On a warm summer night last June, James Gardner gave his daughter permission to sleep over at a friend's house, something he almost never let her do.

Ohetica Win, a member of Wyoming's Northern Arapaho tribe, was a tall, striking 13-year-old who looked much older. Gardner had lived most of his life on the Wind River Reservation and he didn't trust many people there.

Closing arguments began Friday in the case of slain British student Meredith Kercher, with the prosecutor calling for an end to the legal saga that began with Kercher's death two years ago.

American Amanda Knox, 22, and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 26, are on trial for sexual assault and murder. Kercher's bloody body was found on Nov. 2, 2007, under a duvet on the floor of the apartment she shared with Knox.

Lucio Soria is a recorder of the dead in Ciudad Juarez's drug cartel war.

"El Sorias," as he is affectionately called by his colleagues, is a photojournalist for the Mexican city's two main daily newspapers, El Diario and El PM. For the last 10 years, his job has been to photograph the bodies and crime scenes left behind after cartel hit men completed their work.

Three alleged victims of years-ago child sex abuse within a Missouri family told authorities they were forced by one of the accused to kill a man after he was kidnapped, according to new court documents filed in the case.

In addition, another alleged victim told police that she was held captive in the basement of a home and abused by five of the suspects, and that the suspects buried her baby in the basement after she became pregnant the first of two times, the documents say.

Leigh Occhi, 13 and ready to start the eighth grade, was still in her pajamas the morning of August 27, 1992, when her mother left their home in Tupelo, Mississippi, for work.

It was one of the last days of Leigh's summer break and mother and daughter had eaten breakfast together, reading the paper and talking about the coming school year.

Former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson was sentenced Friday to 13 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release for his conviction on 11 counts of corruption.

Jefferson was also ordered to forfeit more than $470,000 after his conviction for using his office to solicit bribes.

He will also have to pay $1,100 in special assessments.

In the first major shakeup among President Obama's senior staff, White House Counsel Greg Craig is being pushed out in favor of veteran Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer because of a dispute over plans to close the U.S. military prison in Cuba, CNN has learned.

The move will be announced by the White House in the coming days, a senior administration official and a senior Democratic source confirmed.

The Colorado parents in last month's notorious "balloon boy" case will plead guilty to offenses for creating a hoax that their son had flown away in a large balloon.

Richard and Mayumi Heene are to plead Friday morning in Larimer County Court, according to a statement issued by Richard Heene's attorney.

Justice fell short with the execution of Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammad, one of his victims' survivors said after witnessing his death by lethal injection.

Muhammad died silently Tuesday night in a Virginia prison death chamber filled with lawyers, lawmen and his victims' survivors.

After the execution, Steven Moore said he thought about Muhammad's accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, who received a life sentence for their crimes.

Sixty miles and the twin tragedies of young lives lost to violence link this industrial hub to the tough streets of North Philadelphia.

Here, a grieving mother uses the memory of her murdered daughter to fight on behalf of victim rights. In his West Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, a paroled teenage killer uses his second chance to mentor at-risk youth. In these separate cases, both the criminals and their victims were juveniles.