An internal tug-of-war over control of jailed polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs' southern Utah-based church may force Utah courts to walk a constitutional tightrope that experts say could tread a little too close to separation of church and state.

The presidency of the 10,000-member Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has been in question since March 28, when church bishop William E. Jessop filed papers with the Utah Department of Commerce seeking to unseat Jeffs as president of the church corporation. Under state law, the move automatically put Jessop in power.

That set into motion a flurry of filings from Jeffs loyalists removing Jessop and claiming that some 4,000 church members have pledged their loyalty to their incarcerated leader.

Monday marks the deadline set by commerce officials for both parties to resolve the dispute or a legal showdown might be set in motion since, if no agreement is reached, the state says power will revert back to Jeffs.

The doctor charged in Michael Jackson's death returns to court Monday to ask for a delay in his upcoming involuntary manslaughter trial.

The move comes two days before jury selection resumes, and one week before opening statements are scheduled to begin.

Dr. Conrad Murray had been seeking a speedy trial, but his attorneys asked for a delay late Friday to give them more time to prepare to rebut the opinions of newly-disclosed prosecution experts.

The Houston-based cardiologist is accused of giving Jackson a lethal dose of the anesthetic propofol in the bedroom of the singer's rented mansion in June 2009. Murray has pleaded not guilty.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor said Friday that he would consider the delay request, but would not necessarily grant it.

A doctor will pay a second visit to a Portuguese model accused of castrating and killing a TV journalist in a Times Square hotel before his lawyer decides whether to pursue a psychiatric defense in the attack.

A psychiatrist visited Renato Seabra this month but needs a second evaluation of the 21-year-old model, defense attorney David Touger said Friday. Seabra was transferred two weeks ago from Bellevue Hospital to jail at Rikers Island, Touger said.

"He is medicated because he has a psychiatric illness. He is doing well under the circumstances that he is under," Touger said after a short pretrial hearing in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Seabra, a former contestant on a Portuguese talent-search show, has pleaded not guilty to murder in Carlos Castro's Jan. 7 death. Castro, a 65-year-old Portuguese TV personality and writer, was found dead, naked and bloodied in a room they were sharing.

A man charged under an Ohio fetal homicide law with trying to force his pregnant girlfriend at gunpoint to get an abortion pleaded guilty Thursday to attempted murder, weapons and abduction counts.

Dominic Holt-Reid pulled a gun Oct. 6 on girlfriend Yolanda Burgess, who was three months pregnant, and forced her to drive to an abortion clinic, police said. Burgess, who was 26 at the time, did not go through with the procedure but instead passed a note to a clinic employee, who called police.

Prosecutors had brought their case against Holt-Reid using the state's 1996 law that says a person can be found guilty of murder for causing the unlawful termination of a pregnancy.

Holt-Reid, 28, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $40,000 fine. A presentencing investigation was ordered, and the next hearing was scheduled for June 9.

Holt-Reid had previously pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, kidnapping, improper handling of a firearm and carrying a concealed weapon. His guilty pleas in Franklin County Common Pleas Court came a day after Prosecutor Ron O'Brien told The Associated Press in a statement that a plea deal was in the works.

Texas has long considered beaches to be public property up to the vegetation line, but a Supreme Court ruling put that in doubt. In November, the court cited early Texas history and ruled that Galveston Island's West Beach could be considered private property.

The Supreme Court agreed to rehear the case on Tuesday morning after the General Land Office complained the more recent Open Beaches Act superseded the earlier law.

The lawsuit arose after Hurricane Rita eroded the sand and left several homes on the beach. The GLO tried to foreclose on those structures, but the property owner took the state to court.

The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the first scheduled execution of a Texas death row inmate using a new drug cocktail on Tuesday, although the proposed lethal mix was not mentioned in the court's decision to reconsider the merits of the condemned man's appeal.

Cleve Foster was to have been executed hours later for the 2002 slaying of a Sudanese woman in Fort Worth — the first Texas execution since the state switched to pentobarbital in its three-drug mixture. The sedative has already been used for executions in Oklahoma and Ohio.

On Tuesday morning, the high court agreed to reconsider its January order denying Foster's appeal that raised claims of innocence and poor legal help during his trial and early stages of his appeals.

Foster's lawyers also have argued that Texas prison officials violated administrative procedures last month when they announced the switch to pentobarbital from sodium thiopental, which is in short supply nationwide. Foster's lawyers contend that the rules change in Texas required more time for public comment and review. Lower courts have rejected their appeals and attorneys had planned to take their case to the Texas Supreme Court.