Attorneys

The Obama administration dropped its long-standing opposition to over-the-counter sales of a controversial morning-after pill Monday and decided to permit consumers of any age to buy Plan B One-Step without a prescription. In papers filed in federal court in New York, government attorneys announced that the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services would remove age and point of sale restrictions on the emergency contraceptive, pending approval by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman.

WASHINGTON - The acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who took over the agency in its meltdown with the Fast and Furious gun-tracking scandal, ran into opposition Tuesday when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration as permanent director. Disturbed by allegations that B. Todd Jones had mismanaged his other current role as the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, Republicans said they hoped to block or delay his appointment until an internal investigation into his leadership of that office could be completed.

In a push to simplify mortgage modifications, federal regulators announced a streamlined process that doesn't require borrowers to prove a hardship. "This new option gives delinquent borrowers another path to avoid foreclosure," Edward J. DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said in a statement announcing the modifications Wednesday. The new modifications, however, would not include reducing the loan balance, a move promoted by housing advocates and others but resisted by DeMarco, who says it would end up costing taxpayers money and would encourage defaults.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey announced Tuesday that she has issued new policies on when to disclose information about police officer misconduct and other evidence in criminal cases to defense attorneys. The move drew praise from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which, along with other civil rights lawyers, sued the county last year accusing prosecutors of improperly withholding key evidence from defendants. The new directives, issued last week, make it clear that prosecutors must disclose all evidence favorable to the defense and that they cannot rely solely on the contents of a district attorney's database that tracks police misconduct when they determine what evidence needs to be turned over.

After you open a Snapchat image, it disappears. But with the right software, those images can be restored, according to a data retrieval company. Decipher Forensics of Utah says it can extract and restore images sent to Android smartphones on Snapchat even after they have been opened. The company, which specializes in retrieving data that has been deleted, said it can do this by using specialized forensics software to go into the folders used by the Snapchat app. Once it has located the image files, Decipher Forensics then edits the file name in order to restores the images.

The gig : Andrew Wiederhorn is the chairman and chief executive of Fatburger Inc., a fast-food restaurant chain based in Beverly Hills. The first Fatburger opened on Western Avenue in Los Angeles in 1947 and gained notoriety when rappers Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. all mentioned the restaurant in songs. Since 2003, Fatburger has been owned by Fog Cutter Capital Group Inc., a Santa Monica investment company of which Wiederhorn is also chairman and CEO. Self-starter : Wiederhorn grew up in a single-parent family in Portland; his father died when he was age 9. In high school, he hired a lawyer to help him get permits to rent out jet-skis on the Willamette River.

Jurors decided Monday that a gang member should be executed for the slaying of four people, including a 10-year-old boy gunned down from close range as he rode his bicycle along a quiet South Los Angeles street. Charles Ray Smith, 44, stared straight ahead and showed no emotion as the verdict was read in a downtown courtroom. Smith was convicted during a previous trial of taking part in two deadly shootings in 2006, including one that became known as the "49th Street Massacre" in which two men wielding AK-47s opened fire on children and adults enjoying a Friday summer afternoon.

Despite their mutual success in securing not guilty verdicts for O.J. Simpson, "Dream Team" defense attorney Robert L. Shapiro traded barbs with co-counsels Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and F. Lee Bailey on Tuesday night in separate televised interviews. Saying that he disagreed strongly with Cochran's decision to "play a race card" in the Simpson murder trial, Shapiro said he will never work with Cochran again.

More than 120 investigators and prosecutors looking into workers' compensation fraud in Southern California served search warrants Wednesday at 31 sites, including the homes and offices of a string of doctors and lawyers suspected of paying illicit kickbacks. The investigation is one of several major workers' compensation fraud probes launched by authorities in the region since the beginning of last year.

An Orange lawyer convicted of stealing from his clients to pay his gambling debts was sentenced Friday to eight years in state prison and ordered to repay more than $300,000 to his victims. After asking unsuccessfully to delay sentencing for two weeks so he could care for his ailing wife, who was also convicted in the thefts, attorney Leonard Basinger, 56, was taken into custody in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana.

