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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

School Shooting in Minnesota Conjures Up Memories of Columbine; Battle Over Terri Schiavo

Aired March 22, 2005 - 22:00 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.

AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
The program tonight revolves around two stories, both tragic, and in their own very different ways neither simple; the school shooting in northern Minnesota and the memories it conjures up, the battle over Terri Schiavo and the issues, which in the end are not political or even legal but moral, it forces upon us, Ms. Schiavo first.

With protesters lining the sidewalks in Atlanta, a federal appeals court is weighing a plea to preserve her life. It is that simple and it is that complicated.

It has also been the source of national discussion and debate for days, in the end not really political, though the politicians are involved and, not really legal, though the courts will have the final say.

In the end, it is an uneasy question about what is right and, while the rest of us can talk about it, Julia Quinlan has lived it as she watched her daughter die.

We begin tonight with NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is unclear exactly what happened to 21-year-old Karen Quinlan on that April night in 1975. She put herself on a strict diet to fit into a new bathing suit, hadn't eaten all day, had a few drinks at a friend's party, felt woozy and went to lie down.

JULIA QUINLAN, KAREN ANN QUINLAN'S MOTHER: All they can assume is that perhaps she may have choked on her vomit and then when someone went up to check her she wasn't breathing.

NISSEN: At first, Karen's family held out hope that she'd recover.

QUINLAN: We weren't really ever told that it was hopeless. The doctors just kept saying that the prognosis is not good.

NISSEN: Seeing pictures of Terri Schiavo now reminds Julia Quinlan of her daughter then although Karen, unlike Terri, was on a respirator that breathed for her and Karen had a nasal feeding line, not a feeding tube in her stomach. But both women had profound brain damage. Both, doctors said, were in a persistent vegetative state.

QUINLAN: Karen's hands were all bent like that but also her knees and her legs. Her knees were drawn up practically to her chest.

NISSEN: And, like Terri Schiavo, Karen Quinlan looked awake.

QUINLAN: Her eyes were open all the time. There were times in the beginning when I felt that Karen recognized me and I felt she looked at me and it's all part of hope and part of your love for your daughter. You don't want to let go. You just can't let go.

NISSEN: But the Quinlan's finally decided they had to let go.

QUINLAN: Every time the respirator would breathe for her, you could see that she was in agony and we finally realized that this is not the way that Karen would ever want to live. She had made the remark, not only to me but to her sister Mary Ellen and also to other friends that she would never want to live that way.

NISSEN: Karen's doctors agreed to remove her from the respirator but the hospital refused. Julia and her late husband Joe Quinlan went to court and started the first fierce national debate about the right to die.

QUINLAN: Suddenly, Karen's picture was on the front page of every newspaper. We had reporters in our home, sitting on the lawn, hiding in bushes to snap pictures of us as we would leave the house, parked outside of the nursing home, of the hospital. It was a terrible invasion of our privacy and it was a very difficult time for us.

NISSEN: In 1976, the New Jersey Supreme Court in The Matter of Karen Ann Quinlan issued the first landmark ruling affirming a person's right to die.

QUINLAN: We do have the right to refuse treatment. We have the right to say that we no longer want our life extended with that treatment. We did not ask for death. Death may have been expected but we never asked for death. My husband put it beautifully. He only wanted what we considered extraordinary means removed and she would be placed back in her natural state and she would die in God's time.

NISSEN: With her father appointed her legal guardian to make decisions for her, Karen was taken off the respirator.

QUINLAN: Once she was removed from the respirator you could see the change in her. She was far more relaxed and the nasal feeding tube never seemed to make her uncomfortable so there was no reason for us to ask for the removal of it.

NISSEN: Karen was moved to a nursing home where she remained in a vegetative state for nine more years before she finally died in 1985 of pneumonia.

QUINLAN: It's heartbreaking to watch your daughter die and I watched my daughter die for ten years just a slow death for ten years. NISSEN: Watching another family go through the slow death of a loved one in the glare and shout of the media, the courts, the Congress has been hard for Julia Quinlan.

QUINLAN: I cam empathize with the parents but I can also empathize with the husband and I really, really pray and wish that they could meet and have an agreement between the family. The decision must be theirs. I do pray that whatever is best for Terri will be done.

NISSEN: Beth Nissen CNN, Newton, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Which brings us back to today, there's a fair chance that years from now people will look back on this as a kind of Elian Gonzalez moment, for some a flash of clarity, for others sheer barking madness. The political and rhetorical lines have already been drawn, sharply drawn, but are they really as clear as they seem?

Here's CNN's Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just for the benefit of one person?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): We've rarely seen anything like it, maybe never. Congress returns from recess to debate through a Sunday night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay out of my family.

GREENFIELD: Passes a law the president signs in the middle of the night. Countless conversations begin about elemental issues of life and death and yet...

(on camera): For all the passionate intensity this case has triggered it's easy to lose sight of one compelling aspect. Many of the facts in the case simply don't fit our assumptions about what it is about.

(voice-over): For instance, is this a classic right to die case? Like many of us, members of the House talked of their experiences with parents and loved ones who were approaching death.

REP. JIM MCDERMOTT (D), WASHINGTON: When my father was 95 years old, he had had about a -- he had a couple of strokes.

GREENFIELD: But Terri Schiavo is not at death's door. She is not on life support in the sense that she needs help to breathe. On the other hand, listen to how House Majority Leader Tom DeLay describes her condition.

REP. TOM DELAY (R), MAJORITY LEADER: She's not a vegetable. She's just handicapped, mentally challenged, like millions of people walking around and living full, productive lives.

GREENFIELD: Terri Schiavo is not like say someone with Downs Syndrome who can indeed work, play, marry. While there is dispute about the extent of her injuries, they are far different even from the kind of case where a patient emerges from a coma.

Dan Callahan is co-founder of The Hastings Center that specializes in medical ethics.

DANIEL CALLAHAN, THE HASTINGS CENTER: I don't believe anybody has any idea whatever about possible therapy for these conditions. If there were available therapy would it be used not only with her but also with other patients as well?

GREENFIELD: The case is also different in that unlike the characters in recent films like "The Sea Inside," or "Million Dollar Baby," there is no clear, absolutely unambiguous statement on Terri Schiavo's part about her wishes.

Writer Nat Hentoff has argued for the culture of life view for more than 20 years.

NAT HENTOFF, THE VILLAGE VOICE: You can't call it a right to die case because we don't have any evidence that she wants to die. There is no clear and convincing evidence that her husband is telling the truth.

GREENFIELD: Another question would a living will in this case have avoided all the controversy?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The lesson here is that everyone in this country should have a living will.

GREENFIELD: But patients with a living will sometimes change their minds.

HENTOFF: Many of those who did, didn't want what they said they wanted because they were on the edge of the precipice.

GREENFIELD: And what if relatives or doctors disagree about the patient's condition?

CALLAHAN: What you really need to do is appoint somebody to speak in your behalf rather than trying to fill out a form and guessing all the circumstances.

GREENFIELD: Even these famous, endlessly seen seconds from an old tape raise questions for both sides. Do they show a response or involuntary movements? If Terri Schiavo, in fact, has no awareness then does that mean her condition causes her no physical or emotional distress? Does it mean she would feel nothing if she dies from lack of nutrition?

This case compels us because sooner or later almost all of us will face this most overwhelming question for our loved ones or for ourselves and the future promises that these questions will only grow in number and in complexity.

CALLAHAN: And we're going to get more and more of these terrible borderline cases because medicine is unfortunately much too good at keeping our body running but not necessarily our mind or our personality.

GREENFIELD: Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: There is, in the end, a moral dimension to this story and we'll look at that a bit later on in the hour. Rabbi Marc Gellman joins us. That's later tonight.

More coming up, beginning in Red Lake, Minnesota, a community reeling with the worst school shooting since Columbine.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The shooter, 16 years old, a loner with possible ties to a Neo-Nazi Web site.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This looks like a very screwed up kid who was going to explode in one way or another.

