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CNN CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT
Television Innovator Roone Arledge Dies; Prosecutor Recommends Overturning Central Park Jogger Convictions
Aired December 5, 2002 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CONNIE CHUNG, HOST: Good evening. I'm Connie Chung.
Tonight: One of television's great innovators, ABC's Roone Arledge, is dead of cancer.
Also: the blood-curdling crime that horrified the nation. Now the prosecutor says the wrong men did the time.
ANNOUNCER: The Central Park jogger case: five teens convicted of the horrible crime. Tonight, the bombshell: The man who put them behind bars now says their convictions should be overturned.
Plus: Coercing young people to confess is nothing new. We'll meet a teenager who police forced to confess to his sister's murder.
The deadly storm:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just slid off the road. I suppose we must have hit some ice.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Ice and snow leaves dozens of the states paralyzed and over a million and a half without power. Tonight: the latest on the winter storm.
Imagine yourself on the operating table in the middle of surgery and your surgeon leaves for a half-hour to go to the ATM.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLES ALGERI, PLAINTIFF: I am physically scarred. I'm mentally scarred.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Tonight: the first prime-time interview with the patient who wants the banking doctor held accountable.
And who will be our "Person of the Day"?
This is CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT. Live from the CNN Broadcast Center in New York: Connie Chung.
CHUNG: Good evening. We'll have all those stories tonight.
We begin, though, with the news of the death of Roone Arledge, one of the pioneers and greatest innovators in television. It's fair to say that much of who you see, what you see, and the way you see things on television, all of that, is because of Roone Arledge, the former president of ABC News and ABC Sports. He died in New York today of complications from cancer. He was 71.
And, in just a few moments, I'll remember him with my colleague Barbara Walters.
But first, ABC News has made available to us this look back at Roone Arledge's remarkable life and career, told by ABC's Peter Jennings.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETER JENNINGS, ABC (voice-over): Roone Arledge made an impact on television that was genuinely unique.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He and he alone created sports television, as we know it today.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): Are you ready for some football, a Monday night party?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are only a handful, maybe four or five people, who you could truly say shaped or changed this business. And Roone clearly is one of them.
BARBARA WALTERS, ABC NEWS: Because, if you think about news in our time, then it's just synonymous with Roone Arledge.
TOM BROKAW, NBC NEWS: How many other people in our industry are so well known, have achieved so much that we need mention only their first name? Roone.
JENNINGS: That's right. He was Roone the extraordinary to all of us in television, Roone the innovator to a huge audience that watches news and sports. He was made head of sports at ABC when ABC was a very small network.
ROONE ARLEDGE: I love sport because, at its finest, at its most pure, it's, in a sense, a microcosm of life. All of the great triumphs and the great tragedies that occur in life occur in a distilled, crystallized form in sporting events.
JENNINGS: And it was Roone who took his sports team, led by Jim McKay, back and forth across the wide world in search of sports adventure. He gave us the thrill of victory. And we know the rest.
ANNOUNCER: And the agony of defeat.
JENNINGS: Before Arledge, sports on television was very different. In the major team sports, the owners believed that the television viewer should never have a better seat than those who went to the game. Roone had a different idea.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is what Roone wrote in 1960: "Heretofore, television has done a remarkable job of bringing the game to the viewer. Now we are going to take the viewer to the game."
JENNINGS: Which he did, using every device then available and those that he brought to television.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Before Roone Arledge, there were no replays. There were no slow-mo machines. There were no handheld cameras. There was absolutely no prime-time sports whatsoever on any network.
JENNINGS: It was Arledge who convinced the National Football League that "Monday Night Football" could become the crown jewel of broadcast sports by also becoming a cultural event. Who else, you may wonder, would have hired Howard Cosell, a former labor lawyer, to do the color commentary?
ARLEDGE: I went through periods with him when you couldn't believe the hate mail. You couldn't believe the pressure that it brought from everything from the U.S. government to advertisers.
HOWARD COSELL, FORMER ABC BROADCASTER: Roone and I, as I've made plain through the years, had many differences. But, in fairness to that man, I would not have survived and prospered without him.