Jurors decided Monday that a gang member should be executed for the slaying of four people, including a 10-year-old boy gunned down from close range as he rode his bicycle along a quiet South Los Angeles street. Charles Ray Smith, 44, stared straight ahead and showed no emotion as the verdict was read in a downtown courtroom. Smith was convicted during a previous trial of taking part in two deadly shootings in 2006, including one that became known as the "49th Street Massacre" in which two men wielding AK-47s opened fire on children and adults enjoying a Friday summer afternoon.

SANFORD, Fla. - When pastors, parishioners and the parents of slain teenager Trayvon Martin gathered in church recently to remember him, the mood differed from one that had prevailed at such vigils 15 months ago, when anger and sadness drove speakers to rail against a justice system that had let a killer walk free. This time, a choir belted out an upbeat, fast-tempo version of "We Shall Overcome. " Hundreds of people in the pews stood and pounded their hands together in hearty applause, as if greeting two rock stars, when Martin's parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, walked up the long aisle to the altar.

WASHINGTON - For years, embattled Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. has repeatedly vowed not to resign under pressure. But on Thursday he talked of "fatigue" and admitted he thought of a day when he would meet with the president at the White House to discuss moving on. Holder, testifying before a Senate appropriations subcommittee, sharply defended his work as the Obama administration's top federal law enforcement official. But he also said: "There are certain goals that I set for myself and for this department when I started back in 2009.

A gang member convicted of fatally shooting four people - including a 10-year-old boy riding a bicycle outside his home - deserves to die for his crimes, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday. Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Amy Ashvanian said Charles Ray Smith was responsible for two separate deadly shootings in 2006, including one that became known as the "49th Street Massacre" in which two men wielding AK47s opened fire on children and adults enjoying a Friday afternoon in summer on a quiet South Los Angeles street.

WASHINGTON - Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and his top Justice Department deputies met with journalists and their lawyers Friday and pledged they would not seek to prosecute reporters under the Espionage Act for reporting and writing stories that may disclose classified information. Holder and his aides also said they were looking closely at the department's guidelines that govern how prosecutors can seek information from journalists and news organizations. The officials focused particularly on provisions in the current rules that in some cases allow the government to obtain records regarding a reporter's telephone calls or emails.

WASHINGTON - Twenty years ago, James B. Comey was a young federal prosecutor in New York trying to put two Gambino brothers away for life. They were charged with murder, selling drugs, money laundering, racketeering - "the whole kitchen sink," recalled Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Comey's partner on the case. Fitzgerald was a young prosecutor back then too, and, like Comey, he also would make a name for himself in the years ahead as a crusading attorney in the Justice Department. But in 1993 they were just a pair of rather green prosecutors taking on two top "capos" in one of the nation's most notorious Mafia families.

All 50 state supreme court chief justices have endorsed a plan to let lawyers at publicly traded companies set aside client confidentiality to tell financial regulators about accounting fraud and other corporate wrongdoing. The Conference of Chief Justices said that disclosing information about a client is justified if it stops a crime that would hurt investors.

To understand what makes Skip Brittenham one of the most powerful entertainment attorneys in the country, picture him fly-fishing. Standing thigh-deep in one of his favorite roaring rivers, he knows just how to gauge where the biggest trout will be and which fly will catch its attention. Most important, he knows precisely when to strike.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. - With the stakes for their client literally life or death, defense attorneys for James E. Holmes on Thursday again challenged the constitutionality of Colorado's law governing insanity pleas. Holmes, 25, is accused in the July 20 massacre that killed 12 people and injured 70 others in a packed Aurora movie theater. He is charged with 166 counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons charges, and faces the death penalty if convicted. By law he cannot be put to death if found not guilty by reason of insanity - a plea his lawyers this month asked the court to accept.

A man accused of killing a Newport Beach doctor said in a jailhouse interview Friday that he was angry about the aftereffects of surgery performed on him about 21 years ago. "I'll admit, what I did was a terrible thing," Stanwood Elkus, 75, said during visiting hours at the Theo Lacy Facility, a jail in Orange. He didn't specify what "thing" he was referring to during the 10-minute interview. But he has pleaded not guilty to lying in wait before shooting Dr. Ronald Gilbert, 52, on Jan. 28 in a medical building exam room off Superior Avenue.