|
 |
CNN TALKBACK LIVE
Are Terrorists Planning a 4th of July Surprise?; Supreme Court Rules Executing Mentally Retarded is Unconsitutional; What is the State of U.S. Public Transportation?
Aired June 20, 2002 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, HOST: Hello everybody. Welcome to TALKBACK LIVE. I'm Miles O'Brien, Arthel Neville is on assignment today. Do you have plans for the 4th of July? Well, it's possible that al Qaeda terrorists are making plans of their own for the patriotic holiday. We'll talk a little bit about that and other security concerns in just a moment. You can call us throughout the program, 800-310-4CNN are the numbers or e-mail talkback@cnn.com. Right now, take a look at what we have planned for today.
Two men described as Middle Eastern allegedly tried to buy an ambulance with cash. Is this cause for alarm? And security tightens after al Qaeda suspects show an interest in the 4th of July.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Folks need to understand that they are subject to screening with regard to metal detector, certainly that those bags will be inspected.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
O'BRIEN: Are terrorists plotting to crash America's birthday party?
Also, it's now unconstitutional to execute a mentally retarded killer. What will that mean to convicted murderers now on death row?
And a new traffic study shows you're wasting more time and money in rush hour than ever before. Traffic jams leave you overheated? Find out where your city ranks.
OK, first up, a couple of guys in Jersey try to buy an ambulance and the seller gets a little bit suspicious. What set off the alarm, we ask? CNN's Deborah Feyerick chasing those details. She joins us now. She has a special guest with us to hopefully we'll get the scoop on all of this -- Deborah.
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You're absolutely going to get the scoop, Miles. Well, it turned out that the man got suspicious because the two people who wanted to buy the ambulance were of Middle Eastern descent or appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, and they say they had a pocket full of cash and were willing to pay for the ambulance on the spot.
The owner didn't buy it. The owner, Joe Sargo, who is with us right now...
JOE SARGO, OWNER, MOVIE TIME CARS: How are you doing?
FEYERICK: Tell us exactly what happened that day on June 11 when they came here.
SARGO: We were setting in the office. We noticed two gentlemen walking through our yard. At the time we went outside, asked if we can help them, that time they asked us if we were selling the ambulances or if we could sell them the ambulances. At the time we told him no. We don't sell ambulances. What we do is we supply ambulances for film and TV.
FEYERICK: OK, there was something that set off red flags in your...
SARGO: Oh, absolutely.
FEYERICK: ... mind. What was it?
SARGO: The fact they was Middle Eastern, the fact that they were in September, shortly after this had gone down that we were contacted by the police about this specific type of stuff happening. So that set it off immediately.
FEYERICK: OK, do you usually sell your vehicles?
SARGO: No.
FEYERICK: You never sell your vehicles?
SARGO: No.
FEYERICK: Do you get a lot of requests from people who want to buy your vehicles?
SARGO: No, not often.
FEYERICK: OK, now your cars are used in -- you got ambulances. You got police cars, and they're used in movies like -- or television shows like "Third Watch" and "Law & Order." Are these exact replicas of the cars...
SARGO: They're very close. They're very close.
FEYERICK: OK and they're certainly realistic enough ...
SARGO: Right.
FEYERICK: ... that if somebody bought one ...
SARGO: Absolutely.
FEYERICK: ... they could use it ...
(CROSSTALK)
FEYERICK: OK ...
SARGO: Right, they wouldn't be buying it from you us. We don't -- like I said we don't sell vehicles to the public.
FEYERICK: When the men left, what did you do? Did you -- you clearly ...
SARGO: We wrote down the license plate number, and we called our local police department.
FEYERICK: OK. You didn't give a description before. Are you comfortable giving one now?
SARGO: Of what?
FEYERICK: The two men.
SARGO: There's really not much. You know, they were of dark complexion, about 5'8" to 5'10", fairly casually dressed, and that's really it.
FEYERICK: Any accent of any sort?
SARGO: Slight accent, that with the combination of the way they looked, you know led me to believe they were Middle Eastern. Where? I don't know.
FEYERICK: OK ...
SARGO: But it threw up the red flags for us, you know, being that we did get the contact in September.
FEYERICK: And finally have you gotten any information from any law enforcement agencies that they've actually got these guys, that your information ...