JENNINGS: That is true of so many people in sports and in news. Roone was a newsman. And he loved the news business as much as he did sports. It was never clearer than during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.
In 1972, Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli residence at the Olympic Village and took 11 Israelis hostage. It was Arledge who ran the show, as the news division and the sports division worked together on the very first terrorist incident to be broadcast live throughout the world.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM MCKAY, ABC: Good afternoon,. I'm Jim McKay, speaking to you live at this moment from ABC headquarters just outside the Olympic Village in Munich, West Germany.
The peace of what have been called the serene Olympics was shattered.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a day like no other in sports. I cannot think of an event in sports that even comes close to it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right in front of me now, in one of the windows of the Israeli delegation, we can see one of the Arab commanders, who has looked very much like keeping watch on one section of the building.
MCKAY: Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They have now said that there were 11 hostages. They're all gone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JENNINGS: When it was over, the Olympic Games and life and Roone Arledge went on.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: But, as Peter Jennings certainly recalls, the reaction was shock and critical when, in 1977, Roone Arledge was named president of ABC News while he still ran the sports division. One critic suggested he would turn news into ABC's wide world of news. And, in a way, he did, but not in the way his critics would ever imagine.
Arledge created programs like "20/20" and "Primetime Live." And, in 1979, after American hostages were seized in Iran, he started the program that eventually became "Nightline," with Ted Koppel as the anchor. And, under his leadership, he turned ABC News, once the poorer relation, into the equal and sometimes the better of its rivals, CBS and NBC.
And one way he did that was by promoting or hiring away big-name correspondent, such as David Brinkley, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, from the competition. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, ABC was generally considered the top network news division.
CONNIE CHUNG, HOST: Just a short while ago, I spoke with Barbara Walters about the man who hired her and me at ABC News and many more, Roone Arledge.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: Barbara, thank you so much for being with us tonight.
Barbara, when you look back, do you think that there is anyone who had a greater impact on television news and sports? Because I don't think so.
BARBARA WALTERS, ABC NEWS: No, I don't think so, either.
I mean, for people who are watching they may say: Well, what was so different about Roone Arledge, aside from that name? You could never forget that name. But this was a man who not only put ABC News on the map, brought Connie Chung from CBS to ABC, nourished my career, made "Nightline" what it was, with Ted Koppel, made Peter Jennings the kind of anchor he turned out to be, brought Diane Sawyer, brought so many people to ABC.
But what he was able to do, whether in sports or news, was make you care and make you know why it was important. He was an innovator. He was a great producer. He was a great director. He was also eccentric. He didn't return the phone calls.
(CROSSTALK)
CHUNG: Why is that? Why would Roone not return phone calls?
WALTERS: I don't think he liked that conflict.
And yet, when he was with you, he would give you hours and hours of time. But he had a way of knowing everything, from the fact that I shouldn't be wearing this blue suit, to you should take the end and put it in the beginning and put this here and put this there. If the story was in the Middle East, boy, he sent us to the Middle East. If the story was in Iraq, as it is now, Roone, Roone would have been the one to get Saddam Hussein. This was a man who lived and breathed news.
CHUNG: Absolutely.
WALTERS: And it's also, I think -- for so many of us in the news business, it's like losing a member of our family. We were so close to him in so many ways. He had been sick for months.
CHUNG: Yes. When was the last time you saw him?
WALTERS: I saw him just last week. And his wife, his wonderful wife, Gigi, she has been with him day and night. And I almost think that I was the last person to see him coherent. I went to see him in the hospital. And you know what we talked about?
CHUNG: What?
WALTERS: We talked about news.
CHUNG: News, yes.
(LAUGHTER)
WALTERS: We talked about Don Hewitt at CBS. I mean, he lived and breathed, until he could no longer breathe, news.
CHUNG: And, Barbara, it was Roone Arledge who made you the first woman co-anchor of the evening news.
WALTERS: Well, actually, it wasn't, Connie, because...
CHUNG: It wasn't?
WALTERS: No, he was in sports when I was the first co-anchor. But let me tell you...
CHUNG: Well, why do we all think that?
WALTERS: I'll tell you why: because I was such a flop.
CHUNG: No.
(LAUGHTER)
WALTERS: I was. Oh, I was.
