A former Bush administration official charged with trying to kill his wife at their Connecticut home is headed toward a trial after plea negotiations with prosecutors failed.

The Connecticut Post reports the attempted murder case of John Michael Farren was put on the trial list at Stamford Superior Court on Thursday during a brief hearing. A date for jury selection wasn't set.

The 58-year-old Farren was deputy White House counsel during President George W. Bush's second term. He also served as undersecretary for international trade under Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush.

Farren has pleaded not guilty. He is accused of beating his wife with a flashlight and choking her at their New Canaan home after she served him with divorce papers. He's free on bail but under house arrest.

China has released a crusading rights lawyer who was detained more than two months ago in a massive security crackdown aimed at preventing any Middle East-inspired unrest.

Teng Biao returned home Friday afternoon but it was not convenient for him to speak with the media, his wife Wang Ling said. She declined to comment on his physical or mental well-being.

Other lawyers and activists released after similar detentions have also declined to speak to the media, perhaps as a condition of their release.

China Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong rights advocacy group, said earlier that Teng disappeared Feb. 19 and that officers searched his home and seized two computers, a printer, articles, books, DVDs and photos of another rights lawyer, Chen Guangcheng.

A law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, Teng was among dozens of well-known lawyers and activists across China who have vanished, been interrogated or criminally detained for subversion as China's authoritarian government, apparently unnerved by events in the Middle East and North Africa, has moved to squelch dissent.