SARGO: I believe it's still under investigation and that should be, you know, held with the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) police department or the FBI.
FEYERICK: OK, Joe Sargo, thank you very much for ...
SARGO: Thank you.
FEYERICK: ... joining us, and as you heard, they're about 5'8", 5'10", Middle Eastern description basically. The police say that they have identified one of the men, but the FBI says well, they've actually identified the owner of the truck that they were driving. It's unclear whether the man are one in the same. Neither law enforcement branch will tell us whether they've actually questioned these men. The FBI says right now they don't have any information corroborating that this may have been some sort of terrorist related attack, but they have not ruled that out either. Again, they're not telling us whether in fact they've questioned any of the men who tried to buy this vehicle.
Now, the NYPD was notified, but they say that they knew about this kind of terrorist tactic way back in September, because there was an intelligence alert put out at the time saying that these vehicles could be used for some purpose. In Israel, for example, they are used to smuggle suicide bombers in. They're also used as a sort of a secondary attack, they'll be brought in when all the emergency workers are in place and then the vehicle is exploded.
Again the NYPD telling us that they're not on any heightened state of alert, no more so than they usually are, but they are saying they know about this tactic and certainly they're being careful. As for the fire department, they say they're always watching their vehicle, and it has less it do with suicide bombers than it does the fact that they're packed with very expensive equipment, as well as narcotics -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Thank you very much, Deborah Feyerick. We appreciate it. With us now to talk a little bit more about this and the larger issue of terrorist threats. I guess threat de jour might apply in some cases. Steven Kuhr, the managing director of the Emergency Management Group with Kroll Incorporated, and Mike Brooks, CNN law enforcement analyst and a member of the -- former member, I should say, of the FBI's terrorism task force. Good to have you both with me, gentlemen.
Mr. Brooks, put this in the grand scheme of things. It wasn't too long ago we were chatting about dirty bombs and the next day they weren't so dirty and today it's ambulances. Tomorrow is it going to be something else?
MIKE BROOKS, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well I think this is a good - a good thing that this happened. It shows that the citizens are out there actually worried and concerned about these kind of things and keeping an eye on being vigilant, and you know, we see a lot of cars, foreign (ph) police cars, state police cars, NYPD, D.C. police sold to normal citizens on a regular basis.
But of course they take all the markings off so they don't look like police cars anymore, but you can still see when you ride down the street, it looks like a used taxi cab or a police car, but I think that there is a possibility that this could have thwarted something, but I think further investigation, the JDTF (ph) here in New York City, will be working on this, and I'm sure they'll come up with some more - with some more leads.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's go to the Web for just a moment, shall we, to eBay. I assume some people in the audience have been to eBay. Clap if you've gone to eBay. Well folks, you want an ambulance?
(CROSSTALK) O'BRIEN: It's $3,800, is that right?
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: ... $3,825 or 28 -- $2,800. And it's, let's see, it's a Ford F-150. It's a '95, easy to get. Mike -- excuse me, let me go to Steve Kuhr. Is that something that in and of itself we should be worried about? After all you can always paint any old truck to look like an ambulance.
STEVEN KUHR, KROLL, COUNTER TERRORISM EXPERT: Well, yes, I think it is, and I think the issue is that people at the local level need to be very alert. For example, there's only one type of vehicle at the fire department New York purchases to use for their EMS fleet. Police personnel should be aware of that type of vehicle. So if, for example, if they're buying Fords and a Chevy van type ambulance shows up on NFDY (ph), police personnel should be suspicious of that particular vehicle.
O'BRIEN: All right, fair enough.
(INTERRUPTED FOR BREAKING NEWS)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: All right, we're back at TALKBACK LIVE and we've decided that it wouldn't take us too much effort to get ourselves an emergency vehicle. We're going to be passing the hat in just a few moments. We're going to see if we can get this fire truck here. Check it out on eBay -- $7,000, not bad.
All right, in all seriousness, though, gentlemen, we focus on this, and it seems -- I don't want to be flippant about it, but Mike Brooks, as we look toward the 4th of July, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize this is a time of opportunity anyway for terrorists, and certainly plenty of gatherings, which might be targets of opportunity.
BROOKS: That's true, we just had you know, Memorial Day at the beginning of the holiday season here, and surrounding Memorial Day, we had the threat that came out against the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. That was handled in a great - in a fantastic, very professional manner.