BROWN: Why he killed, one of many questions tonight.

Before Red Lake, there was Paducah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you tell us why you did it?

BROWN: And Pearl, Mississippi. There was Springfield, Oregon, a string of shootings that culminated at Columbine.

Tonight, we visit each of those places again, what they taught us, what we didn't learn, what we should be doing.

From New York and around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Heading towards quarter past the hour coming up the teenager (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the shootings in Red Lake, Minnesota and all the shootings that came before.

First, some of the other stories that made news today. Erica Hill joins us from Atlanta. Erica, good evening.

(NEWSBREAK)

BROWN: Erica, thank you.

We'll never know, not for certain, what possessed a young man from an Indian reservation in northern Minnesota to murder two people at home, then go to school and kill six classmates and a security guard. He turned the murder weapon on himself.

But before he killed and before he died, he lived, a lonely life it appears, a troubled life to say the least, so here's CNN's David Mattingly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To the public at large, details of what drove 16-year-old Jeff Weise on a murderous rampage remained as incomplete as the understanding of the boy himself. So far, the FBI will not confirm if this is the same Jeff Weise who identified himself last year on a Neo-Nazi Web site.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There could be some clues in that. It's a little premature to make that determination but we need to -- we're certainly open to looking at that.

MATTINGLY: Using the names "NativeNazi" and the German word for angel of death, the Jeff Weise here complained about the lack of full- blooded Natives on his Red Lake reservation because of "cultural dominance and interracial mixing."

He blamed the influence of rap music writing, "We have kids my age killing each other over things as simple as a fight. Things for us would improve vastly under a national socialist government" he wrote. "That is why I am pro-Nazi."

The idea of a young Native American being attracted to such a Web site, however, according to one expert is not as far fetched as you might think.

MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: I think that it's not that uncommon. It's always the same phenomenon which is, you know, these are typically people who are members of more or less oppressed minority groups who want very much to identify with the oppressor, not the oppressed.

MATTINGLY: The Web site belongs to the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, which posted a statement about Weise saying, "He expressed himself well and was clearly, highly intelligent and contemplative, especially for one so young."

POTOK: This looks like a very screwed up kid, you know, who was going to explode in one way or another. You know, I think he was probably interested in all kinds of transgressive things, you know be that Hitler or Satan or whatever it might be.

MATTINGLY: The Minnesota newspaper "St. Paul Pioneer Press" reports Weise's father committed suicide and his mother is in a nursing home with injuries suffered in a traffic accident. The paper quoted unnamed relatives who said Weise was a loner and was teased by other kids.

The FBI said Weise was not living with his grandfather yesterday when the murder spree began and would not say where. Investigators are unaware of any grudge the boy may have had with family or students at the Red Lake High School, though medical personnel dealing with the wounded say Weise's goal was clear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had a couple of head injuries, close range. I think there was an intent to kill.

MATTINGLY: In web postings attributed to Weise he indicated he was suspected last year of threatening to shoot up the school on Hitler's birthday, something authorities have not confirmed. In fact, the FBI is unaware if Weise had any prior police record.

(on camera): One tribal leader tells CNN Weise was not the kind of young person who attracted a lot of attention in this small tight- knit community but now as an extended period of mourning is about to begin, it is clear that no one here will ever be able to forget him.

David Mattingly, CNN, Red Lake, Minnesota.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We might have said not so many years back that this sort of thing couldn't happen in a town like Red Lake, Minnesota. Sadly, we are smarter now. We know it can happen anywhere because it has.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The sirens, the looks on children's faces and parents and teachers and in some ways all of us, unforgettable images for unimaginable acts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw the men with the weapons inside the school.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, there were two of them?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. They were stalking around.

BROWN: There had been school shootings before 1997 and after 1999 but during those two terrible years it felt utterly common, as crazy as that seems. Bethel, Alaska in February of '97, 16-year-old Evan Ramsey; eight months later in Pearl, Mississippi, Luke Woodham who was 17 killed his mother, then went to school and murdered two classmates.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you tell us why you did it?

BROWN: Two months later, the killer was Michael Carneal, a 14- year-old in Paducah, Kentucky. Three students died.

In March of '98, two baby-faced boys, Mitchell Johnson who was 13 and 11-year-old Andrew Golden gunned down four students and a teacher. This time the city was Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Two months later, it was Springfield, Oregon. The shooter was Kip Kinkel. He was 15. He killed both his parents then went to school and killed two more and wounded 22.

Each one separate and yet each one oddly the same and each one seemingly leading to April 20th, 1999, Littleton, Colorado, Columbine, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killing 12 classmates and a teacher then killing themselves.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You should be safe at school, yes. It should be a safe place.

BROWN: Along the way you may have forgotten Pearl, Mississippi and Paducah. Springfield, Oregon and Jonesboro in Arkansas may have slipped your mind. But no one will ever forget Columbine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We took a look at that list late last night and decided to send reporters to four of those towns. What has changed? What did they learn? What do they teach us all?

We begin with CNN's Candy Crowley tonight in Pearl, Mississippi.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): And what was the first call?

CHIEF WILLIAM SLADE, PEARL CHIEF OF POLICE: Possible shots fired at the high school.

CROWLEY: He didn't think that much of it. It's not that kind of town.

SLADE: We figured, you know, kids in the parking lot throwing firecrackers or something. And then we got a second call shots fired.

CROWLEY: In Pearl, Mississippi, where things like that don't happen, it happened October 1, 1997.

SLADE: The first day is just the chaos and then the next day is when you really get down to trying to start your background work, talking to people, looking for things. What caused it? What was there? Would we have seen it?

CROWLEY: In the aftermath, the town wrestled with the should- have-dones and talked about the what-nows.

WILLIAM DODSON, FMR. SUPERINTENDENT PEARL COUNTY: We decided that we did not want an armed camp with barbed wire around and fences and a lot of schools did that. We did not want to make it look like a prison.

CROWLEY: Pearl High School has a new auditorium but not much that you see has changed, no barbed wire, no magnetometers. Physical changes were mostly around the margins, security cameras installed, students restricted to two entrances, character and anger management classes, a specially trained police officer on duty every day in class, in the hallways, at sporting events.

SLADE: If you hear something, if there's a fight or particular -- or potential for a fight, somebody had a disagreement, usually the officers know about it. You can go and pull both of them in the office in there with the school counselor and decide (UNINTELLIGIBLE) even before it happens.

CROWLEY: Drafted by tragedy into the role of expert Chief Slade has become schooled in the mind of a troubled teen, comparing notes with other draftees, the police chiefs of Paducah, Columbine, Springfield. He has been trained by the FBI to spot trouble signs and he found that in the end the most effective security is the simplest. Go where the kids go. Be where the kids are. Listen and the kids will talk.

SLADE: Get in there with them and don't get in there with the attitude I'm the police and you're the kids. Hey, talk to them. What's going on? Is there a problem, if you're scared why? Why are you afraid?

CROWLEY: People here say the town is healed by sadder, smarter and less innocent. Even in towns where things like this don't happen, kids can go wrong. It's why you have to listen.

Candy Crowley CNN, Pearl, Mississippi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In a moment, two other towns, Paducah, Kentucky, where forging ties between student and teacher is the new rule to live by, and out west to Springfield, Oregon, where security is weighed against creating a climate of fear.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: I remember like it was yesterday arriving in Paducah, Kentucky the night of the school shooting there. It was late. A big highway runs through town. We stopped at the Steak and Shake for dinner. People were in tears. Everyone knew the shooter, it seemed, good family, good kid, couldn't happen here.

People still said that; reporting from Paducah tonight, CNN's Jason Carroll.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The students at Heath High School weren't here in 1997. They can see symbols of the tragedy, a wreath in the front lobby, a memorial fountain behind the school, but the staff were here.

