A Minnesota man who spent nearly 2 1/2 years in prison for a fatal Toyota crash in 2006 walked free Thursday, after a judge ordered a new trial and a prosecutor said she wouldn’t prolong the case, which was reopened in the wake of the carmaker’s widely publicized sudden acceleration problems. Koua Fong Lee was convicted of charges including criminal vehicular homicide and sentenced to the maximum eight years. A prosecutor said ineffective counsel was a compelling reason not to try the case again.

A federal judge has sentenced former receiver Lewis Freeman to 10 years, including 21 months of house arrest after prison. Freeman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud in March after admitting he took $2.6 million from court-supervised accounts and misappropriated at least $6 million by shifting money among accounts he was appointed to oversee

A jury in a high-profile federal copyright infringement trial on Friday ordered a Boston University graduate student to pay $675,000 to several record companies for illegally downloading and distributing 30 of their songs. Joel Tenenbaum appeared stoic as the jury announced that each of the 30 counts of willful infringement would cost him $22,500. Though steep, the tab is far less than the $4.5 million that the companies could have received had the jury imposed the maximum per-song damages allowed under law.