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George Zimmerman Case Takes Shape; More Arias Jurors Speak Out; Multiple Types of Bombs Found in Teen's Room; Chasing a Storm

Aired May 28, 2013 - 11:00   ET

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

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield.

And coming your way this hour, could this have been the next Columbine? Police say an Oregon teenager had napalm, molotov cocktails and drain cleaner bombs stashed under his bedroom floor. His mom is blaming a rare obsessive-compulsive disorder. But he's about to face a judge and an aggravated attempted murder charge.

The bombing that sent shockwaves across the nation, six weeks after the mayhem at the marathon, we're going to see just how far the survivors and the city of Boston have come as investigators search for links to other terrorists.

And grab Toto and hang on tight. We're going to take you right into the middle of a Kansas tornado. We're also checking the radar for possible more twisters just in the hours ahead.

Playing out, though, right now in a Sanford, Florida, courtroom, the final sifting process of a blockbuster legal saga, the case against George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin.

In the last few hours, if they're any indication at all, Zimmerman's got quite the uphill battle in defending himself against the second- degree murder charge. The judge just denied the defense's motion to delay this trial. It is set to go June 10th.

The judge also ruled that the jury will not be leaving the courtroom on a "go-see" of the shooting scene. The defense had argued that the best way for the jury to understand what happened that night back on February 26th of 2012 is to go there and see if for themselves.

But the prosecution said it is impossible to recreate the exact conditions and that judge on your screen, Debra Nelson, agreed.

Also potential jurors will not be sequestered, at least during the jury selection, but all that could change once they actually impanel a jury. They could sequester them. The judge is going to take that whole thing up at a later date.

And there are so many moving parts on this case. It was a busy morning in that courtroom.

I want to go straight out to Victor Blackwell who joins me live now from Sanford, Florida. The first thing I want to get to, though, Victor, with you is the defense's key argument about sequestering those potential jurors.

If the last case that we just came off of with Jodi Arias is any indication, is that something that this defense was very worried about?

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They are indeed. and they mentioned actually some of the other big high profile cases, the Arias case, the Casey Anthony case as well, of jurors being just swamped by reporters once they come out of the building after that decision is made.

Now his request, although he said -- we're speaking about Mark O'Mara, the defense attorney for George Zimmerman -- was that the entire jury pool, 500 people, that they be sequestered during the jury selection process. Imagine the hotel rooms and just all the logistics. That was immediately dismissed out of hands.

Now there will be a hearing on this Friday to determine if the media will be able to photograph members of the jury or the potential jury, but this judge has determined that they will stay anonymous. You can only refer to them as their number.

I want to talk to you about one other thing as well, that there will be another hearing before the start of jury selection on the 10th, next Thursday and Friday, Judge Nelson scheduled two days of hearings to determine if the voice data will be used, if it will be admissible, during the trial.

That data was collected by experts for the state and one expert determined that the last words spoken before the shot fired was the word "stop" and, more than likely not, it was Trayvon Martin.

He said that that voice was from the younger person instead of the older person. The defense says there wasn't enough information to even make that determination. He says it should be inadmissible. We'll see what happens on the 6th and 7th of June.

BANFIELD: So, Victor, you know, I've been in a courtroom or two, and I have seen days when they have a the lot of motions to go through. And this judge is firing through them so quickly.

I've got a full printout here, two-and-a-half pages, full ink of all of the things that they had to go through, and by my count -- correct me if I'm wrong, Victor -- this is not going well for George Zimmerman.

I've seen all of the motions, I think, for the prosecution but one have been granted. And I think all of the motions for Zimmerman have been denied. Is that wrong?

BLACKWELL: Well, you're very close, if not exactly on the number. And we've got to go through the important ones.

There was the release of the pictures and the text messages from Trayvon Martin's phone, suggesting that he used marijuana, that he was trying to sell a gun, had familiarity with guns and marijuana. Well, the judge granted the state's motion to keep out of courtroom, meaning the jury will never see, his past marijuana use, the school records, his history of fighting, social media postings, photos of Martin with gold teeth, any information about his familiarity with guns.

