The nine members of the court have wide discretion in deciding what cases to review. An important part of their jobs - done with substantial help of law clerks - is sifting through the nearly 9,000 appeals filed each year and picking about 80 to consider.

In recent years, under the leadership of the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, justices confidently stepped into disputes over physician-assisted suicide, medical marijuana, presidential war powers and even a presidential election.

Rehnquist died last fall and was replaced by Roberts. A few months later, Samuel Alito was confirmed to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Court watchers are anxious for signs of the transition, but the cases that the new court have agreed to review have revealed little. The justices have rejected potential landmark cases including a constitutional challenge to lethal injection and an appeal on behalf of an American jailed without traditional legal rights as an enemy combatant.

"They work in their mysterious ways," said Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University. "The broader story is, is Roberts going to change the dynamic of how the court sets its agenda?"

The court has nearly 30 cases for which it has heard argument and must resolve before ending this term, so the justices may not be anxious to add new contentious issues for the fall, Berman said.

"They may think there's some value in seeing how they work together in tough cases," he said.

Justices take a three-month break at the end of June. Usually by June they have lined up cases for oral arguments in the fall. So far they have chosen just half of the cases needed to fill up their fall argument schedule.

Before becoming a judge, Roberts was a Washington lawyer who specialized in Supreme Court appeals. He said during his Senate confirmation hearing that the justices "hear about half the number of cases they did 25 years ago. There may be good reasons for that that I'll learn if I am confirmed. But just looking at it from the outside, I think ... they could contribute more to the clarity and uniformity of the law by taking more cases."

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh said court watchers should be patient. "It's a little early to read the tea leaves," he said.

VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said in a statement that his agency discovered after an internal investigation that the names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth of as many as 20,000 National Guard and Reserve personnel who were on at least their second active-duty call-up were "potentially included."

In addition, the same information on as many as 30,000 active-duty Navy personnel who completed their first enlistment term before 1991 is also believed to be stored on the laptop computer and disks stolen from a VA data analyst at his Aspen Hill home on May 3.

The VA previously said the stolen data involved as many 26.5 million veterans discharged since 1975, as well as some of their spouses; veterans discharged before 1975 are also deemed at risk if they have submitted benefit claims to the agency.

"VA continues to conduct a complete and thorough investigation into this incident, and those efforts are providing additional details about the nature of the data that may be involved," Nicholson said.

Veterans groups have criticized the VA for the three-week delay in publicizing the burglary after the May 3 theft. Last week, internal documents obtained by the Associated Press showed that the stolen data in many cases included the phone numbers and addresses of veterans, as well as 6,744 records pertaining to "mustard gas veterans" - or those who participated in chemical testing programs during World War II.

"Once and for all the VA needs to come clean about this situation," American Legion spokeswoman Ramona Joyce said in an e-mailed statement.

Nicholson said there was no evidence that information about other active-duty personnel had been breached.

He said there have been no reports that the stolen data have been used for identity theft, but he added that he wanted to alert the public about the VA's findings out of an "abundance of caution" in what has become one of the nation's largest security breaches.

During hearings last month, Nicholson said he was angry that employees did not notify him about the burglary until May 16. Since then, the VA has fired the data analyst who lost the data, and his boss, VA Deputy Assistant Secretary Michael H. McLendon, has stepped down. The department also placed Dennis M. Duffy, the acting head of the division in which the data analyst worked, on administrative leave.

Their bodies were found Saturday partially inside a deflated helium balloon at the entrance of a condominium complex a few miles north of Tampa. The 8-foot-diameter balloon was used to advertise the complex.

"It was more a fun thing they thought they were doing," said Linda Rydman, whose daughter was found dead. "You know how you blow up the balloon and suck the helium."

The county medical examiner said Sunday that the cause of death won't be released for six weeks, until toxicology results come back.

Inhaling helium can quickly lead to brain damage and death from lack of oxygen, according to the Compressed Gas Association, which develops safety standards in the gas industry.

Easterling, 36, steadfastly maintains his innocence. He says that while he slept, his wife of five months and the mother of their daughter, now 2, died of hypothermia in the cold water.

"I was passed out. When I woke up, my wife was gone. She'd passed on. There was nothing I could do about it," he said during a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press from his Sonoma County jail cell. "It was an accident."

Easterling told police he and his 35-year-old wife hit the water around 11 a.m. on Oct. 11, 2004, after stopping for drinks at a bar. They wore life vests, he said, and spent the afternoon cruising the bay about 20 miles northeast of San Francisco on their WaveRunner.

They were headed home when it overheated and caught fire, Easterling said. They were left clinging to the side of the partially submerged machine for hours.

Jennifer Easterling called 911 on her cell phone but got cut off, he said. They also called her father and asked him to send help, Easterling said, but Richard Jevarian didn't call authorities until the next morning.

"I lost my wife. I had no time to mourn her. I was accused of harming her," he said. "If her parents would've called the Coast Guard like I told him to, we would've been OK."

Jevarian maintains that he didn't believe the couple were in any real trouble. He says his daughter frequently blew her problems out of proportion and that he didn't get worried until the next morning when he couldn't reach her. That's when he called the Coast Guard, which picked up Easterling and his wife's body.

A forensic pathologist testified in April 2005 that bruises on Jennifer Easterling's body and face, cuts inside her mouth and water in her lungs were among the factors that helped him reach the conclusion she was murdered.

"What caused her to die was being held under water," Dr. Gregory Rieber testified. "The hand over the mouth left injuries that indicate that there was a component of suffocation before she died."

A hypothermia expert hired by the Sonoma County district attorney's office disputed Rieber's findings, saying "the victim could have drowned as a result of hypothermia-induced unconsciousness."

However, prosecutor Alexander "Bud" McMahon said in a July 2005 note to his boss that the expert, Dr. Alan Steinman, agreed the prosecution's theory "is probably the correct one."

Both sides later agreed the water was likely colder than they originally thought. When a defense investigator re-interviewed Rieber in March 2006, he said that "certainly makes a drowning under accidental circumstances a lot more likely," according to a letter from the investigator to the Sonoma County sheriff obtained by the AP.

Easterling's lawyer, Marie Case, did not return several calls seeking comment.

Prosecutor Spencer Brady refused to answer specific questions, citing concerns about tainting potential jurors.

"We're ready to go," he said. "We believe the evidence is sufficient for a Sonoma County jury to return a verdict of guilty."