They didn't shut down any of the -- any of the monuments. They didn't shut anything down, went about business as usual. As you know we had -- there were a couple of suspicious packages on the Brooklyn - on the Brooklyn Bridge that were handled without incident.
So now as we move forward I think the FBI, again, wants everyone, Americans especially to be vigilant wherever they go, and I think -- I think we need to be reminded of that. As I've said in the past, sometimes I think Americans need to be poked with a stick, because after six months to a year down the road after something, an incident happens, we start to get lulled back into a false sense of security. We become complacent again ... O'BRIEN: You know I think ...
BROOKS: ... and we can't ever allow that to happen again.
O'BRIEN: An informal poll, the audience, the break would bare that out Mike Brooks. As a matter of fact, do you feel as if people are kind of getting slowly but surely complacent, perhaps not listening to the these as I called it, the alarm de jour, Keggie (ph)?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well my question for Mr. Brooks would be, I have a CDL license, and we should be free to buy whatever we want to buy, but wouldn't these guys have to be able to show some certification in medical training to be able to drive an ambulance?
O'BRIEN: All right, well help me out with that licensing. What kind of licensing is that, that CD ...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well I'm just saying my CDL is for school bus and passenger and those kind of ...
O'BRIEN: What does CDL stand for?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's a good question.
O'BRIEN: OK. CDL, that's a fancy drivers license, I think, commercial drivers license.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Commercial drivers license.
O'BRIEN: So not everybody can drive an ambulance, right, yes, no, I don't know.
BROOKS: It's basically a pickup truck. I was an EMT for -- and a volunteer firefighter for a number of years. You have to go through, you know, emergency vehicle operations course, but just to be able to drive a truck, it's basically like a delivery truck. You don't need any special license to drive a pickup truck, and that's basically what it is. It's basically a pickup truck chassis with a box on the back, and you know, there's no special licenses ...
O'BRIEN: All right ...
BROOKS: Now you know ...
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: Presumably a terrorist ...
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: ... a terrorist that would be the least of a terrorist concern having the proper licensing anyway. Michael you bring up an important point. Let's get Michael in here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm just very concerned about racial profiling of Middle Eastern - Middle Easterns. I work -- I teach right down the road in Atlanta, and most of -- the majority of our students are Muslim, and they come to the country for religious freedom and to practice their religion. And a lot of them do not agree with al Qaeda or Osama, and it's very sad that we all of a sudden, like this man was saying, all he could say is that these people were Middle Eastern -- these people were Middle Eastern. That's all he was saying, you know, and then that's what tipped him off. And it really bothers me because my students and their parents are just, you know, here making a better life for themselves.
O'BRIEN: All right that's a valid point. What about profiling, that is the issue we have gotten into. Michael has brought us there. Steve Kuhr, do we the profile given the limited resources out there to combat terrorism?
KUHR: Well, I think we need to be careful when we talk about racial and ethnic profiling. Unfortunately, many of the most horrendous attacks recently have been based by Middle Eastern extremists, but we need to also remember that Timothy McVeigh was a U.S. citizen that created a tremendous amount of damage to the -- to Oklahoma City in the Midwest.
We need to not profile people, but we need to profile activity, and that's something that we share with our clients, and that's -- and that's a message that we send out to security firms and emergency management agencies, police agencies, government entities when we work with them to ensure that as they go forth and they police their communities and they try to secure their communities that they don't look just to put blame on ethnic individuals, but that we take a very close look at activity that's suspicious.
O'BRIEN: All right, I think Ted (ph) has a bit of a counterpoint to all that. Ted (ph), go.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I agree, I think profiling, it is a sad thing and it's a sad fact that these Middle Eastern people are faced with that, but the fact is that a group of Middle Eastern people have declared war on the United States, and I think the ambulance, the man who was selling the ambulances was vigilant enough. All warnings aside, he was alerted to the fact that a potential terrorist, Middle Eastern man, yes, but that's the cold hard truth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mike ...
BROOKS: And I think everyone, again. That's a -- that's a good point he makes, and as I said, this -- that man was trying -- who was selling those ambulances, he was vigilant and -- but we also have to be careful because we have Americans, whenever someone goes and buys a larger amount of ammonium nitrate. You know we want to hear about that too, and that happens in the Midwest.
