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The Latest in the Jodi Arias Trial; Jessica Upshaw, Apparent Suicide; Paterno Family Declines Film Offer; Obama Performs Naturalization Ceremony

Aired March 25, 2013 - 11:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, ANCHOR, "CNN NEWSROOM": ... so much to joining me today.

CNN NEWSROOM continues right now with Ashleigh Banfield.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, ANCHOR, "CNN NEWSROOM": Thanks so much, Carol.

Hello, everyone. Good to have you with us today.

High stakes, hot tempers, accusations, innuendo and that is just the experts. A defense psychologist returns to the stand in the Jodi Arias murder trial. And the prosecution can't wait.

Jerry Sandusky is locked up, probably for life. But the convicted child rapist is speaking out again, this time to a filmmaker who's bent on clearing Joe Paterno's name. But Paterno's family says, no thanks.

And this could be a historic week for gay marriage in America, the Supreme Court, taking up two major cases over the next two days, and the lines are already forming. I'm not kidding.

First, though, a 15-year-old accused in the horrific shooting death of a baby in Brunswick, Georgia, making his first court appearance this morning. The suspect, not named because he's a minor, did not enter a plea, but he and a second teenager are facing murder charges in the death of this 13-month-old baby boy.

Seventeen-year-old De'Marquis Elkins is being charged as an adult and will be in court later on today.

The baby's mother said both suspects demanded money and then shot both her and her child last week.

Authorities in Mississippi are investigating the death of Jessica Upshaw. Local news reports say that she died from a single gunshot wound to the head. The Simpson County sheriff is quoted as saying it appeared to be a suicide.

Brian Todd is covering all the developments and joins us right now.

This is a very unusual story. Not so much that it's a state representative and that there is this potential suicide, but for where this person was found. Can you explain? BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We can a little bit, Ashleigh.

We've gotten new information. We've just got off the phone with a close friend of Representative Jessica Upshaw's. This friend was her yesterday.

This friend does confirm to us that she died outside the home of a former Mississippi state representative named Clint Rotenberry. He lives in Mendenhall, Mississippi, more than 100 miles from the home district of Jessica Upshaw.

This friend who was with Jessica Upshaw tells us that she had struggled with depression for many years, had been battling it and really aggressively battling it, very bravely according to this friend.

We have confirmed with the county coroner in Simpson County, Mississippi, that it was a single gunshot wound to the head, and as you mentioned, published reports are saying that it was self- inflicted.

We're working on getting that information. It appears to be the case. We're working on that right now.

This friend who was with Jessica Upshaw did say that she had traveled to the home of Clint Rotenberry, died outside his home. We're piecing together some details.

We are told by this friend that she did struggle with depression for many years, had been taking medication. She had been under a doctor's care for some time. And that is what we can tell you at this point, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: And, just quickly, Brian, do we know about the relationship between Mr. Rotenberry and the victim in this case?

TODD: Working on those details now. We don't have anything we can actually confirm, but we're speaking to people who were connected to them and we're also trying to contact a relative, a direct relative, of Miss Upshaw's who's in South Korea, traveling back from South Korea.

It's her daughter. We're trying to reach her daughter. Her daughter is an engineer who's working in South Korea, and is apparently on the way back right now. We're trying to make contact with her.

BANFIELD: Brian Todd, thank you. Let us know when you do find out more details. Very unusual case.

Some other top stories that we're looking at this hour, a major winter storm dumping snow across the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic states. So far more than 400 flights have been canceled today. Some areas could get up to a foot of snow.

It is spring, officially. Parts of a dozen states are under winter storm warnings, though, and, yeah, this was supposed to be spring already a week ago.

In other news, a nine-year-old girl hiked for one mile after surviving a car crash to try to save her father. Their car flipped off a cliff in California in the middle of the night. She rushed to the nearest house, but no one was home, so she climbed up the cliff and headed to a train station a mile away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean, it's mind boggling that a little girl at that age could do something like that. She's -- wow, she's a survivor.

TOM LACKEY, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL: In her commitment to her father, she endured very, very threatening set of circumstances that would overwhelm most adults much less a young child.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: And we are sad to report that the girl's father did not survive that crash.

U.S. stocks opening higher this morning after news of a bailout deal for Cyprus. Look at the Big Board right now, stocks are down 44 and change, but we're continuing to watch.

Cyrus was on the brink of a financial collapse that might have forced them to leave the eurozone which could have created a serious domino effect right across the world. in fact.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. hands over control of a prison housing insurgents and other high-security prisoners to the Afghan government. The prison adjacent to the Bagram Air Base has been the source of friction between two sides.