RUSS TILFORD, PRINCIPAL, HEATH HIGH SCHOOL: It almost can be replayed in your mind in slow motion many of the things that did surround it. The details do stay with you for a long time.

CARROLL: Russ Tilford, then a social studies teacher, remembers when student Michael Carneal walked in the lobby and opened fire on a prayer group.

on camera: This is where it happened here?

TILFORD: This is the lobby where the shooting actually did occur.

CARROLL (voice-over): Carneal killed three young girls and severely injured four others.

TILFORD: I did not hear the shots. A student did come up, just overheard them talking in the hall, hey there's been a shooting downstairs. And, it still did not register in my mind exactly what I was going to walk into.

CARROLL: Coping with all the grief made Heath High School a different place.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is everything OK at your location?

CARROLL: An armed officer patrols the grounds every day. Security cameras monitor hallways, as well as the front door.

You have to be buzzed in?

TILFORD: Yes, you have to ring the buzzer. Then they allow you to enter from the office.

CARROLL: The school learned to focus not just on security but on developing stronger ties with students, so there's a buddy system matching students with staff members they trust.

TILFORD: We feel our best measure and our best safety net for our students is to get to know them and for them to be comfortable with us.

CARROLL: His message to the people of Red Lake High School in Minnesota.

TILFORD: They're probably not at school today. They probably won't be at school tomorrow but it will get better.

CARROLL: And he says they too will move on someday but they will never forget.

Jason Carroll CNN, Paducah, Kentucky.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: By the time Kip Kinkel killed his parents and then opened fire in a school cafeteria in Springfield, Oregon, no one was really saying "It can't happen here." By then, we were all saying why is it happening everywhere?

Lessons learned in Springfield tonight from CNN's Rusty Dornin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Before the ambulances even arrived at Thurston High School, Steve Barret was there. His daughter was a student. He worked for the school district and lived across the street. It was wrenching then. Now is no different.

STEVE BARRET, SPRINGFIELD SCHOOL DISTRICT: I think anything that reminds you of the event and makes you walk through it is painful.

DORNIN: But walk we did. Barret, now deputy superintendent of the Springfield School District, showed us the school that was changed forever, not in ways that you can see, no metal detectors here, but there are cameras. There were eight then. Now there are 16.

BARRET: These aren't preventative in the sense that you can stop somebody who is walking on but they are able to let us surveil and it's powerful that people know that they're here but there are some people that would argue that none of this is enough.

DORNIN (on camera): What's the most powerful thing do you think that has changed here?

BARRET: Working with the kids, working with -- knowing what (UNINTELLIGIBLE), the in-service, the training of staff identifying kids who might be susceptible or at risk.

DORNIN (voice-over): So often, students won't tattle on one another for fear of retaliation. Now there's a 24-hour hotline where they can tell someone about their suspicions.

How about emotional scars? What about the scene where it all happened? In this case it was the cafeteria. School officials decided despite the horror of what happened here it was healthier to move on.

BARRET: We did repaint. We did do some things to refurbish the inside of here before kids came back in.

DORNIN: Also in the aftermath, this fence became the symbol for the outpouring of the community. A decision was made to build a memorial nearby.

BARRET: We have moved on. The memorial has really helped us I think in terms -- I know personally it's brought a sense of closure for myself.

DORNIN: But all it takes is another school shooting anywhere to remind people in this community that despite all the precautions there are no guarantees.

Rusty Dornin CNN, Springfield, Oregon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come on the program, the worst shooting of them all, Columbine, still the measure of what we fear could happen in our schools. So, what did Columbine teach us?

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The worst of them all was Columbine, not simply because so many died, reason enough, because so much of what went on that day was broadcast and then endlessly rebroadcast. Columbine, it seemed, was the end of some sort of horrible national convulsion. In a moment, how the horror of it still lingers in Littleton, Colorado.

But, first CNN's Jonathan Freed from Columbine High.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN FREED, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's spring break at Columbine. No talk of this week's shooting in Minnesota. But there would be if classes were in session. Discussing tragedies happening at other schools is one of several key changes at Columbine since the shooting here six years ago.

TOM MAUSER, FATHER OF COLUMBINE VICTIM: They've established hot lines the kids can call if they think if one of the kids has a gun or has made threats.

FREED: Tom Mauser's son, Daniel, was one of the 13 people shot to death in 1999 by fellow students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.

MAUSER: I think kids are more willing to speak up when they think a student is troubled.

FREED: Jeff Kass covered the story for "The Rocky Mountain News" and has also written a book exploring the tragedy and its aftermath. He says one of the biggest changes in campus life is the increased presence of counselors and supervisors.

JEFF KASS, "THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS": These are unarmed officials, but they patrol the campus. They make sure things are OK. They check in on kids. They try and get a feel for what's going on, on campus.

Other measures, for example, have been more cameras. And they were comforted by that.

FREED: Despite the willingness of some students to point a finger at potential trouble, Mauser worries others are now too willing to accept violence in society.

MAUSER: We have to remind kids, do you want to be that one at that school who didn't talk and has to live with it the rest of their life because then that kid that you didn't talk about went on a shooting rampage?

FREED: Complacency, Mauser insists, must be replaced by outrage.

Jonathan Freed, CNN, Littleton, Colorado. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In one way or another, every school in the country changed some. We really are smarter now, not perfect, but smarter. We are also scarred.

Frank DeAngelis was the principal of Columbine that day. He's still the principal. And we talked with him earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I want to talk about lessons learned here, but a couple preliminary questions first. When something like what happened in Red Lake happens, what's it like for you? What's it like at your school?

FRANK DEANGELIS, PRINCIPAL, COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL: For me, personally, when I heard about it for the first time yesterday, had a knot in my stomach, just really broke out in a cold sweat, because I went back to April 20, 1999, and just started feeling some of the same anxiety that I was feeling that day, some of the same numbness.

As far as the school community, we're on spring break. And I'm sure that many of the people in our school community are experiencing some of the same feelings that I experienced yesterday. I think you go by over the years, it's almost six years. But an event like this, I think, retraumatizes everyone in the Columbine community.

BROWN: I think one of the things that we all learned in that horrible period that seemed to culminate at Columbine is that there are almost always signals. There are warnings out there. We don't know everything about Red Lake, but we know enough to say it does fit the pattern.

As you look at your own school, are kids generally more aware of the troubles around them?

DEANGELIS: Oh, most definitely.

From almost six years ago, we have more kids who are reporting situations to us, if they feel that they have a friend who may be thinking of hurting his or herself. We have parents that are more aware of things that are going on, teachers more aware. So, I think there were some lessons learned as a result of the Columbine tragedy.

BROWN: I mean, literally at Columbine, you've rolled through an entire group of kids. The kids who were there that day have all been -- have all graduated and moved on. You're dealing with a new -- do those new kids, the kids who were in middle school and maybe the last year of elementary school, did they get it? Or is it something that happened to someone else at another time and another place?

DEANGELIS: No, they get it.

And I think it's my job as principal to keep reminding them. I think, at times, we can't just assume that everyone learned from the lessons at Columbine. As educators, as law enforcement agents, we need to continually remind our kids about valuing life, about, you know, not hurting others, not hurting property. And they cannot hear that message enough times.

BROWN: Just, on that point, is there -- obviously, if you're going to err, you want to err on the side of telling them -- or warning them too much too often. Do you worry about creating a fearful environment for them that is also dangerous in a different way?

DEANGELIS: I think, early on, I was in a no-win situation. I think there were community members, school members, that really felt that the rules need to be enforced. They must be strict and, you know, there's no room for any type of misbehavior.

But then, on the other side of the coin, I think there were parents who felt that their children were being denied a normal high school education, that we were coming on too strongly.

BROWN: Yes.

DEANGELIS: And that's probably one of the most difficult things that I've had to do as a principal, weighing the both sides. The thing, I think, that we all feel at this point is you really do need to err on the side of caution. I think, you know, things have changed as a result of Columbine, just as things have changed when people walk through the airport as a result of what happened on September 11.