You know, a lot if these, the so-called security experts when Oklahoma City happened, they said this bombing has all the earmarks of a Middle East terrorist attack, but as Steven said we found out that it was homegrown. And you know there's still people out there like Eric Rudolph (ph). CNN just did a profile on him the other evening, and he is still out there. Some people say he's dead. Some people say he's not.
O'BRIEN: All right Michael ...
(CROSSTALK)
BROOKS: He's responsible for a number of bombings.
O'BRIEN: Hang on.
BROOKS: And again, it's not all Middle Eastern ...
O'BRIEN: All right Michael (ph) wants to get in here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was just going to agree with the fact that most - what about our white supremacist people in America ...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... can't stand the U.S. government and they're out to get us like he said Timothy McVeigh. You know he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, and who's to say just because they're Middle Eastern they're going to do this, and you know that all the Americans are perfect, and they're not here to harp the U.S. government.
O'BRIEN: Ted (ph) ...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.
O'BRIEN: All right Ted (ph) go.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another good point, but I'd like to think that our FBI is in tune with those groups, and those people and are monitoring and have been monitoring, but once again the bottom line is you've got a group of people who have declared war, whether they're going to buy ambulances, smallpox, blow up buildings with planes, they're going to come at us from every way and we've got to be ready.
BROOKS: I tend to agree with you on - I agree with you on some of your points, but again, we just can't focus on one particular group. Every time stuff like this happens, when Oklahoma City happened, as I said, I call it Mecca-phobia. Yes, these people crashed planes in our buildings. They did declare war on us, but there are our homegrown terrorists that we have here in the United States that we -- that we can't lose sight of and what we also have to face ...
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: All right, quick final word from Steve Kuhr, go.
KUHR: Yes, I would tend to agree. We need to be very cautious about profiling. There have been, to use the words, declared war. There has been U.S. based militias that have declared war on us. There are eco terrorists, agro terrorists. Terrorists come in all shapes and forms and they represent very, very different political agendas and we need to be very broad scoped when we look at them.
O'BRIEN: All right gentlemen, thank you very much. Steve Kuhr, Mike Brooks, we appreciate you being with us on TALKBACK LIVE.
We'll take a break and then we're going to look at a Supreme Court decision that makes executing mentally retarded killers unconstitutional. Don't you wonder how many death row inmates will try to make that case? We'll be right back with that and more. TALKBACK LIVE continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Hello, I'm Miles O'Brien. We're back with TALKBACK LIVE, but we're shifting gears here. Let's go live to Capitol Hill where members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, chairman from both sides of the aisle are addressing a story that was broken here on CNN, leaks about conversations and intercepts from the security agencies which came out prior to September 11th. Let's listen in to Bob Graham.
(INTERRUPTED FOR LIVE EVENT)
O'BRIEN: All right that's Representative Nancy Pelosi. She is in the Intelligence Committee on the House side. That's members of the -- both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees responding to a report first here on CNN indicating that there were some intercepted communications prior to 9/11 which could, might have, given intelligence community the possibility to stop that attack. That's the story obviously, we are way out ahead on, and we will stay on that for you.
The Supreme Court says executing the mentally retarded is cruel and unusual, and unconstitutional. Incidentally that immediately spares the life of one Daryl Atkins scheduled to die in Virginia for killing an airman.
CNN national correspondent Bob Franken joins us now with more on the Supreme Court's reversal. Bob why did they reverse?
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well it's interesting. The standard that they applied to decide whether this was cruel and unusual punishment was a national consensus and what they did is compare a 1989 where only two states prohibited the execution of the mentally retarded. With the present situation, where there are 18 that do, and another 12 that outlaw capital punishment entirely, meaning a total of 30.
That is how they constructed the national consensus. It was a six to three ruling. The man who wrote the opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens said that the mentally retarded should not be executed because of their disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment and control of their impulses. And that is why it would be cruel and unusual punishment. Now there was a really stinging dissent delivered, as it so often is when it's stinging, by Justice Antonin Scalia, and his two probably most conservatives on the court, Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas. They said, among other things, that seldom has an opinion of this court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members, and now comes the question of what will happen?