The move comes as Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Kabul for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Ford is apologizing for this, an ad, being denounced as offensive and demeaning to women -- you think?

One by these ads by Ford's unit in India features a caricature of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and, in the back, a trio of women tied up and gagged, all fitting nicely into the trunk area of the Ford Figo compact car.

Ford India says the ads were never used commercially, but did appear without authorization on an advertising website. Along with Ford, the Indian firm that created the ads and its British parent company have condemned those ads, not surprisingly.

Want to take you to Phoenix now, the Jodi Arias murder trial picking right back up where it left off, and it's bound to be another very difficult week for the man on the left because he is the woman on the right's psychologist's.

It'll be a battle of the experts and a prosecutor stands ready to pounce.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: In two hours, more tough questions for the defense psychologist who's seated in the Jodi Arias murder trial. It is not fun being up there. The prosecutor in this case, Juan Martinez, is planning to continue a cross-examination.

Let me tell you this. If it was anything like last week, you know it is going to be rough for that man Richard Samuels.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUAN MARTINEZ, PROSECUTOR: Sir, you just used the word "speculating," didn't you?

RICHARD SAMUELS, PSYCHOLOGIST: OK. I used the word. I misspoke.

MARTINEZ: Sure. And speculating means it could be made up, right?

SAMUELS: Yes, that's one possibility. It could be made up.

MARTINEZ: All right. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: That is never good.

Arias is charged with murdering her ex-boyfriend. She stabbed him 29 times and shot him in the head, but she says she did it in self- defense.

Thursday, the jurors got a crack at asking questions and had more a hundred of them. And the judge read them all out loud in court.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE SHERRY STEPHENS, MARICOPA COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT: Can you be sure Jodi is not lying to you about the events on June 4, 2008?

SAMUELS: Not with 100 percent certainty. I can't say that.

However, when you look at the repeated stories, several different times asked the same question, the story was not 100 percent the same, but the basic aspects of the story was sufficient.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: And you know something? You can expect a lot more where that came from, more questions from the jury and a tough battle ahead, not just for him, but a few other experts, too. Once the prosecution starts its rebuttal case, just wait. We're going to hear a whole other version of everything.

Joining me now is Jean Casarez, correspondent for "In Session" on TruTV. She's been in the courtroom throughout this trial. And also with me, Vinnie Politan, an anchor at HLN and "In Session," and Ryan Smith, host of HLN's "Evening Express."

Jean, let me begin with you if I may, please. How much more damage can this expert withstand on that witness stand?

JEAN CASAREZ, CORRESPONDENT, TRUTV'S "IN SESSION": I think a bit more. We're in the midst of the cross-examination based on the first round of jury questions.

And here is something the prosecutor has not touched yet. This defense witness said that when someone premeditates a crime that they are in control and, because of that, there is not acute stress because they have planned, they know what they're doing and they execute it.

And there won't be that erratic of a crime scene because, as you know, there was blood everywhere and the wounds were absolutely unimaginable, that Jodi Arias put into Travis Alexander.

So the prosecutor is going to have to hit home on that and he will. And we expect also, Ashleigh, believe it or not, maybe another round of jury questions with this witness.

BANFIELD: I love it. I find it some of the most telling signs in a courtroom when you watch what the jury says or does and here they get to ask the questions.

Vinnie, there is yet to be one more expert after this one, at least on behalf of the defense, and that's a domestic-violence expert.

What do we expect the defense wants to elicit from that witness?

VINNIE POLITAN, HOST, HLN AND TRUTV'S "IN SESSION": The defense wants to explain the bizarre behavior by Jodi Arias. It's so counterintuitive, Ashleigh, and that's what the domestic-violence expert has to talk about because Jodi Arias is going out of her way to be with Travis Alexander yet claims to be a victim of domestic violence.

She travels more than a thousand miles. She crawls through his doggy door. Why is she doing all these things? That's the explanation that they need.

The problem that that expert and the expert on the stand now has is that so much of their opinion is based upon the words of Jodi Arias.

BANFIELD: which are worth nothing considering how much she's lied up until this point.

Ryan Smith, I'm only guessing here, and I'm not a lawyer, but I like to play one on TV, that the prosecution in its rebuttal will call a few experts, or at least one, of their own.

And it's going to be a big old canceling-out session because the jury's going to be left with two competing pieces of wisdom from two thought-to-be smart people with degrees.

RYAN SMITH, HOST, HLN'S "EVENING EXPRESS": Yeah, you got it. That's exactly what they're going to do.