BROWN: Obviously, you're, I guess, the best example, but educators, principals, teachers all over the country have gone through these difficult lessons. We admired how you handled the difficulties of that time, and we appreciate your time tonight.

DEANGELIS: Well, thank you so much. And my thoughts and prayers go out to the community in Red Lake. And thank you for having me on.

BROWN: Thank you, sir.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on the program, we go back to the case of Terri Schiavo, the theology, the questions of right and wrong. We talk with Rabbi Marc Gellman.

We'll take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In a moment, we revisit the moral and ethical dimensions of the Terri Schiavo case. Rabbi Marc Gellman join us.

First, a look at some of the other stories that made news tonight.

Erica Hill joins us from Atlanta again -- Erica.

HILL: Hi, Aaron. Jurors in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial heard testimony on Tuesday from a comedienne who befriended the family of the accuser. She said she received an extremely disturbing phone call from the boy's mother after an ABC documentary aired showing Jackson and his accuser. She said that the phone call made her think the family was being held against their will. Under cross-examination, she admitted she described the mother as totally bipolar to police and called the family -- quote -- "wacky as they want to be."

Iowa's governor signed a bill today to restrict the sale of cold medicines that contain pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in methamphetamine. Stores can now only sell single packages of liquid and liquid gel caps containing pseudoephedrine. And they have to keep those products locked up. Governor Tom Vilsack called the bill the toughest and smartest of its kind in the country.

Strong storms in the Southeast spawned at least one tornado in Alabama. Four people were hurt near Dothan. Two of the injured were trapped inside damaged homes. The twister also downed trees and power lines.

And, on the other side of the country, help has arrived for a disabled fish processing ship in the Gulf of Alaska. A Coast Guard cutter is now towing the vessel to safety. The ship's steering system failed yesterday as it was being tossed about in 20-foot seas and near hurricane-strength winds. There were more than 200 people on board. No injuries have been reported.

And Barry Bonds may not be chasing Hank Aaron's all-time home run record this year. The San Francisco Giant slugger told reporters today he might be out for the season after having two surgeries on his right knee this month.

And that's going to do it from the Headline News desk in Atlanta -- Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Erica, thank you.

We began talking about the issues raised in the Schiavo case. And we'll end there, too. It may help here to tell you that, while others see this with all the wonderful clarity of black and white, I see lots of gray, and I suspect I'm not alone.

So, to help us through the gray, we call on rabbi Marc Gellman, familiar to many of you, an old friend to me, and, among many other things, a columnist these days for Newsweek.com.

Nice to see you, sir.

RABBI MARC GELLMAN, THE GOD SQUAD: Hello, Aaron.

BROWN: I guess I'm looking for a road map here. What does it mean in this day and age to be alive?

GELLMAN: What it means is that you have an elemental right to stay alive. If you are innocent, if you are alive, even if you're mute, there's just a common moral consensus that you should not be starved to death, or you should not have to die of thirst.

It's true for infants, who can't feed themselves. It's true for people in comas. And it's true for brain-damaged people. In a certain way, what's amazing about this case, Aaron, is that it doesn't come down to, what do the religious people believe and what do the nonreligious people believe? I think there's a general consensus that you have a conflict here between the rights of a husband to be the next of kin and the rights of an innocent, mute and living person to continue to live.

BROWN: All right. All right.

(CROSSTALK)

GELLMAN: And I think that that's just basic.

BROWN: OK.

GELLMAN: OK.

BROWN: I'm not sure...

GELLMAN: OK.

BROWN: I'm not precisely sure -- and we've argued before, and perhaps we will again -- that you answered my question what it means to be alive, except to say that it means to be alive, that any life is alive. So we'll leave it at that.

GELLMAN: No, it means that you have a right not to be -- to have someone end your life. That's the most elemental thing it means.

BROWN: OK. OK.

Do -- let's assume for a second, Marc, that she, in fact -- because I have no factual reason to believe she did not -- she, in fact, said to her husband, I don't want to live that way or this way, if this should ever come to that in my life. Does that matter in a theological sense about whether society should condone the ending of a life?

GELLMAN: That's a great question.

And I think it's one of the things that's complicated people's thinking about it, Aaron. In a theological sense, it doesn't matter, because the theological construct is that what matters is, what is the right thing to do? What matters in a legal context, and for people who think about personal autonomy, is, who has the right to make the decision, whatever the decision is?

From a theological point of view, you have no right to end your own life and you have no right to end the life of someone else.

BROWN: OK. All right. And, just in this sequence, then, Marc, the final question, then, under no circumstance in the theological view, or in your theological view, do I have the right, in the way that people in the state of Oregon, for example, have the right, a terminally-ill person, to end their life prematurely simply because I decide the quality of my life or the pain I'm enduring is more than I choose to bear?

GELLMAN: Right.

But there is a gray here. You do have a right to eliminate an obstacle to death. If you are on medical machinery that is not therapeutic and has no purpose other than to prevent you from dying, other than machinery to feed you and provide hydration, other than that, you have a right to end that medical intervention and reach a peaceful and natural death.

BROWN: But I don't have the right, even though I may be -- I do not have the right, even though I may be in great pain, that I may be terminal within three, four, five, six months, I do not have the right, in a theological sense, to hasten the end of my life, take some pills, and die?

GELLMAN: Right, because the concept is that your life is not a privilege. It's a gift that you didn't give and you cannot take. It's a fundamentally different point of view than people who believe we own our own bodies and we have absolute personal autonomy.

BROWN: Yes.

GELLMAN: It's a very different point of view.

BROWN: Good to see you, my friend. Thank you. Thank you.

GELLMAN: Thank you.

BROWN: Marc Gellman tonight, Rabbi Marc Gellman.

Morning papers when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country, almost exclusively around the country, and probably exclusively around the country.

"Philadelphia Inquirer." Once again, pretty much two stories dominate the front page. "Schiavo Focus Turns to U.S. Appeals Court." "Philadelphia Inquirer." They also take a look at what it means to die or how one dies when a feeding tube is removed. And, down here, kind of an analysis piece under the title "Political Debate." "GOP's Evolving Creed. Smaller Government Is Out. Advancing Moral Issues Is In." A good front page in "The Philadelphia Inquirer."

"Rocky Mountain News" out in Denver, Colorado. "Killer Was Neo- Nazi." They play that story hard for the -- I assume for reasons of Columbine, as much as any other. And a kind of cool picture on the front page of one of the Indian elders. Somebody wrote -- actually, a few people wrote in and said thought we were under-covering the story because the victims were Native Americans. Come on.

"U.S. Rejects Schiavo Appeal." "Washington Times." "Refuses to Reinsert Her Feeding Tube." Pretty straight-ahead. Down here, "News Service Sues Google Over Content. Drudge, Other Web Sites at Risk." My, that would be a loss to the culture. Just kidding -- well, mostly.

"The Oregonian." "Schiavo's Parents Plead. Case Has Oregonians Seeking a Say on Care." I think a lot of people are doing a lot of thinking about the questions that the Schiavo case raises. I'm always uncomfortable when people see these things so clearly, as black and white. There's a lot of gray stuff here.

"The Cincinnati Enquirer," local story. "Gambling Foes Gird For a Fight, as Ohio Rekindles Casino Talk. Opponents Rise Up." They also put the Schiavo case on the front page.

"The Examiner" out in San Francisco. "Bonds: 'I May Not Play in '05.'" Got a bad new. A little flaxseed oil, I think, would help that, I believe.

"Chicago Sun-Times." "Killer Poet Caught on West Side 20 Years Ago. He Escaped From Massachusetts Jail." This is a good story. We ought to chase this.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago, "unending."