And what they do expect to happen is that a lot of prisoners on death row around the country will probably claim that they fall within the parameters of mentally retarded, which by the way have been defined thus far as an IQ of 70 or below. By the way, Daryl Atkins (ph) had an IQ, when he was tested, of 59, Miles, which put him in the nine to 12-year old age group, intellectually.
O'BRIEN: Bob Franken, let me ask you this. In the dissent there, that's an interesting point, how personal opinions have come into play here. Is there any sense and the Supreme Court, of course, prides itself for being in its Ivory Tower and separate from popular opinion, but there is a sense that in this country, opinions are shifting as it relates to the death penalty. Is there anyway to discern whether that's factored into this decision at all?
FRANKEN: Clearly did. In this particular case, they were unusually open about that by saying that they were looking for the evidence of the national consensus. That was the point which is so intriguing because, as you point out, the existence of the court, the federal court system, particularly the Supreme Court, is supposed to insulate from the so-called tyranny of the majority, but in this particular case, that does become a factor, and with the evolution of the capital punishment issue, DNA, for instance adding new questions about it, there is a demonstrably shifting view about the subject.
O'BRIEN: CNN's Bob Franken, watching the Supreme Court for us. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. With us now to talk a little bit more about this Kevin Watson, the legislative director and a spokesman for the Law Enforcement Alliance of America.
And Steven Hawkins, who is the executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and given his title we know where he stands on this. Let's talk to Kevin Watson first. Mr. Watson, is it cruel and unusual punishment to submit, or allow people that are mentally retarded to submit to the death penalty.
KEVIN WATSON, LAW ENFORCEMENT ALLIANCE OF AMERICA: Well, our organization doesn't think so. We would be with Chief Justice Rehnquist on this one, and for a few reasons. First off we think it's an issue of whether or not someone is competent to stand trial. If a court deemed these individuals are competent to stand trial for their actions as an adult, then we think that they should be treated as any other citizen would be in whatever punishment they get.
If there needs to be some protections for these individuals, then that protection needs to be determining when they're unfit to stand trial. One of the problems is that there are multiple definitions of what is mentally retarded. There's not one universal standard and IQ, as it's been given, you have a variety of IQ tests. Mr. Atkins, his case, you know the defense has one IQ test and the prosecution has another, so you get into that debate.
O'BRIEN: All right and we apologize for the innocent mistake, pushing buttons there. We had the wrong person up when we were doing the introductions and obviously we have that straightened out.
Seven Hawkins, what is your response to that?
STEVEN HAWKINS, DEATH PENALTY OPPONENT: Well, obviously we disagree. We think this is a very important opinion, but also be -- and precisely because the Supreme Court really has gone the way of the American people. There have been 20 public opinion polls where Americans, clearly a majority of people in the country, think that it is wrong to execute the mentally retarded.
It does go to the question of punishment, not just competence to stand trial, but the punishment. These people stand to be less culpable than the average person and when we look at questions about innocence, we have seen so many mentally retarded people end up on death row for falsely confessing to crimes. They're very susceptible to any form of interrogation. So this is a very important opinion. It protects a class of people that need to be protected in our society.
O'BRIEN: All right, Brad (ph) has a comment here in the audience. Go ahead, Brad (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Steven, if the mentally ill next-door neighbor killed your mother, what -- how would you feel about it then?
O'BRIEN: That's kind of ...
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: ... question, isn't it? Go ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All I'm saying is that I think the first guy came on and had a nice comment. He said if they're mentally able to stand trial, they should be tried the same way. If you can comment the crime, if you're able to commit the crime, you should either do the time or be capitally -- whatever...
HAWKINS: Killed, murdered.
O'BRIEN: Steve, go ahead.
HAWKINS: Well, my answer to the gentleman is a simple one. The majority of Americans in this country disagree with him. Thirty states have stopped the execution of the mentally retarded. The Supreme Court has spoken. And we need to move on.
The governors in the states that still have this punishment need to set up commissions of mental health experts to review the claims. We make diagnoses every day in this country with respect to persons with mental retardation. We need to expeditiously deal with this and move on.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's get Ross in here.
Go ahead, Ross.
ROSS: I just wanted to say that, what Mr. Hawkins said about the Supreme Court following the majority of the people in the United States, that's exactly what the Supreme Court is not supposed to do. They are appointed. They are not elected. They are supposed to follow law, not the opinion of the people of America.
HAWKINS: Well, let me answer that, if I can.