And I had a partner, Harry Reasoner, who didn't want a partner. And Roone made the decision. He knew the show wasn't going to make it. He bet on me. He let Harry go back to CBS and "60 Minutes," where Harry was happy. And he said, "You know, I'm going to nourish you." And that's when I did the biggest interviews that I've ever done in my life: the Middle East interviews with Sadat and Begin, Fidel Castro, Torrijos of Panama.
You're right. He gave me my future, and not just me. Roone one was great believer....
CHUNG: There was David Brinkley, right?
WALTERS: David Brinkley. He also had a very positive feeling about women, at the time when a lot of women in broadcasting were second-class citizens.
CHUNG: Oh, you are so right, Barbara.
WALTERS: Didn't he?
CHUNG: Yes.
WALTERS: He felt we could do anything, and so we did do anything.
CHUNG: We went to wars. We went to do interviews that were soft, if we wanted them to be soft. He was amazing, I mean, when you think back.
Barbara, personally, what do you think he gave to you?
WALTERS: On a professional level, he resurrected my career. On a personal level, even though he was exasperating, he was so lovable and so smart and so funny. I feel as if I've lost -- I feel as if I've lost a member of my family.
CHUNG: Yes. I do, too.
Barbara Walters, thank you so much for helping us remember this institution in our industry.
WALTERS: Thank you, Connie. And thank you for helping us bring to life the kind of man he was.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: All of us who knew him or had the privilege of working with him just feel we've lost someone that can't be replaced.
When we come back: the legal bombshell in a story that rocked the nation: the Central Park jogger case.
Stay with us.
ANNOUNCER: Still ahead: From Oklahoma to New England, much of the nation is in the grip of a powerful winter storm. We'll check the conditions -- when CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHUNG: A bombshell today in a case that horrified the nation and further divided New York City at a time when racial tensions ran high: Manhattan's district attorney is asking a judge to throw out the convictions of five African African-Americans and Hispanic men accused of raping and beating a white investment banker until she almost died. It became known as the Central Park jogger case.
CNN's Deborah Feyerick has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Yusef Salaam served more than seven years in prison for a crime that the district attorney now says he should not have been convicted of.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My poor child grew up in jail.
FEYERICK: Salaam was one of five young men found guilty in the rape of the Central Park jogger more than 13 years ago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He wants his life back. He did seven years in jail for a crime he didn't commit.
FEYERICK: Confessions given at the time helped convince two juries the teens were involved in the rape and in the assaults of others in the park that night, crimes that shook the city for years. But in a dramatic turn of events, Manhattan's D.A. is asking a judge to toss out all convictions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The verdicts have been set aside in their entirety.
FEYERICK: The bombshell reversal dropped after new evidence came to light. A confession and DNA match linking someone else, Matias Reyes, a serial rapist, to the crime. The D.A. says that, "If that evidence had been available at trial, the verdict would have been more favorable to the defendants."
But an official with the Detectives Union calls the DA's move a rush to judgment, saying, "It's an all-time low for the criminal justice system when we take the word of a convicted murderer, Matias Reyes, over the hard work and testimony of dedicated New York police detectives.
Prosecutors spent months reanalyzing the evidence and using DNA testing not available in 1989. Lawyers for the five are convinced the confessions were coerced, even though some parents were in the room when the young men were questioned. Still, the families are relieved. ANGELA RICHARDSON, SISTER OF EXONERATED ATTACKER: We just wanted the truth. And we wanted to be -- we wanted to be treated fairly and properly. We were misled. We were lied to. We were assaulted in the media. My brother's name was disgraced. He has his name back.
FEYERICK (on camera): The judge still has the final say. It's expected he'll take the DA's recommendation and dismiss all guilty verdicts, thereby rewriting the ending to one of the most shocking chapters in New York City's history.
Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: And we now have legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin with us. And, also, I want to start, though, with Dr. Robert Kurtz, who treated the victim and has remained in touch with her to this day.
Dr. Kurtz, thank you for being with us, and, Jeffrey, of course, as well.
DR. ROBERT KURTZ: You're welcome.
CHUNG: Dr. Kurtz, that horrible morning you received a call to come to the hospital and you saw the Central Park jogger. Can you describe her condition and what you saw?