The program is not unending. We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Good to have you with us tonight. We'll see you tomorrow at 10:00 Eastern. Until then, good night for all of us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

Aired March 22, 2005 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
The program tonight revolves around two stories, both tragic, and in their own very different ways neither simple; the school shooting in northern Minnesota and the memories it conjures up, the battle over Terri Schiavo and the issues, which in the end are not political or even legal but moral, it forces upon us, Ms. Schiavo first.

With protesters lining the sidewalks in Atlanta, a federal appeals court is weighing a plea to preserve her life. It is that simple and it is that complicated.

It has also been the source of national discussion and debate for days, in the end not really political, though the politicians are involved and, not really legal, though the courts will have the final say.

In the end, it is an uneasy question about what is right and, while the rest of us can talk about it, Julia Quinlan has lived it as she watched her daughter die.

We begin tonight with NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is unclear exactly what happened to 21-year-old Karen Quinlan on that April night in 1975. She put herself on a strict diet to fit into a new bathing suit, hadn't eaten all day, had a few drinks at a friend's party, felt woozy and went to lie down.

JULIA QUINLAN, KAREN ANN QUINLAN'S MOTHER: All they can assume is that perhaps she may have choked on her vomit and then when someone went up to check her she wasn't breathing.

NISSEN: At first, Karen's family held out hope that she'd recover.

QUINLAN: We weren't really ever told that it was hopeless. The doctors just kept saying that the prognosis is not good.

NISSEN: Seeing pictures of Terri Schiavo now reminds Julia Quinlan of her daughter then although Karen, unlike Terri, was on a respirator that breathed for her and Karen had a nasal feeding line, not a feeding tube in her stomach. But both women had profound brain damage. Both, doctors said, were in a persistent vegetative state.

QUINLAN: Karen's hands were all bent like that but also her knees and her legs. Her knees were drawn up practically to her chest.

NISSEN: And, like Terri Schiavo, Karen Quinlan looked awake.

QUINLAN: Her eyes were open all the time. There were times in the beginning when I felt that Karen recognized me and I felt she looked at me and it's all part of hope and part of your love for your daughter. You don't want to let go. You just can't let go.

NISSEN: But the Quinlan's finally decided they had to let go.

QUINLAN: Every time the respirator would breathe for her, you could see that she was in agony and we finally realized that this is not the way that Karen would ever want to live. She had made the remark, not only to me but to her sister Mary Ellen and also to other friends that she would never want to live that way.

NISSEN: Karen's doctors agreed to remove her from the respirator but the hospital refused. Julia and her late husband Joe Quinlan went to court and started the first fierce national debate about the right to die.

QUINLAN: Suddenly, Karen's picture was on the front page of every newspaper. We had reporters in our home, sitting on the lawn, hiding in bushes to snap pictures of us as we would leave the house, parked outside of the nursing home, of the hospital. It was a terrible invasion of our privacy and it was a very difficult time for us.

NISSEN: In 1976, the New Jersey Supreme Court in The Matter of Karen Ann Quinlan issued the first landmark ruling affirming a person's right to die.

QUINLAN: We do have the right to refuse treatment. We have the right to say that we no longer want our life extended with that treatment. We did not ask for death. Death may have been expected but we never asked for death. My husband put it beautifully. He only wanted what we considered extraordinary means removed and she would be placed back in her natural state and she would die in God's time.

NISSEN: With her father appointed her legal guardian to make decisions for her, Karen was taken off the respirator.

QUINLAN: Once she was removed from the respirator you could see the change in her. She was far more relaxed and the nasal feeding tube never seemed to make her uncomfortable so there was no reason for us to ask for the removal of it.

NISSEN: Karen was moved to a nursing home where she remained in a vegetative state for nine more years before she finally died in 1985 of pneumonia.

QUINLAN: It's heartbreaking to watch your daughter die and I watched my daughter die for ten years just a slow death for ten years. NISSEN: Watching another family go through the slow death of a loved one in the glare and shout of the media, the courts, the Congress has been hard for Julia Quinlan.

QUINLAN: I cam empathize with the parents but I can also empathize with the husband and I really, really pray and wish that they could meet and have an agreement between the family. The decision must be theirs. I do pray that whatever is best for Terri will be done.

NISSEN: Beth Nissen CNN, Newton, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Which brings us back to today, there's a fair chance that years from now people will look back on this as a kind of Elian Gonzalez moment, for some a flash of clarity, for others sheer barking madness. The political and rhetorical lines have already been drawn, sharply drawn, but are they really as clear as they seem?

Here's CNN's Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just for the benefit of one person?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): We've rarely seen anything like it, maybe never. Congress returns from recess to debate through a Sunday night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay out of my family.

GREENFIELD: Passes a law the president signs in the middle of the night. Countless conversations begin about elemental issues of life and death and yet...

(on camera): For all the passionate intensity this case has triggered it's easy to lose sight of one compelling aspect. Many of the facts in the case simply don't fit our assumptions about what it is about.

(voice-over): For instance, is this a classic right to die case? Like many of us, members of the House talked of their experiences with parents and loved ones who were approaching death.

REP. JIM MCDERMOTT (D), WASHINGTON: When my father was 95 years old, he had had about a -- he had a couple of strokes.

GREENFIELD: But Terri Schiavo is not at death's door. She is not on life support in the sense that she needs help to breathe. On the other hand, listen to how House Majority Leader Tom DeLay describes her condition.

REP. TOM DELAY (R), MAJORITY LEADER: She's not a vegetable. She's just handicapped, mentally challenged, like millions of people walking around and living full, productive lives.

GREENFIELD: Terri Schiavo is not like say someone with Downs Syndrome who can indeed work, play, marry. While there is dispute about the extent of her injuries, they are far different even from the kind of case where a patient emerges from a coma.

Dan Callahan is co-founder of The Hastings Center that specializes in medical ethics.

DANIEL CALLAHAN, THE HASTINGS CENTER: I don't believe anybody has any idea whatever about possible therapy for these conditions. If there were available therapy would it be used not only with her but also with other patients as well?

GREENFIELD: The case is also different in that unlike the characters in recent films like "The Sea Inside," or "Million Dollar Baby," there is no clear, absolutely unambiguous statement on Terri Schiavo's part about her wishes.

Writer Nat Hentoff has argued for the culture of life view for more than 20 years.

NAT HENTOFF, THE VILLAGE VOICE: You can't call it a right to die case because we don't have any evidence that she wants to die. There is no clear and convincing evidence that her husband is telling the truth.

GREENFIELD: Another question would a living will in this case have avoided all the controversy?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The lesson here is that everyone in this country should have a living will.

GREENFIELD: But patients with a living will sometimes change their minds.

HENTOFF: Many of those who did, didn't want what they said they wanted because they were on the edge of the precipice.

GREENFIELD: And what if relatives or doctors disagree about the patient's condition?

CALLAHAN: What you really need to do is appoint somebody to speak in your behalf rather than trying to fill out a form and guessing all the circumstances.

GREENFIELD: Even these famous, endlessly seen seconds from an old tape raise questions for both sides. Do they show a response or involuntary movements? If Terri Schiavo, in fact, has no awareness then does that mean her condition causes her no physical or emotional distress? Does it mean she would feel nothing if she dies from lack of nutrition?

This case compels us because sooner or later almost all of us will face this most overwhelming question for our loved ones or for ourselves and the future promises that these questions will only grow in number and in complexity.

CALLAHAN: And we're going to get more and more of these terrible borderline cases because medicine is unfortunately much too good at keeping our body running but not necessarily our mind or our personality.

GREENFIELD: Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: There is, in the end, a moral dimension to this story and we'll look at that a bit later on in the hour. Rabbi Marc Gellman joins us. That's later tonight.

More coming up, beginning in Red Lake, Minnesota, a community reeling with the worst school shooting since Columbine.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The shooter, 16 years old, a loner with possible ties to a Neo-Nazi Web site.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This looks like a very screwed up kid who was going to explode in one way or another.