The Eighth Amendment -- and this is very important for the audience to understand. The Supreme Court looks at the Eighth Amendment differently than any other amendment. It has to look at what's called an evolving standard of decency that marks the progress of a maturing society. That is the language of the United States Supreme Court on this concept.
How you look at evolving standards of decency, you look at what legislatures are doing around the country. There is no other way to look at that. You have to see what is happening around the country to determine: Are we in a new concept of what is considered cruel and unusual punishment? The Supreme Court followed the law, did what it is supposed to do under the Eighth Amendment.
O'BRIEN: OK, I think we haven't been very fair to Mr. Watson.
So, what we are going to do -- because we have to send it off to a "News Alert" to Fredricka Whitfield -- when we come back, Kevin, we will give you an opportunity to offer your points of view.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: We are back. TALKBACK LIVE is the program. I'm Miles O'Brien. Arthel Neville is on assignment today.
Kevin Watson, Steven Hawkins are still with us.
And Kevin has not had a good opportunity to really weigh in.
First, before we go him, though, I just want to slide in a couple of e-mails here just to give you a sense of the opinions out there.
Jay in Alabama has this: "If they were proven competent to stand trial" -- they meaning mentally retarded prisoners -- "then they are subject to the appropriate punishment."
And Gerry has this: "I hope this does not end up being a means for criminals to get away from punishment."
Kevin, is this a means for criminals to get away from punishment?
WATSON: Well, I certainly think it is. You're going to have a lot more folks on death row that are going to, all of a sudden, have a case of mentally retardation. And that's the problem, because there is no clear medical standard for what is mentally retarded. And I.Q. tests vary. One inmate can get a variety of scores that vary quite differently.
So, what happens when the defense attorney has a test that is below the standard and the prosecutors have a test that's above the standard? I think that's the trouble that's going to come out of this decision.
O'BRIEN: Trey has a comment.
Go.
TREY: Everyone has to be held accountable in society for their actions. So, if these people aren't going to be held accountable, then they need to be either removed or put in a place where they are not going to harm innocent people, who are held accountable for it. If I commit a murder, I would be held accountable for it.
O'BRIEN: Let's ask Steven Hawkins.
I don't think anybody is talking about allowing these people, necessarily, to be on the streets, necessarily. Do you see a difference there?
TREY: I don't know, up to this point, that if you're mentally retarded that you're unable to live amongst society. But you now can live amongst society and commit a capital offense. Is that what citizens are willing to accept?
O'BRIEN: Steven Hawkins, let's talk here for a minute about life sentences. Should people who are mentally retarded be held accountable in that respect? Should they not be offered parole, for example?
HAWKINS: I think the states will decide what best to do. Some persons with mental retardation may very well end up with life- without-parole sentences.
O'BRIEN: But wait a minute. Wait. Wait.
If they can't fully understand their plight as it relates to the death penalty, can they understand the punishment of life?
HAWKINS: The reason why the court moved today is because people with mental retardation do not -- they are not as culpable for their actions as the average person. What that means is that, while they may commit a crime, they lack the reasoning and judgment to understand.
O'BRIEN: Sorry, Trey is disagreeing vehemently.
Go, Trey. TREY: If you live in the society, if you are on the streets, you have to be held accountable for your actions. If you're going to hold them as much accountable -- if you're not going to hold them accountable as you will me, then you have to put them some place -- I'm sorry -- it's sad to say -- put them some place where they will not be able to harm innocent people.
HAWKINS: Well, that's called prison, Trey.
TREY: If it's called prison...
HAWKINS: But, let me tell you.
We have had people who are executed -- who have been executed who were mentally retarded who thought they were going to come back and finish their dessert, who thought they would be able to come back the next day and finish a basketball game, who thought they were being executed because they stole a bed sheet.
What kind of society do we live in that would allow the execution of those kind of people?
(CROSSTALK)
TREY: Then we protect them.
HAWKINS: And that is why the United States Supreme Court today has spoken. And it has spoken in a way that we as Americans have to understand that we have to move on, realize that now we cannot execute mentally retarded people, and begin to define a society that protects the rights of these people who are very vulnerable.
TREY: Then don't put them in that position in the first place. Protect them and protect ourselves. You protect them from committing the crime and you protect the person that the crime is being committed against.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's get a phone call in here.