KURTZ: She was what the police in these types of cases would have called likely, meaning likely to die.
She was in profound hemorrhagic shock. She had lost about three- quarters of her blood volume. She was hypothermic. In other words, her temperature was about 83 or 84 degrees Fahrenheit. She was in a coma. And she was very acidotic, in other words, had a lot of acid in her bloodstream, because her heart was not circulating what little blood she had left.
Any one of these things could have done her in. And, taken together, it was pretty miraculous and I think kind of nifty that we managed to pull her through.
CHUNG: Absolutely. It's quite extraordinary. We'll get to how she's doing now in a minute.
But I know that you do not believe that the man who confessed to raping her, which prompted this bombshell turnaround, was the only person who raped her. Now, why do you believe that?
KURTZ: If we accept what he says, that he was the only person, I think, in logic, we have to accept what he says about his choice of weapons: blunt instruments, a tree branch and a rock, supposedly.
The lacerations on her scalp, from which she nearly bled to death, were inflicted by a sharp instrument, which I know as a trauma surgeon, because the edges of the incision were sharp. There wasn't bridging tissue. There was no crushing. The wound healed kindly by what we call in surgery first intention. In other words, the edges were sewn together and there was healing without loss of tissue, the need to put in flaps and so forth.
The pathologist who saw her rendered his opinion. He's a responsible man, but I differ with his opinion. He didn't get a chance to trace the wound healing day by day, as I did, or to see the consequences. And I am as certain now as I was then that there was a sharp instrument involved.
CHUNG: So, it's your belief that there were others involved. You aren't necessarily saying these individuals who did serve time for it, but you believe others were involved.
KURTZ: Had to have been involved. Medical evidence can't point to a single individual, either to inculpate or exculpate that individual. That's the job of the legal and the forensic system.
But I'm certain now and I was certain then. And I spoke at length to the prosecutors 13 years ago.
CHUNG: Yes, to try to convince them.
KURTZ: And I've spoken with them since. But they had different testimony from the pathologist. And that's fine. Reasonable people can differ on the facts. But I know what I saw and I know how she healed.
CHUNG: Tell me how she is.
KURTZ: She's much better now. She's done a tremendous job of rehabilitating herself. She spent three or four months in Gaylord, a remarkable rehab facility in Connecticut. And she's really built her life around getting herself back in shape. I think some of the public knows that...
CHUNG: Is she normal? Does she seem to be able to walk and run and everything?
KURTZ: Oh, yes.
CHUNG: Everything's fine?
KURTZ: Yes. She looks terrific. She's actually a pretty good- looking woman. She's run in the New York City Marathon.
CHUNG: She has, huh? Anonymously.
KURTZ: She was promoted in her job at Salomon Brothers before she eventually left. She got married. She's writing a book. She's leading a real full life.
CHUNG: And she counsels people, too?
KURTZ: I think she's done some of that also.
CHUNG: All right. Now, Jeffrey, the question is, why did the prosecutors make this turnaround? I mean, it is quite extraordinary, isn't it? Not what you expected.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's not.
And this, you have to pause and say what an extraordinary day this is in the history of the American judicial system. Here you have the most senior and most respected prosecutor in the United States, Robert Morgenthau, DA for 28 years, his biggest case of his career. He walks into court today, files this brief, and says, "We got the wrong guy," because what they could have done, what they could have done is say: "Well, the evidence is ambiguous. We're not sure."
No, no. This brief says: "Reyes is guilty. Those kids are innocent."
CHUNG: Throw the convictions out.
TOOBIN: Throw the convictions, all the convictions. That's where I was wrong.
CHUNG: Yes, you thought it would just be the rape charges.
TOOBIN: And this brief says something. If you read it very carefully, you see, in this year, two of the defendants admitted that they had been involved in the other assaults, but they still threw out the whole case because they said it was tried as one series of assaults. The rape case was so much the center of the case. If you couldn't prove that -- as they admit they can't -- you couldn't honorably prosecute the five for anything, so they threw the whole thing out. Incredible.
CHUNG: It is incredible. But do you think that the prosecution essentially is saying, Morgenthau, the DA, is saying that there was prosecutorial misconduct?