And when you talk about the prosecution's experts, my guess is that they want to call somebody who's going to try to knock done that PTSD diagnosis that Samuels is talking about, maybe somebody to talk about how she didn't suffer from abuse, and also address the memory issues because basically Jodi's story is that she didn't remember so much of what happened.

And the doctor on the stand right now is talking about how that is part of what he diagnosed and part of what he believes that she experienced.

So the prosecution has got to call witnesses to try to knock that done, and it will be that typical battle of the experts.

BANFIELD: OK, Ryan Smith, hold on for a minute. Jean and Vinnie, stay where you are because, oftentimes, it's hard for a jury to figure out just how exactly a crime plays out.

HLN did something to at least help the viewers in this case get a better feel. They constructed a mockup of the apartment where Travis Alexander was killed.

Going to get a tour of this and you're going to see just how plausible it is, what Jodi Arias says happened in this very small space.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Certainly a chilling case. Killed by the hands of his ex- girlfriend, the last pictures of Travis Alexander were taken in the shower before Jodi Arias shot and stabbed him to death. And suddenly that shower became a crime scene, as did the entire bathroom, closet, and en suite.

My colleagues at HLN built a recreation of the place where Travis Alexander was killed. Sometimes jurors actually get a chance to go back to the scene of a crime. Sometimes they get to be a part of a re-enactment, a reconstruction, in a courtroom. But not in this case. Only you are getting that opportunity to experience just what that crime scene looked like.

I want to bring back Vinnie Politan, host of HLN and "IN SESSION" on truTV, and also Ryan Smith, host of HLN's "EVENING EXPRESS". So you two are standing in the recreation. It is all built exactly to size. Can you just, the two of you, spread out and show me how large this whole crime scene actually is?

POLITAN: Sure, sure. And Ryan will get one end. We actually have a tape measure, Ashleigh. How about that?

BANFIELD: Perfect.

POLITAN: All right. So from one end all the way down to the other, we're at 25 feet now. We're talking about 30 feet. You would probably be 30, 35 feet to reconstruct. This is just the hallway, the closet and the bathroom area. BANFIELD: Where the whole murder took place, right from one end to the other.

SMITH: Right. And then the other -- we're talking about space wise, this would be where a wall is. So it's about, let's see. What do you have there?

POLITAN: It's about 10 feet.

SMITH: About 10 feet.

BANFIELD: Guys, you've both been in courtrooms. Could they not have rebuilt this exact replica inside that courtroom to help the jurors sort of block through the crime?

SMITH: Well, it is a big courtroom, so there is a possibility. But I think the reason why you tonight have to don't have something like this in a courtroom, especially if I'm on a defense team, I say unless you can 100 percent accurately reconstruct this and then do the entire reenact reenactment with 100 percent accuracy, given the fact that we don't really know clearly what happened, I don't want it. Because any misinterpretation is something I'm going to say, if I get a conviction get me, I'm going to appeal that because you shouldn't have allowed it in the first place.

BANFIELD: Maybe they saw the 2004 murder trial of Susan Wright in Houston? Do you remember covering that? Where the prosecutor not only brought in the blood-stained mattress of where Susan Wright's husband was murdered, and where she was accused of having stabbed him 200 times, the prosecutor all actually got up on that mattress, having strapped down her colleague, and then reenacted the crime, actually getting someone to hand her the knife and pretending -- she didn't go through all 200 stab wounds, but she pretended that had this was how it played out. The real bed, the real blood, and then of course this re-enactment!

Here is what's so amazing, guys. Susan Wright claimed that she was a battered spouse and acted in self-defense when she did the stabbings. It did not work out for her. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison and later on she was resentenced to 20 years in prison.

So I suppose you're right, Ryan, when you say it can really do you harm.

POLITAN: Yes, and it could do a lot of harm here because if you put the jury in here, this is the thing that really surprised Ryan and I, I think, the most. When take you a look at Jodi Arias' story and it's almost like she's describing it in slow motion. But when come in here and see how tight the quarters are, you see how unlikely it is that her story worked out the way that it did. At least, the first time I stepped in here, it was smaller than I thought.

BANFIELD: So Vinnie. Vinnie, we've also covered trials where jurors have gone on go-sees; they've gone to the crime scene. Or maybe they have just watched a video, like in the case of Susan Smith, the notorious baby killer who killed her own two children. They reenacted the car going into the water. Ostensibly those two babies in the real car were strapped in their car seats in the back as that six minutes of hell played out and that car went under the water. Susan Smith back in 1994 committed this crime. The video was so powerful for the jurors to see the reenactment, she was given a life sentence and she won't be eligible for patrol until 2024.