Erik (ph) is on the line from West Virginia.
Erik (ph), go ahead.
CALLER: Hello, yes.
I'm a prosecutor from Charleston, West Virginia, really worried and looking for a comment from the panel on what they think the possible Pandora's boxes this going to be in opening this up. And you can find many doctors who will say somebody is handicapped, when they work regularly. A doctor that states somebody is retarded -- in a case down here, we have Don and Mike, the two radio hosts, who are obvious...
HAWKINS: Well, if I can try to answer that, that's why I think that it would be a really bad mistake if it becomes a matter of defense and prosecutors going back and forth on definitions. I think that governors have been appointing commissions to look at standards around the death penalty. This should be treated the same way. Get a panel of mental health experts in each state. Let them make evaluation. They do this all the time in cases concerning mental retardation. I.Q. tests can differ, but that is not the only standard, obviously. Mental retardation goes to developmental factors, things that will have manifested themselves in childhood.
Experts are trained to make those diagnoses.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: Kevin, why don't you get in here, Kevin, because we are running out of time and you have not said enough. Go ahead.
WATSON: I would say that misses the point. That misses the point
(CROSSTALK)
HAWKINS: How does it miss the point?
WATSON: We already have a system that determines whether or not someone is fit to stand trial, and it takes that into account. We have the shooter that came in and killed two Capitol Police officers here and he's been deemed unfit to stand trial.
Our courts have a system of protecting those that need extra protection. And that is by determining they are unfit to stand trial. But once they're determined that they can stand fit for trial, they should get equal justice, as everyone else should. All punishments should be available to everyone. We shouldn't pick and choose based on some selective I.Q. test that who knows how good or bad it is. And I think the prosecutor's question about a Pandora's box is a very real one.
HAWKINS: There is no Pandora's box because this is such a clear way to make a diagnosis. Mental health professionals make it every day in this country. You cannot fake mental retardation. It's as simple as that.
O'BRIEN: OK, I'm sorry, we are going to have to leave it there. The music is playing.
Thank you, Steven Hawkins. Thank you, Kevin Watson.
When we come back, let's talk traffic. Everybody talks about the traffic. What are you going to do about it? Stay with us for more TALKBACK LIVE.
Still ahead: Are you driving and crying?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's really frustrating, the stop-and-go traffic that clogs. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's traffic jams bumper to bumper.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: A new study identifies cities with the worst jams in the country. Is yours one of them?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: TALKBACK LIVE is back.
We are choking with congestion and battling clogged arteries. I'm not talking about those of us here. We are talking about traffic. We are doing it in our cars.
A report out of Texas A&M claims we are trapped in rush-hour traffic an average of 62 hours a year, 62 hours a year, three days. What would you do with that three days? Think of all the cell phone calls you'd miss. Anyway, rush hour now covers an average of seven hours a day.
Here to take a look at the nation's 10 most traffic-clogged cities -- Los Angeles occupies the top spot, followed by San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, D.C., then Seattle, Miami, and Boston. San Jose, Denver and New York fill out the bottom three on that list.
Let's meet our guests. Peter Vandoren is editor of "Regulation" magazine -- he is a -- that's not him. That's our other guest. That's David Goldberg.
And there he is.
PETER VANDOREN, EDITOR, "REGULATION": Thank you.
O'BRIEN: He's with the Cato Institute, a professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He's there.
And joining us here in Atlanta -- who came, we should tell you, by subway train, the MARTA -- give him a round of applause for taking the MARTA.
(APPLAUSE)
O'BRIEN: Is David Goldberg, communications director of Smart Growth America.
All right, it's like the weather. We complain about the traffic, David. What are we going to do about it?
DAVID GOLDBERG, SMART GROWTH AMERICA: Well, the first Law of Holes applies here. The first thing we should do is stop digging.
One of the big problems we have with our traffic is that we build a new road. And then we go out and local governments let it be developed in a way that just completely swamps it with traffic. And then we turn around and we are in the same place we were when we started building the road.
O'BRIEN: All right.
Peter?
VANDOREN: I would use prices. I tell my freshen every year that roads are congested because they're free. And, as we all know, when things are free, they're overused. So, we need to use some of those HOV lanes and put some tolls on them to allow people to go at the speed limit during rush hour.