TOOBIN: No, they're not.
And I think that's the sort of chilling legacy of this case. We all sort of understand when cops go wrong, when cops and prosecutors violate the law. What's scary about this case is that these cops and prosecutors played by the rules. These are honorable people. And, still, they wound up prosecuting the wrong person.
CHUNG: So, you don't think the police coerced them into these confessions?
TOOBIN: You know, based on what I saw, I thought this was the way cops behaved all the time. And it is not -- this wasn't the third degree. This wasn't keeping people in a way that was abusive.
This is how cops behave with most prosecutors. I don't think it was abuse. But it just shows, even when there's business as usual, there can be terrible injustice.
CHUNG: Extraordinary.
Thank you, Jeffrey Toobin.
Dr. Kurtz, I thank you very much for coming to us and talking to us...
KURTZ: You're very welcome.
CHUNG: ... because I know you haven't talked during all of this period of time until now. All right.
And if you're skeptical, ladies and gentlemen out there, about the idea that people can be pushed to confess to a crime they didn't commit, we have got proof right here after this.
ANNOUNCER: Still ahead: A surgeon left his patient in the middle of an operation to make a bank deposit. Now the patient wants his doctor held to account.
CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT continues in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHUNG: A new movie airing on Court TV dramatizes the issue we just talked about with the Central Park jogger case: the falsely- accused push to confess.
In this case, the falsely accused was a 14-year-old boy interrogated for hours in 1998 by police, who accused him of killing his 12-year-old sister Stephanie. His story became the basis for the Court TV movie "Interrogation Of Michael Crowe."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE INTERROGATION OF MICHAEL CROWE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: But you need to help us understand how to help you. Now, just because a person makes a mistake and does something bad, A, it doesn't mean that the world comes to an end. And, B, it doesn't mean that you're a bad person. Good people do bad things.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Why are you doing this to me? I didn't do this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHUNG: Michael Crowe did not commit the crime, but he eventually broke down and agreed to say that he did. He spent seven months in jail, while he and his parents were still grieving for Stephanie, until her blood was found on the clothing of a homeless man who is now facing trial for her killing.
Michael and his family, mother Cheryl and father Stephen, join me now from their home in Escondido, California.
Thank you so much for being with us.
Michael, I'd like to start with you.
You know, when I watched this Court TV movie, I couldn't believe that you actually lived this experience. And once people know your story, they'll understand. But can you explain how you could confess to a crime that you did not commit?
MICHAEL CROWE, CONFESSED FALSELY TO SISTER'S MURDER: Well, really, the whole goal that the police had when they took me into that room was to make my world reverse.
You go into the room thinking that: "I didn't do it. I'm not going to confess to something I didn't do." And by the time you leave, everything has changed: The cops are your best friends, your parents hate you, you have no other friends, and that confessing is the right thing to do. They just take everything that you know and turn it inside out.
CHUNG: You know, we have a clip of part of this film. And it just shows this interrogation process, Michael. And I think the part that's so extraordinary and I don't think anybody would believe out there is that the police can actually lie. They can lie to you. And they did lie to you.
So let's take a look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE INTERROGATION OF MICHAEL CROWE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: Once they decide to do an interrogation, there is one goal. It is not to get the truth. It is to get a confession.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: They told him that they found blood in his room.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: Can they do that, lie like that?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: Absolutely. It is not illegal for the police to lie about evidence during an interrogation.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Unbelievable.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: They can do just anything they want. They also told him that they could prove nobody got into the house, when in fact not all the doors were secured. They can tell them they found his fingerprints, that a witness saw him, that evidence was found, blood, whatever, that points to him, that he failed a lie-detector test. None of it has to be true.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHUNG: Cheryl, and, Michael -- first, Michael -- when you suddenly became aware that they were telling you these things, what did you think?
M. CROWE: I didn't know what to think, that they really just caught me off guard. CHUNG: All right.
And, Cheryl, did you lose hope when you realized that the police had manipulated this confession out of your son?
CHERYL CROWE, MOTHER OF MICHAEL CROWE: Not really. We didn't lose hope. We just -- we had a new -- something else to overcome, other than just -- on top of our daughter being murdered, we also had to fight for our son. We still do.