BROWN: Why he killed, one of many questions tonight.

Before Red Lake, there was Paducah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you tell us why you did it?

BROWN: And Pearl, Mississippi. There was Springfield, Oregon, a string of shootings that culminated at Columbine.

Tonight, we visit each of those places again, what they taught us, what we didn't learn, what we should be doing.

From New York and around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Heading towards quarter past the hour coming up the teenager (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the shootings in Red Lake, Minnesota and all the shootings that came before.

First, some of the other stories that made news today. Erica Hill joins us from Atlanta. Erica, good evening.

(NEWSBREAK)

BROWN: Erica, thank you.

We'll never know, not for certain, what possessed a young man from an Indian reservation in northern Minnesota to murder two people at home, then go to school and kill six classmates and a security guard. He turned the murder weapon on himself.

But before he killed and before he died, he lived, a lonely life it appears, a troubled life to say the least, so here's CNN's David Mattingly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To the public at large, details of what drove 16-year-old Jeff Weise on a murderous rampage remained as incomplete as the understanding of the boy himself. So far, the FBI will not confirm if this is the same Jeff Weise who identified himself last year on a Neo-Nazi Web site.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There could be some clues in that. It's a little premature to make that determination but we need to -- we're certainly open to looking at that.

MATTINGLY: Using the names "NativeNazi" and the German word for angel of death, the Jeff Weise here complained about the lack of full- blooded Natives on his Red Lake reservation because of "cultural dominance and interracial mixing."

He blamed the influence of rap music writing, "We have kids my age killing each other over things as simple as a fight. Things for us would improve vastly under a national socialist government" he wrote. "That is why I am pro-Nazi."

The idea of a young Native American being attracted to such a Web site, however, according to one expert is not as far fetched as you might think.

MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: I think that it's not that uncommon. It's always the same phenomenon which is, you know, these are typically people who are members of more or less oppressed minority groups who want very much to identify with the oppressor, not the oppressed.

MATTINGLY: The Web site belongs to the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, which posted a statement about Weise saying, "He expressed himself well and was clearly, highly intelligent and contemplative, especially for one so young."

POTOK: This looks like a very screwed up kid, you know, who was going to explode in one way or another. You know, I think he was probably interested in all kinds of transgressive things, you know be that Hitler or Satan or whatever it might be.

MATTINGLY: The Minnesota newspaper "St. Paul Pioneer Press" reports Weise's father committed suicide and his mother is in a nursing home with injuries suffered in a traffic accident. The paper quoted unnamed relatives who said Weise was a loner and was teased by other kids.

The FBI said Weise was not living with his grandfather yesterday when the murder spree began and would not say where. Investigators are unaware of any grudge the boy may have had with family or students at the Red Lake High School, though medical personnel dealing with the wounded say Weise's goal was clear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had a couple of head injuries, close range. I think there was an intent to kill.

MATTINGLY: In web postings attributed to Weise he indicated he was suspected last year of threatening to shoot up the school on Hitler's birthday, something authorities have not confirmed. In fact, the FBI is unaware if Weise had any prior police record.

(on camera): One tribal leader tells CNN Weise was not the kind of young person who attracted a lot of attention in this small tight- knit community but now as an extended period of mourning is about to begin, it is clear that no one here will ever be able to forget him.

David Mattingly, CNN, Red Lake, Minnesota.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We might have said not so many years back that this sort of thing couldn't happen in a town like Red Lake, Minnesota. Sadly, we are smarter now. We know it can happen anywhere because it has.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The sirens, the looks on children's faces and parents and teachers and in some ways all of us, unforgettable images for unimaginable acts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw the men with the weapons inside the school.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, there were two of them?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. They were stalking around.

BROWN: There had been school shootings before 1997 and after 1999 but during those two terrible years it felt utterly common, as crazy as that seems. Bethel, Alaska in February of '97, 16-year-old Evan Ramsey; eight months later in Pearl, Mississippi, Luke Woodham who was 17 killed his mother, then went to school and murdered two classmates.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you tell us why you did it?

BROWN: Two months later, the killer was Michael Carneal, a 14- year-old in Paducah, Kentucky. Three students died.

In March of '98, two baby-faced boys, Mitchell Johnson who was 13 and 11-year-old Andrew Golden gunned down four students and a teacher. This time the city was Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Two months later, it was Springfield, Oregon. The shooter was Kip Kinkel. He was 15. He killed both his parents then went to school and killed two more and wounded 22.

Each one separate and yet each one oddly the same and each one seemingly leading to April 20th, 1999, Littleton, Colorado, Columbine, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killing 12 classmates and a teacher then killing themselves.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You should be safe at school, yes. It should be a safe place.

BROWN: Along the way you may have forgotten Pearl, Mississippi and Paducah. Springfield, Oregon and Jonesboro in Arkansas may have slipped your mind. But no one will ever forget Columbine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We took a look at that list late last night and decided to send reporters to four of those towns. What has changed? What did they learn? What do they teach us all?

We begin with CNN's Candy Crowley tonight in Pearl, Mississippi.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): And what was the first call?

CHIEF WILLIAM SLADE, PEARL CHIEF OF POLICE: Possible shots fired at the high school.

CROWLEY: He didn't think that much of it. It's not that kind of town.

SLADE: We figured, you know, kids in the parking lot throwing firecrackers or something. And then we got a second call shots fired.

CROWLEY: In Pearl, Mississippi, where things like that don't happen, it happened October 1, 1997.

SLADE: The first day is just the chaos and then the next day is when you really get down to trying to start your background work, talking to people, looking for things. What caused it? What was there? Would we have seen it?

CROWLEY: In the aftermath, the town wrestled with the should- have-dones and talked about the what-nows.

WILLIAM DODSON, FMR. SUPERINTENDENT PEARL COUNTY: We decided that we did not want an armed camp with barbed wire around and fences and a lot of schools did that. We did not want to make it look like a prison.

CROWLEY: Pearl High School has a new auditorium but not much that you see has changed, no barbed wire, no magnetometers. Physical changes were mostly around the margins, security cameras installed, students restricted to two entrances, character and anger management classes, a specially trained police officer on duty every day in class, in the hallways, at sporting events.

SLADE: If you hear something, if there's a fight or particular -- or potential for a fight, somebody had a disagreement, usually the officers know about it. You can go and pull both of them in the office in there with the school counselor and decide (UNINTELLIGIBLE) even before it happens.

CROWLEY: Drafted by tragedy into the role of expert Chief Slade has become schooled in the mind of a troubled teen, comparing notes with other draftees, the police chiefs of Paducah, Columbine, Springfield. He has been trained by the FBI to spot trouble signs and he found that in the end the most effective security is the simplest. Go where the kids go. Be where the kids are. Listen and the kids will talk.

SLADE: Get in there with them and don't get in there with the attitude I'm the police and you're the kids. Hey, talk to them. What's going on? Is there a problem, if you're scared why? Why are you afraid?

CROWLEY: People here say the town is healed by sadder, smarter and less innocent. Even in towns where things like this don't happen, kids can go wrong. It's why you have to listen.

Candy Crowley CNN, Pearl, Mississippi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In a moment, two other towns, Paducah, Kentucky, where forging ties between student and teacher is the new rule to live by, and out west to Springfield, Oregon, where security is weighed against creating a climate of fear.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: I remember like it was yesterday arriving in Paducah, Kentucky the night of the school shooting there. It was late. A big highway runs through town. We stopped at the Steak and Shake for dinner. People were in tears. Everyone knew the shooter, it seemed, good family, good kid, couldn't happen here.

People still said that; reporting from Paducah tonight, CNN's Jason Carroll.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The students at Heath High School weren't here in 1997. They can see symbols of the tragedy, a wreath in the front lobby, a memorial fountain behind the school, but the staff were here.

RUSS TILFORD, PRINCIPAL, HEATH HIGH SCHOOL: It almost can be replayed in your mind in slow motion many of the things that did surround it. The details do stay with you for a long time.

