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.

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.

In what is believed to be the largest single plaintiff award to dateagainst a tobacco company, a Florida jury awarded $300 million incompensatory and punitive damages to a former smoker who filed alawsuit against Philip Morris USA over her emphysema.

Cindy Naugle, 61, was awarded $56.6 million for past and futuremedical expenses, as well as pain and suffering. The jury from BrowardCounty Circuit Court also levied a $244 million punitive damage awardagainst the tobacco company.

Naugle, who said that she began smoking in 1968 to make herself lookolder, alleged that she would have never started smoking if she hadknown of the potential health effects. The smoker’s lawsuit claimedthat the tobacco companies knew smoking caused a variety of lungdiseases, but kept those side effects hidden.

As a result of smoking for about 25 years, Naugle claimed that shesuffers from emphysema, requires around-the-clock oxygen and isconfined to a wheelchair due to how easily she is winded. The juryfound her to be 10% responsible for her own condition, meaning thatwhile Philip Morris is responsible for all of the punitive damages; itis only responsible for 90% of the compensatory damages.

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A jury has found the former manger of a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa guilty on 86 of 91 financial fraud charges.

The verdict against Sholom Rubashkin came Thursday evening after a nearly monthlong trial.

Rubashkin was charged with bank, mail and wire fraud, money laundering and ignoring orders to pay cattle providers in the time required by federal law.

The charges were linked to Rubashkin's job as a top manager at the former Agriprocessor's plant in Postville, Iowa. He was arrested months after a May 2008 immigration raid there that led to the arrest of 389 workers.