CHUNG: Absolutely.
And, Stephen, as you look back, it was obviously the videotape that made the difference. Had he not been videotaped, you never would have found out the truth, nor would the courts have found out the truth.
STEPHEN CROWE, FATHER OF MICHAEL CROWE: Right. I mean, that's the whole thing, is that we are just lucky that they did videotape the whole entire interrogation and the so-called confession.
CHUNG: Michael, you are now in college...
S. CROWE: Because if they hadn't of -- I'm sorry.
CHUNG: No, go ahead.
S. CROWE: I'm sorry.
If they hadn't of, then we would have never really have known what went on and how many hours it went on for that he was in there being interrogated.
CHUNG: Absolutely.
And, Michael, finally to you, I know you're in college now and you're engaged to be married. How have you been able to get past this ordeal?
M. CROWE: I don't think there is such a thing as getting past it. The whole point of my life at this point is learning how to live with it. You adapt. That's all that you can do.
CHUNG: All right, Michael, we want to thank you and your parents for sharing your story.
And next: Much of the Northeast is struggling to get back to work, back on the road, and back to school. We'll have details on the wintry killer storm right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHUNG: At the White House today, the administration warned Iraq to come clean on its weapons. Iraq has three days to report on its weapons programs, but says it will do so Saturday, reporting it has no weapons. Still, the U.S. is beefing up its military presence in the region. The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and its battle group shipped out from Norfolk today, its crew telling reporters they are ready to take on Saddam, if the president orders them to.
The president today also focused on emerging strongholds for terrorism. And that's the first item on the deck as we check out "The World in: 60."
A presidential pledge to take on terrorists in Africa: At a White House meeting, President Bush promised the leaders of Kenya and Ethiopia they can count on the U.S., the promise fueled by fresh concern after last week's deadly terrorist attack in Kenya.
Connecting the al Qaeda dots: CIA and FBI intelligence documents show operatives of the terrorist group fleeing Malaysia and Singapore and planting roots in Thailand.
A mini-submarine has found solidified strands of fuel oil leaking from the sunken tanker Prestige. Experts say it's the first evidence of a long-term threat to the environment along 550 miles of the Spanish coast. The tanker dumped some 17,000 tons of fuel oil before sinking off Spain last month.
The worst fire in a generation rages around Sydney. Strong winds have fanned more than 60 blazes around Australia's largest city, forcing hundreds of people from their homes.
Millions of Muslims around the world celebrate a most important festival, marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The wintry storm that swept this week from New Mexico to New England has now become a killer storm, with at least 19 deaths blamed on the storm conditions. The storm today virtually shut down much of the East Coast. Traffic slowed to a crawl. Flights were canceled and schools shut down for the day in more than a dozen states.
More than 1.5 million people were estimated to be without power today in the Carolinas, where the storm is one of the worst ice and snow storms in years.
And we've got Jeff Flock tonight in North Carolina, in Charlotte.
Jeff, how is it there?
JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you said it, Connie: a million people without power, including the block that we're on -- 264,000 people in Charlotte, North Carolina, alone.
Maybe you can tell how it is here. It is not good. Take a look at just this one house. This lady that lived here was in that upstairs bedroom up there, perhaps you see, on the second floor with her baby. And that's when a branch snapped off, came in through the window. And she was able to get out and be safe.
But so many stories like this played out all around North Carolina tonight: trees down, power lines down. And it's not pretty. And it's not going to get better any time soon, Connie.
CHUNG: So, Jeff, how long will it be before power is restored?
FLOCK: Well, the local power company, Duke Power, tells us that they're working as fast as they can. But they've got scenes like this one down here. You see that tree that is down, a power line, a downed power line right there near it.
And I also want to show you some pictures we shot earlier, because it's dark now and you really can't see the enormity of it. There's some video we shot earlier that really shows what happened all across North Carolina today. Let's go ahead and roll that. Maybe you can see what happened.
Take a look at that. Is that incredible? That happened all around us today, just spontaneously. Eventually, a branch, got too much weight on it, would snap and roll down. That man that you see right there, his house almost hit by a massive oak tree, a well-over- 100-year oak tree. And we talked to him about what that whole experience was like.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a lot like Hugo, a lot cracking limbs and trees.