Videos and walkthroughs can be just as effective, but even that's not done in this case.

POLITAN: No. I mean, there is some -- they have seen a lot of photographs, but they haven't done it the way we've seen it in other cases.

SMITH: And part of the reason is the passage of time. It's been years. That house -- remember, when it first happened, we didn't know about Jodi Arias' story about self-defense. So now you're getting in there, the scene is different fundamentally. And again if I'm the defense, I'm saying no, no way you're getting in that house and trying to tell these jurors --

POLITAN: Somebody else is living there. The house has been sold. There's a family living there.

BANFIELD: True. OK, so I have one for you both, because I know you both said it can really serve against a defense attorney to see a re- enactment or recreation, but I wanted to -- I had to dig deep into the court TV archives to get this one. But the 2000 Massachusetts trial of Barbara Asher. Do you remember Mistress Lauren M? Do you remember this one?

POLITAN: No. Roll the tape, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Look. It was an S&M case and the prosecutor put the S&M mask on and then walked over to the area pretending to be the victim in this case, sort of stringing up his own hands and saying that Barbara Asher, as the dominatrix, basically let him die as he had a heart attack because she was afraid that her tawdry business would be found out.

Now, this was a re-enactment that worked because, in the end, she was found in 2006 not guilty. There was no body, no blood, no DNA, and her alleged confession wasn't taped. No notes. So that was one of those circumstances re-enactment sort of worked. But in this case, do you see any benefit to what you're standing in because in that courtroom or any likeness of it?

POLITAN: Depends which side. You know, if I'm prosecutor, I'm not -- I wouldn't mind doing this.

SMITH: You wouldn't mind doing this. I wouldn't mind bringing the jury through. It's a perfect setup because you get to talk about exactly what happened by your basis. And like you say, Jodi's story doesn't make a lot of sense.

But from a defense perspective, you want to do everything you can do to keep them out of a space like this. BANFIELD: All right, guys. Stand by. Great work. Thank you for showing us the realities of what that scene looked like, Ryan Smith and Vinnie Politan.

Also want to remind our viewers you can watch the Jodi Arias trial this afternoon live on our sister station HLN. Also on CNN.com.

A filmmaker interviews Jerry Sandusky all in an effort to clear Joe Paterno's name. So why is the former coach's family so upset?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: The family of Joe Paterno wants no part of a documentary filmmaker's self-appointed crusade to clear Coach Paterno's name. JoePa, as you probably remember him, is the former legendary Penn State football coach who lost his job and died in disgrace in the Jerry Sandusky child rape scandal.

John Zeigler would seem to be an ally in a website, an upcoming film, he's claiming, and I quote, "an out of control news media created a false narrative that tarred Paterno for Sandusky's sins."

We're going to cover more on that story in just a moment, but I want to take you to the White House right now where the president is about to do something very special. This is something he does on a regular basis. He's actually doing a naturalization ceremony. So as we hear "The Star-Spangled Banner", we'll have about 28 active duty service members and civilians, including 13 troops, who will a wait their swearing in ceremony to become U.S. citizens.

May I just say, personally, I went through this. It was a very emotional time. You may think it's pro forma, you probably pledge allegiance every day, or at least did at one point this your life. But when you do it officially for the first time, especially for those in uniform, folks, this is a magical, magical moment. To have the president reside over it is truly just awesome.

The Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, is standing to his left and she's going to deliver the oath of allegiance. Let's listen in.

(BEGIN LIVE FEED)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, Madame Secretary, candidates for naturalization, distinguished guests, good morning.

(END LIVE FEED)

BANFIELD: As they get the ceremony under way, we'll dip in as soon as the president speaks and as soon as Janet Napolitano delivers that oath. It's really just a terrific moment to watch. We see it a lot of times on July 4, but it's great when you see active duty service members who are being given this wonderful opportunity. "And please be seated everyone. "

So we'll be zip back to the story we were in the middle of covering a moment ago, and that's the story of John Zeigler. John Zeigler, a documentary filmmaker, had an opportunity to interview Jerry Sandusky not just once but several times -- in prison, over the telephone -- and recorded a lot what have he had to say, as well. And then he decided to give NBC's "Today" show the exclusive opportunity to listen to some of the comments that were made by a man who heretofore had been a hero, but after Jerry Sandusky's trial has become quite a villain -- a child rapist, 45 counts and going.