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CNN Live Today

One Murder, Two Trials

Aired September 05, 2002 - 10:05   ET

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

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: We are also monitoring this hour's resumption of the King murder trial in Pensacola, Florida, two young boys are charged with murdering their father, and their defense starkly contrasts with their choir boy looks. It is built on claims of child molestation, drug use and deadly family secrets.
CNN's Mark Potter explains.

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Anderson. Here at the Escambia Circuit Court in Pensacola, we are beginning the third and likely final day of testimony in this highly unusual and disturbing case. It involves, as you said, two boys, Alex and Derek King, ages 13 and 14, who are accused of beating their father to death with a baseball bat last November, and then setting their house on fire to cover the evidence.

The centerpiece of the prosecution's case was played yesterday in court. It involved taped confessions from both boys, taken shortly after their arrests.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I hit him once, and I heard him moan, and I was afraid he might wake up and see us, so I just kept on hitting him. I hit him somewhere around ten times.

QUESTION: Where?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The face, the face, the left side of the face and forehead.

QUESTION: The third time it made contact, blood come from his head, and then he smashed -- he smashed his face in, his skull, normally his skull, his forehead is -- his nose comes out further than his forehead normally, his normal-sized head. But when he smashed his face in, it is smashed in further than his head.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

POTTER: But in the months that followed, the boys recanted those confessions, and blamed a family friend, 40-year-old Ricky Chavis, for killing their father. Authorities say Chavis had an emotional and sexual relationship with one of the boys, Alex. The boys claim that Chavis convinced them to falsely confess, argued that they would not be punished together severely because they are juveniles, and he also said that it would enable them to finally be together. Now, late yesterday, 12-year-old Alex took the witness stand, and he told the court that he loved Chavis, but he also said that he loved his father, and would harm him. The word here at the courthouse today is that the other brother, the older brother, Derek, is not -- and I stress not -- going to testify. That is the word this morning.

Now in an unusual move this morning, a grand jury also indicted Chavis for exactly the same murder on exactly the same charges now facing the boy. He was tried. There was a verdict. He was tried on a different prosecution theory. However, that verdict is being withheld until we have a verdict in this case.

If convicted, he, the boys, or conceivably both, could automatically face life in prison -- Anderson.

COOPER: Mark, what is the -- what is the motive that the prosecutors allege would have led these young boys to kill their father?

POTTER: The theory is that they had run away and were brought back home, and they feared that they would be severely punished, so to prevent that, they killed their father. That is the prosecution's theory.

COOPER: And what is expected to happen in court today?

POTTER: We are expecting a number of witnesses, defense witnesses. The talk here is that this could all end, at least the testimony, by noon. Whether there is to be a rebuttal case by the prosecution, we don't know. But the next step typically would then be closing argument. I mean, this could wrap up today, and if not today, certainly tomorrow.

COOPER: And what is the status of Mr. Chavis. I know he has gone through the trial, and has been sealed. Is he in custody? Is he out?

POTTER: Well absolutely, is he in custody. He was held on a first-degree murder charge. And in addition to that, he faces other charges for altering the evidence in this case, and also for that alleged sexual relationship with the young boy, so he faces other trials after. Even if he is acquitted this time, he will stay in jail.

COOPER: All right, Mark Potter reporting. Obviously, CNN will be following this trial throughout the day, and we will bring it to you live as warranted. Thanks, very much, Mark.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: In fact, we will have more on it in just a second here.

First, we want to tell you about one other story, another court proceeding today. This one involves David Westerfield, the man convicted of murdering 7-year-old Danielle van Dam. The same jury that convicted him two weeks ago has started deliberating whether he should die for that crime. Danielle disappeared during the night from her bedroom in early February. Westerfield lived two doors down, he was arrested three weeks later. Danielle's body was found discarded along a rural road, too badly decomposed to determine the cause of her death.

For some legal perspective now on the Westerfield case and the murder trial going on with the two King brothers, we want to turn to former U.S. attorney Kendall Coffey joining us this morning -- good morning.

KENDALL COFFEY, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Good morning.

KAGAN: First to Westerfield. How long do you expect this phase to take, this jury deliberation to take?

COFFEY: I don't think it is going to be like the ten days that was saw before, 40 hours, where it appeared that the jury did have some difficulties going through all of the issues. Obviously, reached a conviction of guilty.

At this point, the focus seems to be he is guilty, they've looked at the evidence in the sentencing phase, it wasn't that many days, and I expect we will have a verdict in much less time than the actual question of guilt or innocence required.

KAGAN: Do you think he is going to get the death penalty?