FLOCK: Now, you weren't having wind.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. Just you could hear the limbs cracking and crashing down.
FLOCK: Did you think this was going upon your house?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were thinking about it. In fact, we went downstairs. Our bedroom is in the corner, so we went on downstairs.
FLOCK: So, what was this whole experience like?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it was frightening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FLOCK: You heard him, Connie, invoke the name of Hugo there. That one, of course, hit Charleston, but made its way inland to Charlotte and did a lot of damage here back in 1989. But they have more people who lost power as a result of this storm than lost power in Hugo -- so bad times here.
CHUNG: Incredible.
Jeff Flock, thank you. Stay safe and stay warm.
When we come back: How would you feel if your doctor took a little break to go to the bank while he was operating on you? Can you believe it?
Stay with us.
ANNOUNCER: Still ahead: Who will be our "Person of the Day"?
CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT returns in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHUNG: We have got one of those jaw-dropping, wait-until-you- hear-this-one stories tonight.
It began this summer when a Massachusetts doctor left a patient on the operating table with an open incision for 35 minutes, while he went to the bank. Can you believe that? The hospital suspended the doctor. It also issued a statement saying it's been taking -- quote -- "a very hard and critical look" -- unquote -- at its procedures.
The doctor has other problems, including charges that he raped a 15-year-old boy. As for the patient, he says he still hasn't recovered.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALGERI: My back looks like a mine field, you know what I mean, like a battleground. I am physically scarred. I'm mentally scarred, you know what I mean? The medication I have to take, I have to, like, take more of it, because as the pain gets worse -- and I don't want to do that. I can't do anything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHUNG: Charles Algeri joins me now from Boston for an exclusive interview, his first since filing the lawsuit yesterday, along with his attorney, Marc Breakstone.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being with us.
Mr. Algeri, tell me, since the surgery, how have you been?
ALGERI: Not very good. The pain is getting progressively worse every day.
CHUNG: Well, I know that this operation was a spinal fusion and that the doctor left for 35 minutes. Did you have any idea that he was gone?
ALGERI: No, none at all. I was under general anesthetic at the time. I didn't find out for, like, a month. Almost a month after the surgery is when I actually found out.
CHUNG: How did you find out?
ALGERI: The hospital called me up and they told me there was something they thought I might like to know, that the doctor left. And I said, "Well, everybody needs a break."
And they said, "Well, he left the building and he went down to Harvard square and to the bank." The whole -- just the call was, they wanted to tell me that my confidentiality would be left out -- my name would be left out in case there was an investigation into it.
CHUNG: Do you know what prompted the hospital to call you right at that time, because it was a month later?
ALGERI: The next day, I picked up the newspaper and I turned on the news and my phone started ringing. I was all over the place. Well, the case was all over, not my name, because the media had ahold of it and it broke the next day. That's why I believe they told me that day.
CHUNG: Mr. Algeri, you must have been just astounded. I mean, what were you thinking and feeling inside once you heard that this doctor had left you on the operating table?
ALGERI: I hung up the phone. And they told me. And I said, "Goodbye." And I didn't believe it. It was, like, surreal. And I said, no, that couldn't have been happening. This must be like a dream. And I just hung up the phone.
And as it sank in, I said, this isn't a dream. It actually happened. Then I started to get a little mad and why me and the depression and all of that. I went through all the stages.
CHUNG: Well, let's bring in your lawyer now.
Mr. Breakstone, tell us, you are not suing the hospital. Why not?
MARC BREAKSTONE, ATTORNEY FOR ALGERI: Well, in Massachusetts, we have an antiquated law called the charitable immunity cap which limits damages to a charitable institution, like Mount Auburn Hospital, to $20,000.
And Dr. Arndt has $5 million of insurance coverage and really bears full responsibility for the damage done to Mr. Algeri, which is a significant permanent nerve injury.
CHUNG: So, what you've done is file that malpractice suit.
BREAKSTONE: Yes.
CHUNG: And what do you hope to get from that?
