the possibility of lethal injection for a 2000 murder-for-hire killing in West Hartford.

The 2012 ban had been passed prospectively because many lawmakers refused to vote for a bill that would spare the death penalty for Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, who were convicted of killing a mother and her two daughters in a highly publicized 2007 home invasion in Cheshire.

The state's high court said the death penalty violated the state constitution, "no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency," and didn't serve any "legitimate penological purpose." The majority included Norcott and Justices Richard Palmer, Dennis Eveleigh and Andrew McDonald, the same four justices that rejected the prosecution's reconsideration request Thursday.

Chief Justice Chase Rogers and Justices Peter Zarella and Carmen Espinosa bashed the majority in the Santiago case, accusing the other four justices of tailoring their ruling based on personal beliefs. The three dissenting justices also were in favor of the prosecution's motion to reconsider.

Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane had said the majority justices unfairly considered concerns that had not been raised during Santiago's appeal and denied prosecutors the chance to address those concerns. He said prosecutors have filed briefs in the still-pending death penalty appeal of Russell Peeler Jr., raising the same issues they did in the motion for reconsideration in the Santiago case.

Military prosecutors have reached into a section of military law seldom used since World War II in the politically fraught case against U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier held prisoner for years by the Taliban after leaving his post in Afghanistan.

Observers wondered for months if Bergdahl would be charged with desertion after the deal brokered by the U.S. to bring him home. He was -- as well as misbehavior before the enemy, a much rarer offense that carries a stiffer potential penalty in this case.

Bergdahl could face a life sentence if convicted of the charge, which accuses him of endangering fellow soldiers when he "left without authority; and wrongfully caused search and recovery operations."

Observers say the misbehavior charge allows authorities to allege that Bergdahl not only left his unit with one less soldier, but that his deliberate action put soldiers who searched for him in harm's way. The Pentagon has said there is no evidence anyone died searching for Bergdahl.

"You're able to say that what he did had a particular impact or put particular people at risk. It is less generic than just quitting," said Lawrence Morris, a retired Army colonel who served as the branch's top prosecutor and top public defender.

Transgender people can be especially vulnerable to harassment and attacks and shouldn't be equated with gays and lesbians by U.S. immigration officials determining whether to grant asylum, a federal appeals court said Thursday.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling in the case of a transgender Mexican woman who sought shelter in the U.S. on the grounds that she would likely be tortured if returned to Mexico.

Edin Avendano-Hernandez said she had been sexually assaulted by uniformed Mexican police and a military official for being transgender.

The Board of Immigration Appeals wrongly relied on Mexican laws protecting gays and lesbians to reject Avendano-Hernandez's asylum request, the ruling states.

The 9th Circuit said transgender people face a unique level of danger and are specifically targeted in Mexico by police for extortion and sexual favors.

"While the relationship between gender identity and sexual orientation is complex, and sometimes overlapping, the two identities are distinct," Circuit Judge Jacqueline Nguyen wrote. "Significant evidence suggests that transgender persons are often especially visible, and vulnerable, to harassment and persecution due to their often public nonconformance with normative gender roles."

Pennsylvania Superior Court has overturned the longest drug sentence ever imposed in a central Pennsylvania county as "manifestly unreasonable and excessive."

Blair County Senior Judge Thomas Peoples imposed the 104½- to 216-year sentence four years ago against 43-year-old Gene "Shorty" Carter, of Philadelphia. Carter had been convicted of running a major heroin ring — while still serving time in a halfway house for a previous drug conviction.

The judge, who has since died, imposed mandatory sentences for 16 separate crimes Carter committed, then ran them consecutively.

Although the appeals court upheld those convictions, the Altoona Mirror reports Friday that the court ordered Carter must be resentenced.

The court cited a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision which determined juries must decide whether mandatory sentences are warranted, not judges.

An elderly man who spent 24 years in prison for his daughter's death in a fire will remain free after a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania on Wednesday refused to reinstate his murder conviction.

Han Tak Lee, 80, a native of South Korea who earned U.S. citizenship, was exonerated and freed last year after a judge concluded the case against him was based on since-discredited scientific theories about arson. Prosecutors appealed, saying that other evidence pointed to his guilt.

The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal, meaning Lee will stay out of prison.

The New York City shop owner had taken his 20-year-old, mentally ill daughter to a religious retreat in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains where, prosecutors say, he set fire to their cabin. Lee has long contended the 1989 fire was accidental.

Lee, who returned to Queens after his release from prison, did not answer his phone Wednesday. He told The Associated Press in an interview last month that he still loved America and "I expect America to make the right decision."

His attorney, Peter Goldberger, called on prosecutors to let the ruling stand.

"I hope, now, that they will finally see there is no basis for this conviction," Goldberger said. "They can say it's nobody's fault, that science changed, that this is over now, and the federal court has had the last word."

Monroe County District Attorney David Christine, who prosecuted Lee in 1990 and whose office lost the appeal, did not immediately return a text and email seeking comment.