COFFEY: Everything seems to point that way, the brutality of the crime, the fact that in San Diego, four -- of other four juries looking at child murders have returned verdicts of the death penalty. His lingering hope, if there is one, is that there is some lingering doubt about his guilt based upon the length of the prior jury deliberation.

KAGAN: Let's go ahead and focus on the King brother trial that we looked at it just a couple of minutes ago. This is your home state, Florida?

COFFEY: This is Florida.

KAGAN: Explain Florida to me, Kendall.

COFFEY: I can't.

KAGAN: How can prosecutors go after three different people for the same crime?

COFFEY: I can't. It's tragic, it's bizarre. Prosecutors are not lawyers for civil litigants in everyday cases over money or over real estate issues. A prosecutor has to reach and determine, first of all, a determination as to who he or she believes is actually guilty, and then you go to whether the evidence supports it.

This looks like a prosecution at a roulette table where they are covering their bets on the red as well as on the black, and it is very difficult to understand. KAGAN: I want to get right to these boys. They look more like they should be in a Gap ad or Ambercrombie & Fitch than on trial for murdering their own father. The problem here, I guess, is they have confessed not once, but a number of times. We just heard part of the confession in Mark Potter's piece.

COFFEY: Multiple confessions, and some of the confessions have been graphic in the way they have described the brutality of the crime. Concrete, cracking wood, those kind of pretty horrible terms. So, that is a problem. What this case is going to come down to, when the defendant takes the stand, as this young child did yesterday, it becomes essentially a one-witness trial. You got the confessions, but the defense has a theory as to why they -- quote -- "manufactured" the confession, so at the end of it, the jury saw Alex King take the stand. If they believe him, they will be acquitted, or if it raises a reasonable doubt.

KAGAN: In fact -- I'm sorry, I want to jump in, because they heard him recant, and we have a little bit of that tape, so I want to listen to that and talk to you about that. So let's listen to Alex King recanting his confession on the stand.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX KING, DEFENDANT: He was saying that if we took the blame than we would get off on self defense, because we were juveniles, and like, he was saying that we could say that Derek had done it because he was, like, stronger and stuff, and, like, they would believe that and we would get off on self defense because of, like, he was saying that mental abuse that he was doing to us. And he said that he had cop friends that could, like, back us up on it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Not a bad theory, if it is indeed true. You have the adult saying to the kids, well, you cop to it because you are juveniles and you will get off, but that backfires because these boys being tried as adults, and very possible they could spend the rest of their lives in prison.

COFFEY: It is not a completely implausible theory. What it comes down to is the focus on how young they are in the sense that, is it easier for a 12 or 13-year-old to come in and lie one time in a courtroom in front of a jury, perhaps, with whatever preparation. Or is it easier for two young boys -- is it more likely that they will be telling the truth when they make multiple statements to multiple people where the sense, the general substance of what they are saying is fairly consistent, even in terms of the number of times the bat struck and in terms of how it took.

Which do you believe? The one-time version before your eyes, or the multiple instances, including the tape recorded confessions, so I think that if you are normally looking at this in any other scenario, you would say this is a tough case for the defense to win. With the extraordinary event of the prosecution putting someone else on trial for precisely the same event, this isn't some kind of aiding and abetting theory that Chavis went to trial on. He went to trial for holding the bat. So, it has got to be one or the other, and with that extraordinary ingredient, it makes this court case very, very hard to call.

KAGAN: Let me -- or help me, actually, look down the line here. And let's just say for the sake of conversation, guilty verdicts all across the board, and of course, we don't even know with the Chavis case because that one is sealed right now, even though that trial is over, but if you get guilty verdicts across the board, what happens further down the legal system in terms of appeal? You can't have all of these people guilty.

COFFEY: Especially the way these are teed up. Sometimes you have seemingly inconsistent verdicts where you can rationalize it, but the judge, apparently, in the Chavis case dismissed anything on the murder side other than the allegation that Chavis personally did it. Cannot be reconciled with the prosecution theory in the present case.

So if there are all convictions, which frankly, I think is unlikely, I would like to think that if the first jury had returned a conviction, the judge would have said, that is the end of it. That is the end of it. The jury has spoken. But that didn't happen, so it suggests to me that it may have been a not guilty verdict, but either way, if it is all guilty verdicts, the appellate court is not going to allow all of those verdicts to stand.

More likely than not, I think, would have say that the first jury that spoke, because the prosecution chose, or the system chose to go with that jury trial first, the first jury that spoke has got to be the one that answers the question.

But one way or another, this not a proud moment for prosecution or for the criminal justice system in the state of Florida.

KAGAN: Got it. We will be tracking it as you will, I am sure. Kendall Coffey, thanks for stopping by this morning. Always good to see you.

COFFEY: Thanks for inviting me.

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