A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati overturned Donald Ayers' conviction of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and Roger Faulkenberry's conviction of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering, saying the government didn't provide enough proof.

Remaining in place are Ayers' convictions of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and securities fraud, and Faulkenberry's convictions of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., securities fraud and wire fraud.

Ayers, 74, is serving 15 years in Coleman federal prison in Florida after his 2008 conviction with Faulkenberry and four other top executives from National Century Financial Enterprises, a Columbus health care financing company. Federal prosecutors compared the case to Enron.

Faulkenberry, 49, is serving 10 years in Gilmer federal prison in West Virginia after his 2008 conviction.

After three days of testimony from former staffers, Allegheny County Judge Donna Jo McDaniel heard brief closing arguments and immediately ruled that the sisters were to stand trial on all charges.

Attorneys for both women said they were not surprised at the judge's decision but said they were confident of their chances at trial.

Jane Orie's attorney, William Costopoulous, called the evidence put forth by prosecutors as "trivial." He acknowledged staff members performed campaign work, but said they did so at their own volition or on compensatory time.

In a survey released today by the American Bar Association, judges indicated that a lack of representation in civil matters is hurting those individuals’ cases, and is negatively impacting courtrooms.

Approximately 1,000 state trial judges responded to the survey, which posed questions about their dockets, self-representation and the impact on the courts.  More than half of the judges stated that their dockets increased in 2009, with the most common areas of increase involving foreclosures, domestic relations, consumer issues such as debt, and non-foreclosure housing issues such as rental disputes. 

Sixty percent of judges said that fewer parties are being represented by lawyers, with 62 percent saying that parties are negatively impacted by not being represented.  The impact is exemplified, through a failure to present necessary evidence (94 percent), procedural errors (89 percent), ineffective witness examination (85 percent), failure to properly object to evidence (81 percent) and ineffective argument (77 percent).

The ABA has a resource page on its website that can help individuals find legal assistance — www.findlegalhelp.org.  

During a time when state budgets are constrained, agencies as well as courts are being asked to become more efficient.  However, the increase in non-represented parties makes this more difficult for courts.  The lack of representation has a negative impact on the court, said 78 percent of the judges, and 90 percent of judges stated that court procedures are slowed when parties are not represented.

Nearly half of the judges responding believe that there is a middle-class gap with respect to access to justice, stating that the number of people who are not represented and who do not qualify for aid has increased.

Lamm announced the findings during a news conference earlier today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. 

The survey of judges on the impact of the economic downturn on representation in the courts was conducted for the ABA Coalition for Justice.  Respondents came from around the country.

Two conservative-driven decisions with potentially broad consequences will likely define the just-completed Supreme Court term: freeing corporations and unions to spend as much as they like in campaigns for Congress and president, and ruling that Americans have a right to a gun for self-defense wherever they live.

A key member of the five-justice majorities in both cases, and the author of the guns opinion, was Justice Samuel Alito. Though he has been on the court less than five years, Alito has had an outsize influence in firming up the court's conservative bloc.

His appointment to replace the more moderate Sandra Day O'Connor, more than any other choice in the last decade shows the importance of Supreme Court nominations. It also points up that Elena Kagan's nomination to take the place of the like-minded John Paul Stevens almost certainly will not have the same short-term impact as Alito has had.

"Of all the changes in personnel during this time of rapid change at the court, the Alito-for-O'Connor switch has clearly been the most consequential," said Paul Clement, who was top Supreme Court lawyer for then-President George W. Bush.

Indeed, nothing is likely to alter the court's current path in either direction unless President Barack Obama has the chance to replace a right-leaning justice, or a future Republican president gets to add another solid conservative vote.

The conservative trend on the court might be even stronger as long as Democrats hold Congress and the White House, said Paul Smith of the Jenner and Block law firm in Washington. "The conservative majority is going to continue to feel a need to push back in a lot of areas," Smith said.

The credit, or criticism, for many of the court's high-profile decisions goes variously to Chief Justice John Roberts, the putative leader of the court's conservatives, or Justice Anthony Kennedy, who dislikes the label "swing justice," but is always in the majority when the other eight justices split along liberal and conservative lines.

Their influence certainly was in evidence this term. Roberts was in the majority more than any other justice — 92 percent of the time — and Kennedy wrote the campaign finance decision as well as one in which the liberal justices prevailed, ruling out life prison terms with no prospect of parole for juvenile offenders in other than murder cases.