And I want to show this moment between defense attorney Mark O'Mara and the judge in which, during the questioning about the familiarity with guns, he says, to put it in layman's terms and take out the legalese, this is just unfair.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK O'MARA, GEORGE ZIMMERMAN'S ATTORNEY: The drugs and the history of his chronicity, his chronic use of drugs, and his familiarity with fighting and to a certain extent his familiarity with guns is completely relevant to the theory of defense.

So how could you keep us from arguing our theory of defense?

JUDGE DEBRA NELSON: Because the rules of evidence keep you from doing it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: And you've got to say that there was no guarantee, and these were the words from Mark O'Mara, no guarantee that he was going to introduce any of it, but he wanted to show his hand when he released this last week to say. if you go after the character of George Zimmerman, I'm going to introduce this so the jury knows this is part of Trayvon Martin's history.

BANFIELD: Ah. And I'm correcting myself, too, here, Victor, because I'm seeing that the gag order request, which is something the prosecution wanted -- I think they were getting tired of seeing all of this evidence coming out on TV, et cetera, and that was denied. So it will keep coming out for now anyway.

Victor, if you could stand by for just a moment, please, Victor Blackwell doing our live reporting in front of the courthouse, I want to bring in, also, defense attorney Danny Cevallos.

Danny, look, even by this count, this was a pretty good deal for George Zimmerman to be able to keep that gag order from stopping some of that material to get out because there's no jury yet. So anybody watching this, right now, now knows about those photos, knows about those text messages, knows about some of the background of the victim in this case.

But it does look like this has been a tough day. Is this an indication, though, of what trial will be like?

DANNY CEVALLOS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: No, I don't think it is. The defense here is going to file a number of different motions. Some of them have merit and the judge is shooting them down, but I don't think that -- remember the jury in this case is ultimately going to decide whether George Zimmerman is guilty or the not guilty.

This judge has a history of speeding through these motions. She disposes of them quickly. She has -- there have been days where the defense has won the day, and this appears to be a day where the judge is going in favor of the prosecution.

There are a couple of other of these motions that should concern us. This expert motion that's coming up, that's going to be a big one. If you read this expert's report, and I recommend that everybody does read this expert's report, it is really questionable.

And the defense is essentially saying that it doesn't meet the standards of Frye. It would be like, for example, if I tried to introduce astrology and said that I'd studied astrology for 20 years.

I may be an expert in astrology, but astrology just isn't an accepted science that will tell us anything about the world. So those motions were not really reached today.

BANFIELD: And, you know, as you say that, it makes me harken back to the Casey Anthony trial in which evidence was brought into court of what the trunk of Casey Anthony's car smelled like.

They captured the essence in a tube and they preserved it, I think, for over a year or two and then wanted to open that tube for the jurors to smell. It was called smell evidence. And there was a Frye hearing, I believe, on that as well.

Does that sort of equate?

CEVALLOS: Oh, absolutely. That's an even better example. Any time you have a novel area, the smell evidence, although we are all familiar with smells, reducing smells to a science is something totally different.

And that's exactly what came up in Casey Anthony. Whether or not the smell evidence was an accepted area of science. Not whether or not you're an expert on smells. We all arguably are an expert on smells. But whether or not smell science itself is a legitimate science. And that's -- it's a very similar motion.

Now it's important to note the prosecution in Zimmerman says, hey, this is about voice identification and this has been an accepted science. But the defense is saying, no, no, not quite. This expert is talking about -- and you have to read this report of their proposed expert right -- that this -- that the sounds that he heard and the voices he heard sounded like a religious statement. It sounded like he was making some kind of religious reference.

That is not the language of voice identification. That's the language of -- that's tea leaves. That's reading -- that's like a psychic reading into what George Zimmerman may or may not have been doing, so I think ...

BANFIELD: It looks like they are wrapping right now.

CEVALLOS: ... this motion absolutely -- yeah, this motion has some real validity.

BANFIELD: Sorry, Danny, to interrupt you, but as you were talking, I just wanted to make sure that viewers knew this is a live picture we're watching inside the courtroom.

And I -- look, I expected these motions to go most of the day, so I'm pretty surprised they've been able to rifle through them as quickly as they could -- as they did in two hours or so.

You can see Mark O'Mara who's just greeting some of the other members in the court.

George Zimmerman, though, Danny, wasn't there today. Stand by, Danny, because I think we're going to hit this topic again as we sift through what else has transpired.