BREAKSTONE: Well, we hope to get answers for the bizarre behavior of this physician, who left his patient opened up with a 14- inch incision, under general anesthesia, while he went to the bank. And we hope to get full compensation for Mr. Algeri for his very significant permanent injuries.
CHUNG: Now, according to the Department of Public Health, they don't quite agree with you. I mean, they don't believe that your claims are valid.
BREAKSTONE: Well, I don't quite agree with you, Connie. That's not a fair reading of the Department of Public Health report.
They found that three of the four claims were valid. And they found that the X-rays taken in the operating room at the end of the procedure did not show, as one of my experts suggested, that the fusion looked as if it was going to fail. Subsequent X-rays done with contrast, a myelogram, showed that the fusion grafts had actually fallen out, like mortar that had been dropped on the ground, rather than placed between bricks.
CHUNG: Mr. Algeri, you gave he a little idea in the beginning of how you are, but perhaps you can tell us now. I mean, will you have to have another operation or did the spinal fusion actually work?
ALGERI: No, it did not work. Actually, we've been fighting with the insurance company. Within two weeks, I hope I'm going to be having another surgery to straighten it out, which means they have to take apart the screws and the rod. They have to take apart the whole hardware to fix this thing, this piece that fell out. And they have to put me back together again.
So, it means another scar, another week in the hospital, maybe another two weeks rehab, running through Christmas. And the pain is worse and worse. I mean, I've thought about not having it done, but there's no way I cannot have it done.
CHUNG: And what do you think should happen to Dr. Arndt?
(LAUGHTER)
ALGERI: Everybody asks me this. And I would like for him to live in my shoes for a couple of weeks or a month, just to see what his actions have done to me.
A lot of people think I'm out for money. And it's not that. It's that I want to get well. I would like him to live, to go through what I go through every day just to get out of bed, just to get in and out of the bathroom, let's say, you know what I mean, just to go through -- walk a mile in my shoes.
CHUNG: All right, Mr. Algeri and Marc Breakstone, thank you so much for being with us.
ALGERI: Thank you for having us.
BREAKSTONE: Thank you.
ALGERI: Thank you, Connie.
CHUNG: We wish you well.
And just before we go, we want to just tell you that we have a quick "Snapshot." We have some stories that we are reporting all day. And some of them are rather distinctive stories.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) (voice-over): Christmas came to the White House today, First lady Laura Bush upholding the tradition of displaying the grand White House Christmas Tree. Just hours ago, President Bush joined the first lady in lighting the National Christmas Tree, the 79th year for this Washington tradition.
A dose of rude reality for "The Osbournes," as the wildly popular MTV series watched its ratings plunge. One-third fewer people tuned into this week to watch the oddity of "The Osbournes."
Trouble-laden diva Whitney Houston comes clean in an ABC interview, admitting she used drugs, but says she now has the problem under control.
Cheating on your spouse? Beware. It might kill you. Research by a British cardiologist finds 75 percent of sudden death during sexual activity involves people taking part in extramarital sex.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: And one last "Snapshot": Winona Ryder will be sentenced tomorrow for shoplifting. The district attorney is recommending three years probation and mandatory drug and psychiatric counseling.
On a very different note, stick around to find out who is today's "Person of the Day." He has lived 36,525 of them as of today.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHUNG: Today's "Person of the Day" was born on December 5, 1902.
Strom Thurmond grew up in Edgefield, South Carolina. A popular war hero, he served as state legislator, governor and, since 1954, senator. He started as a Democrat, rebelled over civil rights reforms to run for president on his own and eventually jumped to the Republican Party. He later dropped his opposition to desegregation.
He was honored in the Senate today, his 100th birthday. When he retires next month, he will have the distinction of being the oldest and the longest-serving senator ever: 48 years. Tonight, we also call Strom Thurmond our "Person of the Day."
And tomorrow: Jermaine Jackson, the sentencing of Winona Ryder, and Saddam's deadline draws closer.
And coming up next on "LARRY KING LIVE," Princess Di's former butler, Paul Burrell, speaks out live in prime time.
And that's our program for tonight.
Thank you so much for being with us. And for all of us at CNN, have a good night and we'll see you tomorrow.
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