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CNN Live At Daybreak

'Legal Grounds': Morning Coffey

Aired August 26, 2002 - 06:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: So many questions attached to that Oregon case and to others in the news. That's why we like to talk with our legal expert every Monday at this time.
The segment is called "Legal Grounds" with Kendall Coffey. And Kendall joins us on the phone from Miami to talk about what's going on.

Let's talk about this case of these two girls in Oregon, first off.

KENDALL COFFEY, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Carol, it's absolutely heartbreaking. It's all still sort of sinking in.

COSTELLO: Well, neighbors and family members have been urging the FBI to search this property for months now, and the FBI didn't do it. Why?

COFFEY: There's going to be some second-guessing on this. But the concern the FBI has in a situation like that is you've got to have probable cause, and establish to the satisfaction of a judge probable cause to believe that there's evidence of a crime on a particular property, unless you have, of course, the owner's consent.

And it appears that what happened here is there were just too many leads. There had sadly been serious allegations regarding abuse directed toward both girls. Authorities had even conducted a search warrant of two other men in the apartment.

So it appears that things really didn't focus in on Ward Weaver until the August 13 rape allegation surfaced, in which Weaver's own son accused him of raping Weaver's girlfriend, and at the same time, Weaver's son said that his father indicated that he had been involved in the disappearance and murder of the other two girls.

So there's going to be some second-guessing, but I think the FBI wanted to make sure that there were no technical problems with the search before pursuing it, because of course, that could affect the ability to obtain a conviction down the road.

COSTELLO: Oh, definitely. And Ward Weaver, himself, gave the FBI permission to search his property.

COFFEY: Yes, ironically, this was a consent search. And I suspect that because on Monday, the actual owner of the property was about to finish out an eviction against Weaver, and then he would have been in the position to give Weaver -- I mean, to give the FBI permission to search the premises, Weaver decided why stretch it out, why run it out any longer, and gave the consent on Friday. And that was the basis of the search that began Saturday morning.

COSTELLO: Got you, Kendall.

Let's talk about Steven Hatfill for a second. He's the guy who was a "person of interest" in the anthrax investigation. He's really angry. He has now filed some sort of lawsuit against the attorney general.

COFFEY: What he's filed is an ethics claim, or complaint, with the Office of Professional Responsibility in the same Justice Department of which John Ashcroft is the head, is the attorney general. And, boy, it's a little easier to understand his concern about this phrase "person of interest," Carol. That is the exact phrase that the FBI was using to describe Ward Weaver at the hour of when 40 agents and 3 dogs were descending upon the property Saturday morning.

So the phrase or the ambiguity has, according to Hatfill, been absolutely devastating to him.

On the other hand, our system doesn't let people stop the FBI before they complete an investigation, so he's going to continue taking his case to the press. In the meanwhile, the FBI is going to keep doing its job and try to close out the investigation one way or the other as soon as they can.

COSTELLO: So Steven Hatfill doesn't have a prayer of winning in this case.

COFFEY: Well, the complaint is going to accomplish, I think, what they want it to accomplish, which is to get public opinion focused on whether or not he is the victim of a witch hunt.

COSTELLO: All right, Kendall Coffey, thanks for joining us this morning. We'll catch you again next Monday at about 35 minutes past the hour.

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