A lawyer told the state Supreme Court yesterday that his client’s death penalty case was the weakest one ever to go before the high court, alleging that the jury was biased and that key evidence was improperly withheld from the trial.

Justices heard the appeal of former Torrington resident Eduardo Santiago, 31, who prosecutors say agreed in 2000 to kill a West Hartford man in exchange for a pink-striped snowmobile with a broken clutch. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2005 after a jury convicted him, despite no clear evidence that he was the one who pulled the rifle trigger.

Two other men are serving life prison sentences for the killing of Joseph Niwinski, 45, who was shot in the head while sleeping in his home.

Santiago’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Mark Rademacher, told the Supreme Court that there was no way a reasonable jury could have condemned Santiago. The defense presented 25 mitigating factors, including Santiago’s troubled childhood, for jurors to consider against the death penalty, while the state based its argument for execution on one aggravating factor, that Niwinski was killed in a murder-for-hire plot.

Federal authorities have charged two men with running an insider trading scheme that netted more than $30 million with information stolen from law firms.

Garrett Bauer is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., on Wednesday afternoon. Matthew Kluger will make his first appearance in federal court in Alexandria, Va.

They're accused of trading on inside information stolen from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a law firm with offices in Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong.

Authorities also allege the decades-long scheme used information stolen from prominent New York law firms Cravath Swaine & Moore and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Tribune Co. employees at the time of company’s 2007 leveraged buy-out are eligible to join a class action lawsuit against the ESOP trustee that represented their interests in the takeover by billionaire Sam Zell, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Any Tribune Co. employee or beneficiary who received or were entitled to an allocation to their employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) stock or ESOP cash accounts are now automatically members of the class suing Lisle-based GreatBanc Trust Co. for failing to fulfill its fiduciary responsibility in the deal, said Daniel Feinberg, an attorney representing the employees and other plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer’s ruling is the second set-back in less than a week for GreatBanc, the remaining defendant with significant liability in a 2008 lawsuit brought by Dan Neil and other Los Angeles Times staffers against the architects of the ill-fated going-private transaction.

A former fugitive is due in federal court in Detroit to face charges he was a member of a violent ring that lured Eastern European women to the United States and forced them to become strippers.

The U.S. attorney's office says Veniamin Gonikman, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Ukraine, was due in court Friday afternoon. He consented to the transfer from New York last month.

Court papers claim Gonikman was using a fake Russian passport while living in Ukraine. Officials there arrested him on Jan. 26 and ordered his deportation.

The Associated Press reported on the case involving Gonikman last year in a lengthy investigation of the exploitation of a U.S. cultural exchange program that provides foreign college students temporary visas to live and work in the United States.

The Supreme Court is refusing to invalidate Nevada laws banning newspaper advertisements that identify places where prostitution is legal.

The court refused to hear on Tuesday an appeal from two newspaper companies, the American Civil Liberties Union and a Nye County brothel called the Shady Lady Ranch.

Laws went into effect in Nevada in 1979 that prohibited brothel advertising in counties where prostitution is illegal. Prostitution is illegal in five counties, which include Las Vegas and Reno, and 10 Nevada counties authorize prostitution by local ordinance.

A federal judge said the laws were overly broad and unconstitutional, but the judgment was overturned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling.

U.S. authorities say the shipping company Horizon Lines LLC has agreed to plead guilty to fixing prices and to pay a $45 million fine.

A Justice Department statement Thursday says the company was accused of conspiring to fix rates and surcharges for freight transportation between the United States and Puerto Rico from May 2002 until April 2008.

Five former executives have been sentenced after pleading guilty in 2008 to charges related to the shipping conspiracy.

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company has a fleet of 20 U.S.-flagged cargo ships that carry items including heavy equipment, medicines and consumer goods.

In June 2009, the company agreed to pay $20 million to settle a class action price-fixing lawsuit.