CARROLL: Russ Tilford, then a social studies teacher, remembers when student Michael Carneal walked in the lobby and opened fire on a prayer group.

on camera: This is where it happened here?

TILFORD: This is the lobby where the shooting actually did occur.

CARROLL (voice-over): Carneal killed three young girls and severely injured four others.

TILFORD: I did not hear the shots. A student did come up, just overheard them talking in the hall, hey there's been a shooting downstairs. And, it still did not register in my mind exactly what I was going to walk into.

CARROLL: Coping with all the grief made Heath High School a different place.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is everything OK at your location?

CARROLL: An armed officer patrols the grounds every day. Security cameras monitor hallways, as well as the front door.

You have to be buzzed in?

TILFORD: Yes, you have to ring the buzzer. Then they allow you to enter from the office.

CARROLL: The school learned to focus not just on security but on developing stronger ties with students, so there's a buddy system matching students with staff members they trust.

TILFORD: We feel our best measure and our best safety net for our students is to get to know them and for them to be comfortable with us.

CARROLL: His message to the people of Red Lake High School in Minnesota.

TILFORD: They're probably not at school today. They probably won't be at school tomorrow but it will get better.

CARROLL: And he says they too will move on someday but they will never forget.

Jason Carroll CNN, Paducah, Kentucky.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: By the time Kip Kinkel killed his parents and then opened fire in a school cafeteria in Springfield, Oregon, no one was really saying "It can't happen here." By then, we were all saying why is it happening everywhere?

Lessons learned in Springfield tonight from CNN's Rusty Dornin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Before the ambulances even arrived at Thurston High School, Steve Barret was there. His daughter was a student. He worked for the school district and lived across the street. It was wrenching then. Now is no different.

STEVE BARRET, SPRINGFIELD SCHOOL DISTRICT: I think anything that reminds you of the event and makes you walk through it is painful.

DORNIN: But walk we did. Barret, now deputy superintendent of the Springfield School District, showed us the school that was changed forever, not in ways that you can see, no metal detectors here, but there are cameras. There were eight then. Now there are 16.

BARRET: These aren't preventative in the sense that you can stop somebody who is walking on but they are able to let us surveil and it's powerful that people know that they're here but there are some people that would argue that none of this is enough.

DORNIN (on camera): What's the most powerful thing do you think that has changed here?

BARRET: Working with the kids, working with -- knowing what (UNINTELLIGIBLE), the in-service, the training of staff identifying kids who might be susceptible or at risk.

DORNIN (voice-over): So often, students won't tattle on one another for fear of retaliation. Now there's a 24-hour hotline where they can tell someone about their suspicions.

How about emotional scars? What about the scene where it all happened? In this case it was the cafeteria. School officials decided despite the horror of what happened here it was healthier to move on.

BARRET: We did repaint. We did do some things to refurbish the inside of here before kids came back in.

DORNIN: Also in the aftermath, this fence became the symbol for the outpouring of the community. A decision was made to build a memorial nearby.

BARRET: We have moved on. The memorial has really helped us I think in terms -- I know personally it's brought a sense of closure for myself.

DORNIN: But all it takes is another school shooting anywhere to remind people in this community that despite all the precautions there are no guarantees.

Rusty Dornin CNN, Springfield, Oregon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come on the program, the worst shooting of them all, Columbine, still the measure of what we fear could happen in our schools. So, what did Columbine teach us?

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The worst of them all was Columbine, not simply because so many died, reason enough, because so much of what went on that day was broadcast and then endlessly rebroadcast. Columbine, it seemed, was the end of some sort of horrible national convulsion. In a moment, how the horror of it still lingers in Littleton, Colorado.

But, first CNN's Jonathan Freed from Columbine High.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN FREED, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's spring break at Columbine. No talk of this week's shooting in Minnesota. But there would be if classes were in session. Discussing tragedies happening at other schools is one of several key changes at Columbine since the shooting here six years ago.

TOM MAUSER, FATHER OF COLUMBINE VICTIM: They've established hot lines the kids can call if they think if one of the kids has a gun or has made threats.

FREED: Tom Mauser's son, Daniel, was one of the 13 people shot to death in 1999 by fellow students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.

MAUSER: I think kids are more willing to speak up when they think a student is troubled.

FREED: Jeff Kass covered the story for "The Rocky Mountain News" and has also written a book exploring the tragedy and its aftermath. He says one of the biggest changes in campus life is the increased presence of counselors and supervisors.

JEFF KASS, "THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS": These are unarmed officials, but they patrol the campus. They make sure things are OK. They check in on kids. They try and get a feel for what's going on, on campus.

Other measures, for example, have been more cameras. And they were comforted by that.

FREED: Despite the willingness of some students to point a finger at potential trouble, Mauser worries others are now too willing to accept violence in society.

MAUSER: We have to remind kids, do you want to be that one at that school who didn't talk and has to live with it the rest of their life because then that kid that you didn't talk about went on a shooting rampage?

FREED: Complacency, Mauser insists, must be replaced by outrage.

Jonathan Freed, CNN, Littleton, Colorado. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In one way or another, every school in the country changed some. We really are smarter now, not perfect, but smarter. We are also scarred.

Frank DeAngelis was the principal of Columbine that day. He's still the principal. And we talked with him earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I want to talk about lessons learned here, but a couple preliminary questions first. When something like what happened in Red Lake happens, what's it like for you? What's it like at your school?

FRANK DEANGELIS, PRINCIPAL, COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL: For me, personally, when I heard about it for the first time yesterday, had a knot in my stomach, just really broke out in a cold sweat, because I went back to April 20, 1999, and just started feeling some of the same anxiety that I was feeling that day, some of the same numbness.

As far as the school community, we're on spring break. And I'm sure that many of the people in our school community are experiencing some of the same feelings that I experienced yesterday. I think you go by over the years, it's almost six years. But an event like this, I think, retraumatizes everyone in the Columbine community.

BROWN: I think one of the things that we all learned in that horrible period that seemed to culminate at Columbine is that there are almost always signals. There are warnings out there. We don't know everything about Red Lake, but we know enough to say it does fit the pattern.

As you look at your own school, are kids generally more aware of the troubles around them?

DEANGELIS: Oh, most definitely.

From almost six years ago, we have more kids who are reporting situations to us, if they feel that they have a friend who may be thinking of hurting his or herself. We have parents that are more aware of things that are going on, teachers more aware. So, I think there were some lessons learned as a result of the Columbine tragedy.

BROWN: I mean, literally at Columbine, you've rolled through an entire group of kids. The kids who were there that day have all been -- have all graduated and moved on. You're dealing with a new -- do those new kids, the kids who were in middle school and maybe the last year of elementary school, did they get it? Or is it something that happened to someone else at another time and another place?

DEANGELIS: No, they get it.

And I think it's my job as principal to keep reminding them. I think, at times, we can't just assume that everyone learned from the lessons at Columbine. As educators, as law enforcement agents, we need to continually remind our kids about valuing life, about, you know, not hurting others, not hurting property. And they cannot hear that message enough times.

BROWN: Just, on that point, is there -- obviously, if you're going to err, you want to err on the side of telling them -- or warning them too much too often. Do you worry about creating a fearful environment for them that is also dangerous in a different way?

DEANGELIS: I think, early on, I was in a no-win situation. I think there were community members, school members, that really felt that the rules need to be enforced. They must be strict and, you know, there's no room for any type of misbehavior.

But then, on the other side of the coin, I think there were parents who felt that their children were being denied a normal high school education, that we were coming on too strongly.

BROWN: Yes.

DEANGELIS: And that's probably one of the most difficult things that I've had to do as a principal, weighing the both sides. The thing, I think, that we all feel at this point is you really do need to err on the side of caution. I think, you know, things have changed as a result of Columbine, just as things have changed when people walk through the airport as a result of what happened on September 11.

