The Minnesota Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling Thursday in the fight over a ballot question about the future of policing in Minneapolis, but it didn’t settle the bigger question of whether the public will get to vote on the issue.

Chief Justice Lorie Gildea’s ruling lifted a small part of a lower court’s order that rejected the ballot language approved by the City Council, saying that elections officials don’t have to include notes with ballots instructing people not to vote on the question and that any votes won’t be counted.

The order didn’t address the main issue in dispute — whether voters will get to decide on a proposed charter amendment that would replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety that “could include” police officers “if necessary.”

The proposal has its roots in the “defund the police” movement that gained steam after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody last summer, but it leaves critical details about the new agency to be determined later.

The Supreme Court was under pressure to rule quickly because early and absentee voting opens Friday in the Minneapolis municipal elections, and ballots have already been printed.

Terrance Moore, an attorney for the Yes 4 Minneapolis campaign, which spearheaded the proposal, said he expects a ruling on the bigger question to come at some point later. The city attorney’s office agreed that the high court has yet to rule on the main issues.

Joe Anthony, an attorney for former City Council member Don Samuels and two other people who challenged the ballot language as misleading, called the order “a little mysterious.” He noted the lower court injunction barring counting and reporting votes was left in place, at least for the moment. There are a few possibilities for what could happen next, he said, including the Supreme Court taking time for fuller arguments, then deciding by Nov. 2 whether the votes cast would count.

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed the third-degree murder conviction of a former Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot an Australian woman in 2017, saying the charge doesn’t fit the circumstances in the case.

Mohamed Noor was convicted of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a dual U.S.-Australian citizen who called 911 to report a possible sexual assault behind her home. He was sentenced to 12 1/2 years on the murder count but was not sentenced for manslaughter.

The ruling means his murder conviction is overturned and the case will now go back to the district court, where he will be sentenced on the manslaughter count. He has already served more than 28 months of his murder sentence. If sentenced to the presumptive four years for manslaughter, he could be eligible for supervised release around the end of this year.

Caitlinrose Fisher, one of the attorneys who worked on Noor’s appeal, said she’s grateful that the Minnesota Supreme Court clarified what constitutes third-degree murder, and she hopes that will lead to greater equity and consistency in charging decisions.

“We’ve said from the beginning that this was a tragedy but it wasn’t a murder, and now the Supreme Court agrees and recognizes that,” she said.

Messages left Wednesday with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, were not immediately returned.

The ruling could give former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin grounds to contest his own third-degree murder conviction in George Floyd’s death in May 2020. But that wouldn’t have much impact on Chauvin since he was also convicted of the more serious count of second-degree murder and is serving 22 1/2 years. Experts say it’s unlikely Chauvin would be successful in appealing his second-degree murder conviction.

The ruling in Noor’s case was also closely watched for its possible impact on three other former Minneapolis officers awaiting trial in Floyd’s death. Prosecutors had wanted to add charges of aiding and abetting third-degree murder against them, but that’s unlikely to happen now. The trio are due to go on trial in March on charges of aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and manslaughter.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is considering President Joe Biden’s nomination of a Vermont judge who played a role in the state’s passage of the first-in-the-nation civil unions law, a forerunner of same-sex marriage, to become the first openly LGBT woman to serve on any federal circuit court.

At the start of the Tuesday hearing, Democratic U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, called the nomination of Beth Robinson, an associate justice on the Vermont Supreme Court, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit “truly historic.” The court’s territory includes Connecticut, New York and Vermont.

“She’s been hailed as a tireless champion for equal rights and equal justice in the mode of the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” Leahy said as he introduced Robinson. “It’s no exaggeration to say that Beth helped Vermont and America more fully realizing the meaning of equality under the law.”

Robinson helped argue the case that led to Vermont’s 2000 civil unions law. She has served on the Vermont Supreme Court since 2011.

She “has built a reputation for her impartiality, and fair application of the law,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, in his introduction. “She treats people with respect and compassion and she understands the duty of the court to provide equitable justice.”

Robinson told the committee that she would be honored to continue her work promoting the rule of law as a judge on the 2nd circuit.

Jury selection began Monday in the retrial of a Massachusetts man whose murder conviction was overturned by the state supreme court in Maine.

Marcus Asante, of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, was sentenced to 35 years as the convicted triggerman in a drug-related killing in Sherman, Maine, before his conviction was overturned last year.

It was the first murder conviction to be set aside in more than a decade in Maine.

Asante was accused of shooting Douglas Morin Jr., of Oakland, nine times during a drug deal in October 2016.

Asante testified that he fired in self-defense when Morin pulled out a gun after the deal was called off.

The supreme court ruled that a judge erred in instructions to jurors, allowing the jury to reach “a verdict based on impermissible criteria.”

The original trial was held in Aroostook County, where the crime took place, but the retrial was moved to Androscoggin County.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has rejected a request to remove two members of the state’s Pardon and Parole Board from a high-profile death penalty case.

The court’s brief ruling on Friday denied a prosecutor’s request to remove Adam Luck and Kelly Doyle from considering the commutation request of Julius Jones, who was sentenced to death for the 1999 killing of Edmond businessman Paul Howell.