And there's a lot to go through, so we'll have to do another revisit on this just in a few more minutes. So standby if you would, Danny Cevallos, live for us.

I also want to bring you up to speed on a couple of other big stories that we're watching here in the NEWSROOM.

In New Mexico, really just bizarre, two homeless women are going to be in court today on murder charges. Police have released a video of a high-speed chase that led to their arrest. Take a look.

Now you've seen high-speed chases before, I'm sure, but when the police finally stopped the car, one of the women inside who they were pulling out admitted that there was a body in the trunk.

The prosecutors say the women who are 20- and 18-years-old killed a 51-year-old man so that they could steal his car.

Another juror in the Jodi Arias murder trial is speaking out to CNN and talking about why they ended up at such an impasse, unable to decide on life or death for Jodi Arias after deciding she was guilty.

Here's what the juror told Anderson Cooper last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARILOU ALLEN-COOGA, JODI ARIAS JUROR: I didn't believe what she had to say. I don't think she ever was truly honest with us.

I know that for me I didn't see any remorse or any issues with herself for what happened that day, for what Travis went through. I didn't see any of that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: She also said that the jury felt like they had let the system as well as Travis Alexander's family down when they couldn't decide on the death penalty.

She says it ended up the way it did partly because of the instructions that they were given. The deadlock means that a brand-new penalty phase and a brand-new jury for Jodi Arias will be impaneled if -- if -- if they don't come to an agreement, which so far doesn't look like there's any plan for that.

So the next phase gets under way on July 18th.

An Arizona woman will learn her fate today in a Mexican court. Yanira Maldonado could face drug charges or be set free. She is a mother of seven and she was driving back from a family funeral in Mexico when she and her husband were stopped by Mexican soldiers.

The soldiers said that they found 12 pounds of marijuana in the family's bus. Maldonado's husband says he believes that the Mexican troops wanted a bribe.

Heading out to Oregon where Molotov cocktails, napalm, pipe bombs, a drain cleaner bomb found in a secret compartment of a teenage boy's bedroom.

He's due in court today, accused of a very adult attack, planning an attack, an attack deadlier than Columbine.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: The attack was supposed to be more deadly than Columbine with more powerful bombs to ratchet up the death toll. That's what prosecutors say a teenager in Oregon was planning just before the police foiled an elaborate plan to attack his school. His name is Grant Allen Acord and he is about to face a judge this afternoon charged with some very serious adult crimes.

CNN's Miguel Marquez is live in Corvallis, Oregon, this morning. Miguel, what do we know about this suspect and about the plot and how far it got?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it sounds like it was fairly far along, Ashleigh. Police are taking it obviously very, very seriously. He is 17 years old. They say that he had hidden, in a secret compartment in the floorboards of his mother's house, some six bombs including a napalm bomb, pipe bombs, bombs made out of Drano, and Molotov cocktails. They say they got on to this by a tipster, somebody who called 911 and let them know he was talking about this. They are darn lucky that they did because it makes one's blood run cold just to think of the chance of this thing happening again.

He will be arraigned here at the courthouse in Corvallis a little later today. The high school where he goes to, that he was planning this attack on, West Albany High School, has opened back up for business today. Police searched that and searched it again. They have extra staff on duty today.

They also want to talk to students there because this kid had talked to some of his friends before and said things about bombs, talked about building bombs, but nobody took him very seriously. Apparently he was a very quiet kid. Some of them called him a little strange, but nothing that he said to them, at school at least, caused them to believe he would hatch a plot like this. But police believe that he was planning it and would have pulled it off if they had not arrested him.

BANFIELD: That is very distressing. Miguel Marquez reporting live for us this morning, thank you so much.

And here, by the way, is exactly what this young man is facing: one count of aggravated attempted murder, six counts of manufacturing a destructive device, six counts of possession of a destructive device, six counts of possession of a weapon with intent to use it against another person.

Danny Cevallos is now back with me again. And I'm also joined by criminal defense attorney Monica Lindstrom. Welcome to you both again.

Danny, just to you, to see a list like that with one count of attempted aggravated murder and the other lists of six, can you make that make sense for the person out there that sees a school as a whole lot more than one or six people?

