The stepfather of a 3-year-old girl, known as Precious Doe after her body and severed head were discovered four years ago, was sentenced to life in prison without parole Thursday for killing the girl.

Erica Michelle Marie Green was known as "Precious Doe" for years before her murder was solved.

The child had apparently been killed three years before her body was found in a wooded area near Kansas City, Missouri.

Harrell Johnson, 29, was convicted last month of first-degree murder in the death of Erica Michelle Marie Green, as well as endangering the welfare of a child and abusing a child.

Sixteenth Circuit Judge John Torrence sentenced Johnson to four years and 25 years, respectively, for those convictions, ruling that those sentences will run consecutively to the life sentence, according to court spokeswoman Mary Jacobi. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty against Johnson.

The girl's mother, Michelle Johnson, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder charges last year and testified against her husband. She said he was high on drugs when he kicked Erica in the head and threw her to the floor because, prosecutors said, the girl did not want to go to bed.

Erica remained on the floor unresponsive for two days before she died, authorities said. Michelle Johnson said the two did not seek medical attention for the girl because both she and her husband had outstanding arrest warrants.

After Erica died, authorities said, Harrell Johnson cut off her head with hedge clippers and disposed of her body before the couple retrieved her head from a Dumpster and put it in the woods. The head, wrapped in a garbage bag, was found in April 2001 not far from where the body had been discovered a few days earlier.

Because authorities had no way of identifying the child, she was dubbed "Precious Doe." The case haunted Kansas City for years, and many residents were involved in attempts to discover her name and find those responsible for her death.

In May 2005, a man who said he had not seen his granddaughter for several years responded to a newspaper ad placed by Alonzo Washington, a Kansas City-based community activist and missing-child advocate.

The man provided photos he said were of the child and information about her parents, and that material led to the Johnsons' detention on unrelated charges in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where they had moved.

During questioning, Michelle Johnson told police that she was Erica's mother and that the child had been killed while the family was living in Kansas City.

When Barack Obama becomes the 44th president in January, millions will watch the swearing-in of the first African American, the first tail-end Baby Boomer and the first candidate too young to have served in Vietnam take the oath of office.

To say it will be historic is putting it mildly, at least where Charles Ward is concerned.

For many African Americans, like Ward, Obama's victory is possibly the most important event of their lives.

"It's comparable to the abolition of slavery, the right of women to vote, the various occurrences during the modern-day civil rights movement and landing on the moon," said Ward, 62, director of development at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

His is one perspective among Bay Area residents, from high-profile Democratic Party donors to Gen X hipsters and high school students, who will attend the inauguration in person, crowds be damned. Travelers have contacted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Bay Area and East Coast offices to have their names placed on her list and have done the same at the offices of red state congressional representatives. There's no guarantee they will get tickets, but even if they don't, they say they intend to take to the streets for the patriotic Mardi Gras sure to ensue.

"If you'd asked a black person back in the 1960s what would be the greater possibility, landing on the moon or an African American being president, landing on the moon would have won by a mile," Ward said. "If you had asked them today, are we going to fly to Mars and settle the planet or have an African American president, everybody would have gone to Mars and be living there. That's how remote a possibility it seemed to African Americans."

Ward's wife, Cheryl, and their son, Che Hashim, also will attend. Hashim, 28, a criminal defense attorney in San Francisco, had never been involved in politics before Obama. Obama, he said, inspired participation with his message and his use of social networking in the campaign. Hashim is part owner of a San Francisco nightclub and hosted fundraisers there for Obama and Kevin Johnson, the former UC Berkeley and NBA basketball star and new mayor of Sacramento. Hashim used Facebook to invite people.

Hashim's emotions are running high. "The only way I can explain it is this way: It's as if every city I've ever wanted to be in, or play for a sports team in, won the Super Bowl and the NBA finals at the same time," he said. "It's like the exuberance of a championship celebration. Usually, you root but the team plays and you don't have an effect on the outcome. This is a game we all played together, and we all hugged as we came off the court."

Burlingame attorney Joe Cotchett, one of the nation's leading trial lawyers and a top Democratic fundraiser, will attend with five friends. His firm, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, sent 20 paralegals and young lawyers to canvass for Obama in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.

"This is truly a transformational year not only for this administration but for the country, and you want to be part of it," said Cotchett, 69. "It's similar to the air when Kennedy became president. Teddy Kennedy summed it up when he endorsed Obama by saying 'The dream lives on and will continue forever.' I think the dream died when John Kennedy was shot, and one of the reasons that Obama was elected was because he radiated to many people the dream that there could be a country that was fair to everyone."