The ruling came after a lawyer for District Attorney David Prater argued before a court referee that unless members Luck and Doyle were barred from taking part in the decision, the five-member board would likely recommend that Jones’ sentence be commuted following a hearing Monday.

Prater, who argued that Luck and Doyle have a conflict of interest because of their work with released inmates, said in a statement that he respects the high court’s decision.

“This is the system I operate in every day and I believe in it, though decisions don’t always go as I desire,” Prater wrote.

Prater said his office is prepared to present “the truth of the circumstances” surrounding the fatal shooting of Howell during a carjacking.

“If the Board objectively considers the truth, they will quickly vote to deny the killer’s commutation request,” Prater said.

Attorneys for Luck and Doyle didn’t immediately reply to Saturday phone messages seeking comment.

Jones’ attorney, Michael Lieberman, said he is pleased the ruling came quickly.

“We’re certainly very grateful to the Supreme Court for getting that issue resolved as quickly as they did,” Lieberman said. “We’re looking forward to Monday, going before the parole board to prove that (Jones) is innocent.”

The board could recommend downgrading Jones’ sentence to life in prison with or without the possibility of parole, but Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt would make the final decision.

Prater vowed to oppose a commutation recommendation should the board send it to the governor. Jones, now 41, has maintained his innocence since his arrest and alleges he was framed by the actual killer, a high school friend and former co-defendant who was a key state witness against him.

His case drew widespread attention after it was profiled in “The Last Defense,” a three-episode documentary produced by actress Viola Davis that aired on ABC in 2018. It has since drawn the attention of reality television star Kim Kardashian West and athletes with Oklahoma ties, including NBA stars Russell Westbrook, Blake Griffin and Trae Young, who have urged Stitt to commute Jones’ death sentence and spare his life.

Prater and former state Attorney General Mike Hunter have said the evidence against Jones is overwhelming. Information from trial transcripts shows that witnesses identified Jones as the shooter and placed him with Howell’s stolen vehicle. Investigators found the murder weapon and a bandana with Jones’ DNA in an attic space above his bedroom, but Jones claims in his commutation filing that the gun and bandana were planted there by the actual killer.

Jones also maintains his trial was contaminated by a racist juror, but Hunter has noted that the trial court and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals found otherwise.

Supporters of Jones plan a prayer service and a rally Monday in support of his commutation application.

“Julius Jones will finally have a chance to tell his story,” said the Rev. Cece Jones-Davis of Justice for Julius, who is not related to Julius Jones. “We believe the truth will set him free.”

A retired Navy officer from Rhode Island has been sentenced to serve life in prison for sexually abusing a child for years.

U.S. District Judge John McConnell ordered retired Lt. Cdr. Ronald Zenga to serve the rest of his natural life in federal prison on Friday in Providence federal court, WPRI-TV reports.

Zenga tearfully apologized to the victim and others he’d hurt in court. His lawyer argued for leniency, saying he suffered from mental illness and was capable of rehabilitation.

But the victim’s mother described Zenga as manipulative and incapable of remorse.

Zenga, who had been stationed at the Naval War College in Newport, pleaded guilty to coercion and distributing and possessing child pornography last November. He’d previously pleaded not guilty to eight charges.

Authorities say Zenga used a Russian website to communicate with a law enforcement agent in England, where the case started, to graphically describe an ongoing sexual encounter with a child.

The federal indictment against him showed he had transported the underage victim across state lines and another country for sex over the course of nearly a decade.

Prosecutors say the abuse happened while he was actively serving and continued into his retirement from the Navy in 2017.

Australia’s highest court on Friday agreed to hear a challenge to a police officer using his law enforcement job as a defense against a charge of murdering an Indigenous man.

Constable Zachary Rolfe could become the first police officer to be convicted in Australia of unlawfully killing an Indigenous person.

Rolfe shot Kumanjayi Walker three times in a bedroom of his family home in the central Australian Indigenous township of Yuendumu during an attempted arrest on Nov. 9, 2019.

Walker had stabbed Rolfe with a pair of scissors during a struggle. The murder charge relates to the second and third shots that killed the 19-year-old and that prosecutors allege were unnecessary.

Three High Court judges on Friday agreed to hear a challenge by prosecutors to the Northern Territory Supreme Court’s interpretation of defenses available to Rolfe.

Five Supreme Court judges found that Rolfe could claim immunity from criminal liability under a law that protects police officers acting “in good faith in the performance or purported performance” of law enforcement duties.

The judges ruled that a jury should decide whether Rolfe’s actions fitted the criteria of the immunity clause.

But prosecutors had argued that that defense should not be available to Rolfe.

Body-cam footage allegedly recorded Rolfe explain that he fired the fatal shots to prevent his partner Constable Adam Eberl from being stabbed.

Prosecutors argued that because Rolfe was protecting Eberl, he was no longer trying to arrest Walker and was therefore not indemnified by the Northern Territory Police Administration Act.

Prosecutor Philip Strickland told the three High Court judges on Friday that if their court did not decide the indemnity question, Rolfe could be acquitted on an incorrect interpretation of the law.