BROWN: Obviously, you're, I guess, the best example, but educators, principals, teachers all over the country have gone through these difficult lessons. We admired how you handled the difficulties of that time, and we appreciate your time tonight.

DEANGELIS: Well, thank you so much. And my thoughts and prayers go out to the community in Red Lake. And thank you for having me on.

BROWN: Thank you, sir.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on the program, we go back to the case of Terri Schiavo, the theology, the questions of right and wrong. We talk with Rabbi Marc Gellman.

We'll take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

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BROWN: In a moment, we revisit the moral and ethical dimensions of the Terri Schiavo case. Rabbi Marc Gellman join us.

First, a look at some of the other stories that made news tonight.

Erica Hill joins us from Atlanta again -- Erica.

HILL: Hi, Aaron. Jurors in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial heard testimony on Tuesday from a comedienne who befriended the family of the accuser. She said she received an extremely disturbing phone call from the boy's mother after an ABC documentary aired showing Jackson and his accuser. She said that the phone call made her think the family was being held against their will. Under cross-examination, she admitted she described the mother as totally bipolar to police and called the family -- quote -- "wacky as they want to be."

Iowa's governor signed a bill today to restrict the sale of cold medicines that contain pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in methamphetamine. Stores can now only sell single packages of liquid and liquid gel caps containing pseudoephedrine. And they have to keep those products locked up. Governor Tom Vilsack called the bill the toughest and smartest of its kind in the country.

Strong storms in the Southeast spawned at least one tornado in Alabama. Four people were hurt near Dothan. Two of the injured were trapped inside damaged homes. The twister also downed trees and power lines.

And, on the other side of the country, help has arrived for a disabled fish processing ship in the Gulf of Alaska. A Coast Guard cutter is now towing the vessel to safety. The ship's steering system failed yesterday as it was being tossed about in 20-foot seas and near hurricane-strength winds. There were more than 200 people on board. No injuries have been reported.

And Barry Bonds may not be chasing Hank Aaron's all-time home run record this year. The San Francisco Giant slugger told reporters today he might be out for the season after having two surgeries on his right knee this month.

And that's going to do it from the Headline News desk in Atlanta -- Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Erica, thank you.

We began talking about the issues raised in the Schiavo case. And we'll end there, too. It may help here to tell you that, while others see this with all the wonderful clarity of black and white, I see lots of gray, and I suspect I'm not alone.

So, to help us through the gray, we call on rabbi Marc Gellman, familiar to many of you, an old friend to me, and, among many other things, a columnist these days for Newsweek.com.

Nice to see you, sir.

RABBI MARC GELLMAN, THE GOD SQUAD: Hello, Aaron.

BROWN: I guess I'm looking for a road map here. What does it mean in this day and age to be alive?

GELLMAN: What it means is that you have an elemental right to stay alive. If you are innocent, if you are alive, even if you're mute, there's just a common moral consensus that you should not be starved to death, or you should not have to die of thirst.

It's true for infants, who can't feed themselves. It's true for people in comas. And it's true for brain-damaged people. In a certain way, what's amazing about this case, Aaron, is that it doesn't come down to, what do the religious people believe and what do the nonreligious people believe? I think there's a general consensus that you have a conflict here between the rights of a husband to be the next of kin and the rights of an innocent, mute and living person to continue to live.

BROWN: All right. All right.

(CROSSTALK)

GELLMAN: And I think that that's just basic.

BROWN: OK.

GELLMAN: OK.

BROWN: I'm not sure...

GELLMAN: OK.

BROWN: I'm not precisely sure -- and we've argued before, and perhaps we will again -- that you answered my question what it means to be alive, except to say that it means to be alive, that any life is alive. So we'll leave it at that.

GELLMAN: No, it means that you have a right not to be -- to have someone end your life. That's the most elemental thing it means.

BROWN: OK. OK.

Do -- let's assume for a second, Marc, that she, in fact -- because I have no factual reason to believe she did not -- she, in fact, said to her husband, I don't want to live that way or this way, if this should ever come to that in my life. Does that matter in a theological sense about whether society should condone the ending of a life?

GELLMAN: That's a great question.

And I think it's one of the things that's complicated people's thinking about it, Aaron. In a theological sense, it doesn't matter, because the theological construct is that what matters is, what is the right thing to do? What matters in a legal context, and for people who think about personal autonomy, is, who has the right to make the decision, whatever the decision is?

From a theological point of view, you have no right to end your own life and you have no right to end the life of someone else.

BROWN: OK. All right. And, just in this sequence, then, Marc, the final question, then, under no circumstance in the theological view, or in your theological view, do I have the right, in the way that people in the state of Oregon, for example, have the right, a terminally-ill person, to end their life prematurely simply because I decide the quality of my life or the pain I'm enduring is more than I choose to bear?

GELLMAN: Right.

But there is a gray here. You do have a right to eliminate an obstacle to death. If you are on medical machinery that is not therapeutic and has no purpose other than to prevent you from dying, other than machinery to feed you and provide hydration, other than that, you have a right to end that medical intervention and reach a peaceful and natural death.

BROWN: But I don't have the right, even though I may be -- I do not have the right, even though I may be in great pain, that I may be terminal within three, four, five, six months, I do not have the right, in a theological sense, to hasten the end of my life, take some pills, and die?

GELLMAN: Right, because the concept is that your life is not a privilege. It's a gift that you didn't give and you cannot take. It's a fundamentally different point of view than people who believe we own our own bodies and we have absolute personal autonomy.

BROWN: Yes.

GELLMAN: It's a very different point of view.

BROWN: Good to see you, my friend. Thank you. Thank you.

GELLMAN: Thank you.

BROWN: Marc Gellman tonight, Rabbi Marc Gellman.

Morning papers when we come back.

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BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country, almost exclusively around the country, and probably exclusively around the country.

"Philadelphia Inquirer." Once again, pretty much two stories dominate the front page. "Schiavo Focus Turns to U.S. Appeals Court." "Philadelphia Inquirer." They also take a look at what it means to die or how one dies when a feeding tube is removed. And, down here, kind of an analysis piece under the title "Political Debate." "GOP's Evolving Creed. Smaller Government Is Out. Advancing Moral Issues Is In." A good front page in "The Philadelphia Inquirer."

"Rocky Mountain News" out in Denver, Colorado. "Killer Was Neo- Nazi." They play that story hard for the -- I assume for reasons of Columbine, as much as any other. And a kind of cool picture on the front page of one of the Indian elders. Somebody wrote -- actually, a few people wrote in and said thought we were under-covering the story because the victims were Native Americans. Come on.

"U.S. Rejects Schiavo Appeal." "Washington Times." "Refuses to Reinsert Her Feeding Tube." Pretty straight-ahead. Down here, "News Service Sues Google Over Content. Drudge, Other Web Sites at Risk." My, that would be a loss to the culture. Just kidding -- well, mostly.

"The Oregonian." "Schiavo's Parents Plead. Case Has Oregonians Seeking a Say on Care." I think a lot of people are doing a lot of thinking about the questions that the Schiavo case raises. I'm always uncomfortable when people see these things so clearly, as black and white. There's a lot of gray stuff here.

"The Cincinnati Enquirer," local story. "Gambling Foes Gird For a Fight, as Ohio Rekindles Casino Talk. Opponents Rise Up." They also put the Schiavo case on the front page.

"The Examiner" out in San Francisco. "Bonds: 'I May Not Play in '05.'" Got a bad new. A little flaxseed oil, I think, would help that, I believe.

"Chicago Sun-Times." "Killer Poet Caught on West Side 20 Years Ago. He Escaped From Massachusetts Jail." This is a good story. We ought to chase this.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago, "unending."

The program is not unending. We'll wrap it up in a moment.

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BROWN: Good to have you with us tonight. We'll see you tomorrow at 10:00 Eastern. Until then, good night for all of us.

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