O'BRIEN: All right, well, you need to elaborate on this a little bit, because, what you're talking about -- as we take a look at the central artery in Boston, courtesy of our affiliate WHDH. This is a famous bottleneck. They're trying to bury that highway right now. That's a mess unto itself, but nevertheless a constant choke point all day.
Let's elaborate, Peter, just a little bit on your idea. Your idea would be, if you're going to go through the central artery during rush hour -- which is pretty much all day long, anyway -- you're going to pay through the nose, right?
VANDOREN: That's right.
There's a couple experiments now going on in the United States, both California. And one is the I-15 lanes in San Diego. And the other is state Route 91 in the Orange County area. And they have tolls that vary by time of day to ensure that people are freely moving at all times. The tolls during rush hour can reach $5 to $8 to go about 10 miles.
O'BRIEN: Five dollars to $8 to go to 10 miles. Who in this audience thinks that is a good idea?
The silence is deafening.
All right, we've got to get Tina in here, because, before the program began -- Peter, I guess you're not surprised to see people are not too enthused about that, by the way.
VANDOREN: No, I'm not surprised.
O'BRIEN: What do you think?
GOLDBERG: Well, I think it's not a terribly bad idea, as long as you use the money that you collect to provide real alternatives for people.
O'BRIEN: All right, fair enough, real alternatives meaning trains, buses.
GOLDBERG: Trains, buses, whatever.
O'BRIEN: Tina, you are the absolute winner -- I guess you could call it a winner. Or are you the loser? Tell everybody about your commute.
TINA: I drive 52 miles each way, 2 1/2 hours per day, an hour in the morning and an hour and a half in the afternoon.
O'BRIEN: That's a lot of your life, Tina.
TINA: That's a lot of time.
O'BRIEN: What are the alternatives for you, though?
TINA: I live in a lower-income area of town. And I work in a very high-income. And so we really can't afford to live in North Atlanta, which is where I work. But my job is to sell expensive furniture. And so I have to go where the rich people live.
O'BRIEN: All right, David, what do you do for Tina? She lives in a city that was designed for the automobile. The public transportation alternatives are really not geared for the kind of commute she has. What do you do?
GOLDBERG: Well, you're absolutely right.
One thing we do is, we start building places where you have got jobs mixed in closer to housing, where you put different kinds of housing, not all this one monoculture, everybody makes the same amount of money kind of thing, where the people who work and provide the services and hold all the jobs and sell the furniture to them can't live anywhere near there. The schoolteacher can't live anywhere near there. The police officer can't.
O'BRIEN: All right, we have got to take a break on this point. We are talking about basically redesigning cities, no small task.
We will pick up on that point when TALKBACK LIVE returns. We've got traffic.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: All right, we don't have much time left, so we have to completely reengineer our city in about one minute.
David Goldberg, explain how we can. I mean, we have built a car culture. This is not going to be undone very easily.
GOLDBERG: Well, I guess that's the main point. We are going to live with congestion, to some degree or other, no matter what we do. As long as we have roads that are free, as Peter said, as long as we have cheap gas, as long as we own cars, and as long as we have a vibrant economy -- which, despite a current downturn, it is still a vibrant economy -- we are going to have some degree of congestion. The point is, do you have choices or do you not have choices?
O'BRIEN: Peter, final word.
VANDOREN: One example of smart growth might be Manhattan. And think of the density there is there, and yet there's congestion all the time. So, reducing or increasing residential density alone won't do it. You need to place roads.
GOLDBERG: Oh, yes, but if you look at the same Texas Transportation figures that came out, the degree of delay per person in rush hour in New York is significantly below, is way down for its size and population, below so many others, like Atlanta, that is close the top.
O'BRIEN: I apologize. Congestion in the program has not served us well. We are not going to get enough audience input on this subject, but we will revisit it some other day.
David, we'll give you MARTA fare back and maybe pay for your MARTA to come back another time. We appreciate it.
Peter Vandoren, we appreciate you being with us as well.
Thanks to all of you for watching TALKBACK LIVE. On behalf of Arthel Neville, who is on assignment today, I'm Miles O'Brien. We'll see you tomorrow for more TALKBACK LIVE, 3:00 p.m. Eastern.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Court Rules Executing Mentally Retarded is Unconsitutional; What is the State of U.S. Public Transportation?>
|
|
|
|
|
