The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a case over whether a federal agent should face a third trial over a fatal 2011 shooting in a Waikiki McDonald's restaurant.

The refusal means prosecutors can't pursue a manslaughter charge against U.S. State Department Special Agent Christopher Deedy. “The impact of this is that the manslaughter charge is now dismissed permanently and that Mr. Deedy cannot be tried again on it,” Deedy's defense attorney Thomas Otake said in an email Thursday.

The case isn't over, said Brooks Baehr, a spokesman for the Honolulu prosecuting attorney's office. A statement from the office called the decision “regrettable" but said the state will continue to pursue a trial for first-degree assault.

Prosecutors pursing a third trial took their quest to the Supreme Court after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request for a wider panel of judges to hear the case. A panel ruled that if prosecutors want to try Deedy a third time, it can only be for assault, not manslaughter.

A divided federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the dismissal of the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, turning back efforts by a judge to scrutinize the Justice Department’s extraordinary decision to drop the prosecution.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said in a 2-1 ruling that the Justice Department’s move to abandon the case against Flynn settles the matter, even though Flynn pleaded guilty as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation to lying to the FBI.

The ruling, a significant win for both Flynn and the Justice Department, appears to cut short what could have been a protracted legal fight over the basis for the government’s dismissal of the case. It came as Democrats question whether the Justice Department has become too politicized and Attorney General William Barr too quick to side with the president, particularly as he vocally criticizes, and even undoes, some of the results of the Russia investigation.

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Wednesday centered on another unusual move by Barr to overrule his own prosecutors and ask for less prison time for another Trump associate, Roger Stone. Barr has accepted an invitation to testify before the panel on July 28, a spokeswoman said Wednesday, and he will almost certainly be pressed about the Flynn case.

Trump tweeted just moments after the ruling became public: “Great! Appeals Court Upholds Justice Departments Request to Drop Criminal Case Against General Michael Flynn.”

Later, at the White House, Trump told reporters he was happy for Flynn.

“He was treated horribly by a group of very bad people,” Trump said. “What happened to Gen. Flynn should never happen in our country.”

Flynn called into conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and said the ruling was a good development for him and his family. But he also called it “great boost of confidence for the American people in our justice system because that’s what this really comes down to — is whether or not our justice system is going to have the confidence of the American people.”

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan had declined to immediately dismiss the case, seeking instead to evaluate on his own the department’s request. He appointed a retired federal judge to argue against the Justice Department’s position and to consider whether Flynn could be held in criminal contempt for perjury. He had set a July 16 hearing to formally hear the request to dismiss the case.

A Washington sheriff has asked the state's highest court to reject legal arguments seeking his removal.

The Daily Herald reported attorneys for Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney are seeking a state Supreme Court review of a lower court ruling allowing an effort to unseat him to move forward.

The Committee to Recall Sheriff Fortney accuses him of violating his statutory duties and endangering community peace and safety by saying in an April 21 social media post that he would not enforce Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee's coronavirus stay-at-home order. The group also leveled other accusations of office misuse by Fortney.

An Irish truck driver appeared in an English court Wednesday, accused of the manslaughter of 39 people who were found dead in a container in southeastern England in an apparent people-smuggling tragedy.

Ronan Hughes, 40, appeared by at Southend Magistrates Court, east of London, by video link from a police station, after being extradited from Ireland.

The Vietnamese nationals were found Oct. 23 in an industrial park in the English town of Grays inside a refrigerated container that had arrived by ferry from Belgium.

The victims came from impoverished villages in Vietnam and are believed to have paid people smugglers to take them on risky journeys to better lives abroad.

The truck’s driver, Maurice Robinson, 25, admitted 39 counts of manslaughter in April. He had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.

Hughes wasn't asked to enter a plea and was ordered detained until a plea hearing at London's Central Criminal Court on July 22.

The state of Ohio continued Monday to defend its right to impose normal signature requirements on ballot issue campaigns amid the global pandemic.

Uncertainty over the question prompted a voting-rights campaign to suspend its ballot effort last week, but minimum wage and marijuana decriminalization issues remain.

In a filing with the U.S. Supreme Court, Republican Attorney General Dave Yost’s attorneys argued that a lower court judge who had temporarily relaxed the rules effectively “rewrote Ohio’s Constitution and Revised Code.”

The state also argued that changing signature-gathering rules now would lead to “last-minute confusion” and the possible wrongful passage of issues this fall. The argument has an ironic twist, since some of the delay pushing the campaigns closer to the signature deadline has been caused by the litigation itself.

U.S. District Court Judge Edmund Sargus Jr. set up the more flexible rules in a May 19 decision. They would have allowed campaigns promoting minimum wage, voting rights and marijuana issues to collect signatures electronically. Sargus had also extended the deadline for submitting signatures by about a month, to July 31.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked those less restrictive rules from kicking in. Justices have been asked to decide whether failing to accommodate ballot campaigns during the time of COVID-19 violates their constitutional right to access Ohio’s ballot.

A decision by the justices will no longer help what was the most high-profile of Ohio’s fall ballot campaigns. Ohioans for Safe and Secure Elections, which advanced election-law changes aiming to make voting easier, suspended its campaign last week as its protracted fight to proceed with the effort neared the June 30 filing deadline.

The Supreme Court on Monday preserved an important tool used by securities regulators to recoup ill-gotten gains in fraud cases.

By an 8-1 vote, the justices ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission can seek to recover the money through a process called disgorgement. Last year, the SEC obtained $3.2 billion in repayment of profits from people who have been found to violate securities law.

“The Court holds today that a disgorgement award that does not exceed a wrongdoer’s net profits and is awarded for victims is equitable relief permissible" under federal law, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. The Supreme Court in 2017 unanimously limited the SEC’s ability to go after profits where alleged fraud has been going on for years before authorities file charges. That case left open the question the high court answered Monday, that courts have the authority to order disgorgement of profits. The SEC has continued to aggressively pursue defendants’ profits in fraud cases.

The state Health Department’s effort to shut down a large auto show in central Pennsylvania over claims it represents a risk to the public will be the subject of an emergency hearing, a state court said late Wednesday.

The order from Commonwealth Court scheduled a Thursday morning hearing at the judicial center in Harrisburg, with social distancing rules because of the pandemic.

The unsigned order also declined to immediately shut down Spring Carlisle over the state’s claim the event runs afoul of a 250-person limit for gatherings in Cumberland County.

Attendees streamed into the fairgrounds Wednesday, the first day of the event put on by defendant Carlisle Productions Inc., also known as Carlisle Events. It is scheduled to run through Saturday.

Business closures and social distancing have saved lives, lawyers for the Health Department said.

“When individuals choose to ignore those safeguards — such as by holding an event anticipating 100,000 attendees — they put the lives of Pennsylvanians at risk and threaten to reverse the significant progress that has been made to resolve this crisis. That dangerous conduct must be stopped before it can occur,” they told the court.

Carlisle Events has held the spring auto show at the Carlisle Fairgrounds since 1976. It typically draws about 100,000 people, although organizers say they expect a smaller crowd for this year’s event.