The appeals court in Washington ruled that the White House Office of Administration is not an agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act, allowing the White House to keep secret documents about an e-mail system that has been plagued with problems.

During its first term, the Bush White House failed to install electronic record-keeping for e-mail when it switched to a new system, resulting in millions of messages that could not be found. The Bush White House discovered the problem in 2005 and rejected a proposed solution.

A group known as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued to get documents about the office's electronic record-keeping, including reports analyzing system problems, plans to find the missing e-mails and create an improved system and records of any retained messages.

In response to court orders in the case, the White House disclosed that it has located nearly 3,500 pages of documents about problems with its e-mail system. But the Bush administration argued in this case for the first time that the office's records are not subject to public disclosure, even though it had responded to hundreds of other FOIA requests in the past decade and even included instructions on its Web site for filing them.

Donald Lee Gilson, 48, proclaimed his innocence in the death of Shane Coffman before he was injected in Oklahoma with a lethal combination of drugs.

"I'm an innocent man but ... I get to go to heaven and I'll see Shane tonight," he said in his final statement. He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m.

Gilson's parents, sister, a friend and a pastor witnessed the execution, and about a dozen members of the victim's family watched from behind a one-way glass.

He became the second person to be executed this year in Oklahoma.

In 1998, Gilson was convicted of first-degree murder in Shane's death in 1995. An autopsy showed fractures to the boy's skull, his collarbone, shoulder blades, ribs, legs and spine and a tooth missing from his jaw.

Court records indicate that four other children who lived with Gilson and girlfriend Bertha Jean Coffman in a mobile home in Cleveland County showed abuse, and two of the children were emaciated. One of the children told investigators that Gilson beat the boy with a board and then placed him in a bathtub as punishment for going to the bathroom on a rug.

Not guilty pleas were entered on behalf of Adam Cuomo of Hagersville, Ontario, and Quinton Broussard of Carrollton, Texas.

The FBI says Cuomo, 31, incriminated himself during an interview in December 2006. Authorities also have recordings of phone calls between him and Ghazi "Gary" Manni of Sterling Heights.

In December 2005, the talk turned to how a reluctant basketball player had agreed to shave points.

"Cuomo responded by saying that money will overcome all," FBI agent Stephen Ferrari said in a court document unsealed last month.

Cuomo is charged with conspiring with Manni, Mitchell "Ed" Karam and others to fix the results of Toledo football and basketball games, from late 2004 through 2006.

He met Manni through the owner of a phone shop in Toledo, Ohio, the FBI says.

On Sunday, Nicholas Sampson filed paperwork to add David Kofoed, commander of the Douglas County CSI unit, and the Douglas County Sheriff's Office to a 2007 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court against the Nebraska State Patrol and the Cass County Sheriff's Office.

The amendment says Kofoed violated Sampson's constitutional rights by planting a speck of blood in a car Sampson had driven.

Sampson spent five months in jail after being wrongfully charged in the deaths of Wayne and Sharmon Stock. The couple were found slain in their Cass County farmhouse on April 17, 2006. Both had been shot in the head at close range with a shotgun.

"Law enforcement involved with the Stock investigation insists that the case against Nick Sampson remains an open case," said Sampson's attorney, Maren Chaloupka. "I find that ironic, given that the only person currently under indictment is one of their own."

Kofoed, 52, was charged Wednesday in Cass County Court with evidence tampering and was indicted a day later on four federal charges, including falsifying records.

His attorney, Steve Lefler, has said Kofoed may have made some mistakes in the case, but they did not rise to the level of criminal misconduct.

President Barack Obama won more than 48 percent of the vote in November in this overwhelmingly white community northwest of the state capital.

Yet Canyon Creek, the heart of Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One, is the site of a major Supreme Court battle over the federal government's often used and most effective tool in preventing voting discrimination against minorities.

The utility district's elected five-person board manages a local park and pays down bond debt. Because it is in Texas, the board is covered by a section of the Voting Rights Act that requires approval from the Justice Department before any changes can be made in how elections are conducted.

That requirement applies to all or parts of 16 states, mostly in the South, with a history of preventing blacks, Hispanics and other minorities from voting.

The utility district is challenging that section of the law, which Congress extended in 2006 for 25 years. The Obama administration is defending it.

The Voting Rights Act, enacted in 1965, opened the polls to millions of black Americans. The law "has been the most important and transformative civil rights act in our country's history," said John Payton, director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

The federal government has used the provision, known as Section 5, to "stop things that would have perverted our democracy," Payton said. His group represents Texans and organizations seeking to preserve the section.

On the other side are the utility district, an array of conservative legal groups and some Southern Republicans.