The California Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a voter-approved measure intended to speed up the appeals process for the state's Death Row inmates to give it time to consider a lawsuit challenging the measure.

In a one-page decision, the court stayed the "implementation of all provisions of Proposition 66" and set a timeline for filing briefs in the case.

Proposition 66 would change how appeals are handled, appointing more lawyers to take cases, putting certain types of appeals before trial court judges and setting a five-year deadline for appeals to be heard. Currently, it can take longer than that for an attorney to be assigned to a case and upward of 25 years to exhaust appeals.

The lawsuit by former Attorney General John Van de Kamp and Ron Briggs, whose father wrote the ballot measure that expanded California's death penalty in 1978, said the reform measure would disrupt the courts, cost more money and limit the ability to mount proper appeals. They said the deadlines would set "an inordinately short timeline for the courts to review those complex cases" and result in attorneys cutting corners in their investigations.

Supporters of the measure have called the lawsuit a frivolous stall tactic.

California voters faced two death penalty measures on the November election. They rejected a measure that would have abolished the death penalty and narrowly approved Proposition 66.

A Massachusetts woman accused of sending her boyfriend text messages encouraging him to kill himself is due in court for a pretrial hearing.

Michelle Carter is charged with manslaughter in the 2014 death of Conrad Roy III. The 18-year-old Roy died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Prosecutors say the then-17-year-old Carter had sent him dozens of messages urging him to follow through on his suicide plan.

Earlier this month, Carter’s attorney asked a judge for funds to hire an expert to explain the effects of an antidepressant to a jury at Carter’s trial. The judge denied the request.

Carter’s lawyer said both teens were taking an antidepressant that has a warning that it may cause suicidal thoughts.

Carter’s lawyer said he may make additional arguments at a hearing scheduled for Monday.

The Supreme Court is upholding the broad reach of a federal law prohibiting bank fraud.

The unanimous ruling on Monday came in the case of a California man who illegally siphoned about $307,000 out of a Taiwanese businessman's Bank of America bank account.

Justice Stephen Breyer rejected Lawrence Shaw's claim that the law applies only when a defendant intends to cheat the bank itself ? not a bank customer. Breyer said the bank has property interests in the customer's account and that Shaw misled the bank to steal the customer's money.

The justices sent the case back to a lower court to decide whether the jury instructions in Shaw's case were correct.

Determined to hold around two dozen Senate seats in 2018, Democrats will use the coming series of confirmation hearings to try to distinguish themselves from President-elect Donald Trump's billionaire nominees and convince working-class voters who elected him that he's not on their side.

While Democrats have little leverage to stop the Republican's picks in the Senate, they still plan a fight. To highlight what they say is the hypocrisy of Trump's campaign promise to be a champion for the economically struggling little guy, they'll focus on the nominees' wealth, ties to Wall Street and willingness to privatize Medicare, among other issues. In some cases, they'll seek to drag out the process by demanding more information and ensuring a full airing of potential conflicts of interest.

"We're going to give each of them a thorough examination to determine whether they'll actually stand up for workers against the special interests or rig the system even more," said incoming Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, echoing some of Trump's own campaign rhetoric.

Democrats gave up their ability to block Trump's nominees in 2013, when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changed Senate rules and reduced the number of votes needed to end filibusters. Now in the majority, Republicans can confirm the nominees along partisan lines.

The limits of the Democratic minority have already been tested, as California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who will be the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the new session, has repeatedly asked Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley for more time to review documents ahead of Jan. 10-11 hearings for Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's choice for attorney general. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has declined to delay the hearings.

The Supreme Court has denied appeals from death row inmates in Louisiana and South Carolina who questioned their lawyers' actions.

The justices on Monday did not comment on the cases of James Tyler of Louisiana and Sammie Stokes of South Carolina.

Tyler's lawyer conceded his client's guilt in the hope of drawing a life sentence, even though Tyler repeatedly objected to that strategy y.

Stokes' lawyer had previously prosecuted him for assaulting his ex-wife. The lawyer never informed the judge of his earlier role, not even when the ex-wife took the stand against Stokes.

A Chinese court says a star securities trader who was arrested following last year's stock market collapse has pleaded guilty to insider trading and manipulating share prices.

The court in the eastern city of Qingdao said in a statement Tuesday that Xu Xiang and two co-defendants pleaded guilty at the start of a trial but no verdict had been issued.

Xu was arrested in November after a rapid rise in Chinese share prices collapsed. Top executives of China's biggest state-owned securities firm also were arrested in a separate case.

The court statement said Xu and his co-defendants were accused of conspiring with executives of 13 companies from 2010 to 2015 to inflate their share price and then sell.