Kate Goldstein-Breyer, a 29-year-old freelance publicist, had never been involved in a presidential campaign but volunteered to canvass for Obama in the rural town of Espanola, an hour outside Santa Fe, N.M., with her boyfriend.

"I felt so good about Obama and so bad about this country that it was like I couldn't help but to get involved," said Goldstein-Breyer, who is going to the inaugural with her boyfriend. "With that victory, I actually feel like I'm part of America. The idea of going to this huge celebration with people who feel that way, too, feels right to me."

Obama's star quality is a draw for her and other Gen Xers. Obama was on the cover of Ebony's August issue in suit and sunglasses, with the headline, "The 25 Coolest Brothers of all Time - Black Cool." Goldstein-Breyer and her friends still like to pore over the Flickr Web site photo album of election night in Obama's hotel suite as the votes came in.

"He's so cool, and he's not even trying," she said. "I found myself lately watching a video clip of the Obama family making a tuna fish sandwich. If you told me you had footage of them going to the dry cleaners, I'd probably watch that, too."

Other attendees will include such supporters as Democratic fundraisers and Hillary Rodham Clinton friends Susie Tompkins Buell and Mark Buell; TV personality Belva Davis; investment industry consultant Pamela Joyner; Eva Paterson, president of the Equal Justice Society in San Francisco; and high school students from Athenian School in Danville and St. Joseph Notre Dame in Alameda, to name a few.

Meredith Ratto, 16, a junior at St. Joseph, is among 30 students who will attend as part of an annual trip to Washington, D.C., that happens to coincide with the inaugural this year.

"In my history class, we'd been following the debates," she said. "With Obama, I didn't see color, and I didn't see age. I saw somebody who I could relate to. I liked his positions better than (Sen. John) McCain's, especially with regard to the war."

She tried to imagine how she might feel standing on Pennsylvania Avenue, watching the first family walk by, waving to the throngs.

"It's going to be a huge change for our country, and I'm just really excited," she said. "I don't even know how to describe it."

But Ward does.

"It's going to be as if you were at the Gettysburg Address," he said. "The first only comes once."

The father of Green Bay Packers wide receiver Donald Driver was beaten by Houston, Texas, police officers as they arrested him for outstanding traffic warrants, Driver's family members claimed Wednesday.

As they beat him and forced him to swallow something, the officers told Marvin Driver Jr. he was "going to see Jesus," according to relatives and community activist Quanell Evans, who identified himself as Quanell X.

"Mr. Marvin Driver Jr. is now at Hermann Hospital in ICU where he can't even speak," relatives said in a statement. "Doctors say there is some bleeding on his brain from blunt force trauma."

Police said Driver was arrested for outstanding traffic warrants and was found to be "unresponsive" upon his arrival at jail. Paramedics transported him to the hospital, they said. The Houston Police Department said in a written statement it takes the assault allegations "very seriously, and will begin a thorough investigation into the matter."

The two officers involved remain on duty pending further investigation, police said. However, relatives and Evans called for the officers involved to be suspended or placed on administrative leave until the investigation is complete.

The incident began late Sunday when Driver was dropping his brother, Winston Driver, off after the two had moved furniture, family members said.

Officers stopped Marvin Driver Jr. in front of his mother's home, relatives said. An argument took place between police and Driver's family, as well as between Driver and officers over the language police were using, according to the written statement issued by family members.

Police told relatives Driver was being taken to jail for the outstanding warrants, relatives said. "Later, the family found out he never made it to the jail," the statement said.

Relatives at first alleged Driver was picked up several blocks away by paramedics and that he was lying bloody and unconscious in the street. However, Evans told reporters Wednesday afternoon he had spoken to paramedics, and they had told him they had picked Driver up at the jail, and that he was injured, semiconscious and unresponsive when they arrived.

Houston Fire Department spokesman Omero Longoria told CNN Driver was picked up at a police substation and taken to the hospital. He said he did not know when Driver arrived at the jail or what his condition was when paramedics arrived.

Evans showed reporters paper towels upon which he said Driver had written his account. On them, he said Driver wrote that the police took him behind a Valero gas station and beat him. The officers kneed Driver and elbowed him in the throat, Evans said. They also made him swallow something, he said, telling him he was "going to see Jesus" and made disparaging remarks about his family, including "one particular family member."

One officer parked his cruiser behind the station and watched the beating, the activist alleged. Evans showed reporters photographs he said depicted Driver lying a hospital bed with a tube in his mouth.

One of the officers named in the arrest report