The CBS producer accused of trying to extort $2 million from "Late Show" host David Letterman pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan courtroom.

The producer, Robert Joel Halderman, allegedly told Letterman last month that he would disclose Letterman's dalliances with his show's staffers unless he paid the money.

A retired prosecutor whose comments in a 2008 HBO documentary threatened to derail a 31-year-old sex case against film director Roman Polanski now says he lied.

David Wells admitted he "buttered up" his role in the case to impress the documentary crew, but never expected it to be shown in the United States.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has shaken up a state commission that is probing whether a man executed in 2004 belonged on death row. Perry's move forces the commission to delay a scheduled hearing on the case.

A family photo shows Cameron Todd Willingham with his wife, Stacy, and daughters Kameron, Amber and Karmon.

A Florida death-row inmate convicted of abducting and murdering 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005 has died, prison officials said Wednesday.

John Couey had been sentenced to death for killing 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in Florida in 2005.

Chicago police asked the public for help Tuesday in finding three more people believed connected to last week's videotaped fatal beating of 16-year-old Derrion Albert.

"We need the public's help, your help," Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis told reporters.

Derrion Albert was different from the other boys in the often violent and tense neighborhood of Roseland in South Side Chicago, a community activist said. But it didn't save him for a brutal death that was videotaped and played around the country. Some say he was jumped because he wouldn't join a gang.

The events of a single afternoon when she was 13 have haunted Samantha Geimer her entire life. A famous movie director allegedly gave her champagne and had sex with her. She is 45 now, and wishes the whole matter would just go away. The arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland over the weekend makes that highly unlikely.

French authorities expressed solidarity with Roman Polanski's family Monday after authorities arrested the filmmaker on a 1970s sexual-offense charge involving a 13-year-old girl.

Roman Polanski attends a film premiere in Paris, France, in June 2009.

Filmmaker Roman Polanski has been arrested on an arrest warrant stemming from a decades-old sex charge, Swiss police said today. The Academy Award-winning director pleaded guilty in 1977 to a single count of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, acknowledging he had sex with a 13-year-old girl, but fled the United States before he could be sentenced.

A stranger crept into Jennifer Schuett's bedroom when she was 8, raped her in a field by her elementary school, slashed her throat and left her for dead. Doctors said they doubted she'd ever speak again. Nearly 20 years later, Schuett has regained her voice and is using it to help authorities catch her assailant. Advances in DNA testing could bring him to justice. "It's not about me anymore," she explained. "It's about all the little girls that go to sleep at night."