A former western Massachusetts police chief who organized a gun fair was found not guilty of all charges in the 2008 death of an 8-year-old boy who accidentally shot himself in the head with an Uzi submachine gun.

Edward Fleury cried and hugged his attorney and family Friday after he was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter and three counts of furnishing machine guns to minors in the death of Christopher Bizilj on Oct. 26, 2008. Several of Christopher's relatives quickly left the courtroom without commenting.

The former Pelham, Mass., police chief said he regretted holding the machine gun shoot and will never do it again.

"I want to express my heartfelt sympathy to the Bizilj family," the 53-year-old Fleury said in a courthouse hallway to a throng of TV cameras and reporters. "It was always meant to be an educational event for people and it's unfortunate this terrible accident happened."

He said his arrest and the trial were devastating to him and that he would rather be "dropped into hell than go through this again."

Fleury's firearms training company co-sponsored the annual Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo at the Westfield Sportsman's Club, about 10 miles west of Springfield. Christopher, of Ashford, Conn., was shooting a 9 mm micro Uzi at pumpkins when the gun kicked back and shot him in the head.

Gov. Mitch Daniels has appointed new judges in two central Indiana counties.

The governor's office says Daniels appointed J. Jeffrey Edens as judge of the Boone Circuit Court. Edens succeeds Justice Steven David, who was appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court in September. Edens has been serving as judge pro tempore since David's appointment.

Edens is a former Boone County chief deputy prosecutor and past president of the Boone County Chamber of Commerce.

Daniels also appointed David Riggins as a Shelby County Superior Court judge. Riggins succeeds Judge Russell Sanders, who announced his retirement in August.

The state Supreme Court ruled on Friday that possession of more than 8 pounds of marijuana is a serious enough charge to warrant forcing medication on a defendant so he is competent to stand trial.

The high court's 7-0 ruling came in the case of 30-year-old Christopher Seekins of Torrington, who authorities say has been ruled incompetent to stand trial because he refuses to take psychotropic medication for bipolar disorder. Justices upheld a lower court judge's order to medicate Seekins against his will.

State law says a defendant can be involuntarily medicated if the crime is serious enough and there is an overriding law enforcement interest in determining whether the defendant is innocent or guilty. Seekins argued that possessing marijuana isn't a serious crime.

Seekins' lawyer, Richard Marquette, declined to comment on the ruling Friday through an employee at his Hamden law firm.

Seekins also made headlines in 2005 when he painted large pictures of marijuana leaves on his Winsted home with the word "hemp" beneath them after being charged with growing marijuana, saying it was in support of legalizing the drug. He later agreed in a plea bargain to remove or cover up the paintings, which caused a ruckus in town because they were visible from busy Main Street.

Justice Richard Palmer, a former prosecutor, wrote in the Supreme Court's ruling that the basis for determining whether a crime is serious is the severity of the sentence it potentially carries. Palmer noted that Seekins faces a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years in prison if convicted of just three of the many charges he faces.

The fate of the largest job bias lawsuit in the nation's history — a claim that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. shortchanged women in pay and promotions for many years — hinges on whether the Supreme Court will let the class-action case go to trial.

The court is likely to announce as soon as Monday whether it will hear the retail giant's appeal asserting that a single lawsuit cannot speak for more than 1.5 million employees.

Business lawyers and civil rights advocates are closely following the Wal-Mart case for its implications for class-action litigation.
"This may sound like just a technical, procedural issue, but because of the economics of it, class-action certification is often the most important issue to be decided," said Washington lawyer Roy T. Englert Jr.

If the high court permits the Wal-Mart case to proceed as a class action, it will put enormous pressure on the retailer to settle, he said. The plaintiffs have not specified the damages they would seek, but given the size of the class, it could mount into billions of dollars.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several large corporations have joined with Wal-Mart, the nation's largest employer, in urging the high court to hear the appeal and to restrict the use of class-action claims.

They argue that it is unfair to permit plaintiffs' lawyers to lump together many thousands of employees from stores spread across the country and to rely on statistics to prove illegal discrimination.

An industrial espionage trial between Oracle Corp. and SAP AG, two of the world's biggest business software makers, ended Friday without the testimony of one of its most anticipated witnesses.

The evidence part of the three-week trial wrapped up Friday without an in-person appearance by the new CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., Leo Apotheker, and without Oracle playing a videotaped deposition he gave.

The cat-and-mouse game of Oracle trying to force Apotheker to testify, and HP refusing to allow it, has captivated technology watchers and overshadowed Apotheker's start as head of the world's biggest technology company by revenue.

Oracle wanted Apotheker to testify because he was previously SAP's CEO.

But Oracle says that HP refused to accept a subpoena on Apotheker's behalf. HP accused Oracle of harassing Apotheker.

Oracle hired investigators to track down Apotheker, but since he started the HP job Nov. 1, he wasn't spotted close enough to the federal courthouse in Oakland, where the case is being tried, for Oracle to serve him with the subpoena. The subpoena only applies within 100 miles of the courthouse, which includes HP's headquarters in Palo Alto.

HP hasn't disclosed Apotheker's whereabouts. Representatives have