Former radio talk show host Gregg T. Rennie pleaded guilty in US District Court in Boston to charges related to a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, and now faces up to up to 20 years in prison on each of 13 counts of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud.

Prosecutors said the 44-year-old Quincy resident stole at least $3.2 million from victims, including elderly retirees, a church congregation saving for a new building, and listeners of his radio show, “Your Money.’’

Rennie told investors he could offer a guaranteed rate of return in risk-free federal housing certificates and annuities. But instead of investing the money, he used it to fund his expenses, prosecutors said. To conceal the fraud, Rennie made periodic payments to some victims, showed them prospectuses, and sent victims bogus invoices.

NFL Hall of Famer Bruce Smith pleaded guilty today in Circuit Court to a charge of drunken driving. Prosecutors dropped the charges of speeding and refusing to submit to a blood or breath alcohol test but retained the right to refile them.

Smith was fined $1,000 and was sentenced to 90 days in jail, all of which was suspended. His license was suspended for one year.

After the hearing, Smith said he thought he had a 50/50 chance of beating the DUI charge but then still would have had to face the charge of refusal to take a breath test. “The risk versus the reward was not in our favor,” he said.

Los Angeles authorities have officially changed the death certificate belonging to late King of Pop, Michael Jackson to reflect an exact cause of death.

Updated due to the completion of a lengthy investigation, Jackson's cause of death has now been labeled a murder due to 'acute Propofol intoxication' via an 'intravenous injection from another'.

Jackson's original death certificate was filed July 7.

While the official cause of death has been revealed, embattled Dr. Conrad Murray remains a free man.

Sources say the Jackson family, specifically Joe Jackson, still believe more than one person is responsible for the entertainer's death.

"Joe won't give up on getting justice for his son and a lawsuit is his focus," a source told Daily Mail.

New York's top court has rejected Dan Rather's bid to reinstate his $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp.

Rather's motion was denied without comment Tuesday by the Court of Appeals.

CBS spokeswoman Shannon Jacobs says the network is pleased with the outcome. A call to Rather's lawyer was not immediately returned.

Rather sued CBS and its top executives in 2007, claiming he had been wrongfully removed from his "CBS Evening News" anchor post over a report that examined President George W. Bush's military service.

In September, a five-member Appellate Division panel unanimously concluded there was no breach of contract because CBS still paid Rather his $6 million annual salary after the disputed 2004 broadcast.

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously in Smith v. Spisak that the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit contravened the directives of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) by extending Mills v. Maryland  to resolve in a habeas petitioner's favor questions that were not decided or addressed in Mills. The Sixth Circuit ruled that the jury instructions in defendant John Spisak, Jr's trial violated Mills by requiring unanimity in the finding that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating factors. In reversing the decision below, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote:

The Court of Appeals held the sentencing instructions unconstitutional because, in its view, the instructions, taken together with the forms, "required" juror "unanimity as to the presence of a mitigating factor" - contrary to this Court's holding in Mills v. Maryland. Since the parties do not dispute that the Ohio courts "adjudicated" this claim, i.e., they considered and rejected it "on the merits," the law permits a federal court to reach a contrary decision only if the state-court decision "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." Unlike the Court of Appeals, we conclude that Spisak's claim does not satisfy this standard.