DANNY CEVALLOS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, the aggravated murder just means that it's a murder with aggravating circumstances. Obviously, in this case, it's using an explosive device or the planning involved. I mean, this is very clearly an attempt -- at least that's what the prosecution's saying. And the real question here is at what point did he make that substantial step beyond just thinking about it, maybe preparing for it?

It's interesting also to note, even though he's 17, every state allowed for juveniles to be charged as adults when there are certain enumerated crimes. You can't do it if it's just a small amount of, say, marijuana, but this is as egregious as crimes again. So because he's charged with that crime, it's likely that the Oregon statute allows him to be -- what they call direct filed. So he's a juvenile, he's 17, but he's going to be charged as an adult.

And hopefully for the juvenile, at least, he's going to do everything he can to get back into juvenile court because the punishments there are nothing like they are in adult court, which obviously is prison and very long-term. So that's what this juvenile defense is going to be oriented around, number one, getting him back into juvenile court and, number two, fighting those charges.

BANFIELD: So Monica, if -- his mother has said that this young man suffers from a very rare form of OCD. When you're talking about a defense, because look, if he's going to be in adult court, he's going to face it like everyone else. What kind of defense can you mount if you do suffer from something like this and how much evidence would you have to show about that suffering?

MONICA LINDSTROM, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: That's a great question, Ashleigh. And really you need to focus on what is it that's really affecting him. She said that it's PANDAS, which is a rare form of OCD brought on by the body's reaction to the strep virus, and it can cause mental illness issues or a brain injury. So you have to look at is that going to affect his ability to understand right and wrong or to know what he was doing was right or wrong?

And I know that sounds a lot like an insanity, but they kind of go hand in hand. They have to look the at it to see if it affects is he able to understand what charges are against him? Is he able to help his attorneys defend him? So as they are looking at trying to get this back into juvenile court, and the prosecutor is keeping it in adult court, how does that mental issue come into play here and can we prosecute him?

BANFIELD: OK, so let's say -- I get competence. I mean, everybody has to be competent and be able to assist in his or her defense and assist his or her attorneys and understand the charges against him or her. But if you're going to add OCD, and the fact that he's young and perhaps immature, doesn't that speak directly to competence? Can't that boost him back to juvenile court? Because how can a kid who can't cope help his attorneys?

LINDSTROM: You're absolutely right, Ashleigh, and that's something that the court is going to have to look at. And one reason why they are going to order the competency test and the full-scale mental evaluation, to determine was he able -- even though he's 17 and this was a grave, grave crime allegedly -- is he going to be able to understand what is going on? And does he have the capability to understand what he was doing was wrong? So you're right on; it comes down to competency.

BANFIELD: Well, we've got a lot more coming in this case and he's going to be facing the judge this afternoon. Danny Cevallos and Monica Lindstrom, thank you to you both. We're going to be talking just a little bit later on in this hour as well. So stay put, if you would, for us.

Also following more than a dozen tornadoes reported in the United States yesterday, including one in Kansas, it is unbelievable in that you're looking at it from within -- inside the tornado. Not to mention there's a severe threat for this today. Chad Myers is standing by with that, all coming at you right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: President Obama is back on the Jersey Shore today to survey the recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy. He actually just landed, and he and the governor, Chris Christie, are expected to tour that coastline throughout hour. The president's also expected to speak at Asbury Park about 2:00 Eastern. We will of course monitor that for you.

Also in the news, firefighters struggling. It is a rough one. They're trying to get the upper hand on a huge wildfire out in Southern California. It is fast moving and forced the evacuation of 6,000 people. It's from place called White Rock Campground. Very popular. It's, of course, very popular the end of Memorial Day weekend, so this was quite an emergency to move them all out. It's already charred about 1,000 acres and the U.S. Forest Service says the fire is about 5 percent contained.

The widow of a Kentucky police officer killed in an apparent ambush held back tears as she talked about her husband, and this happening just minutes ago. Officer Jason Ellis was shot to death early Saturday morning while he was simply clearing debris off of a road. Police say that they think somebody put the debris there on purpose, then lay in wait and shot Ellis when he got out of his car.

Today his wife, Amy, thanked everyone for their support.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMY ELLIS, WIFE OF OFFICER JASON ELLIS: It just means a lot. I mean, I can't say how much that it has meant to us just to see the honor that has been shown to him and the support of our family.

He was an amazing man. I want everybody to know what an amazing man that he was. He was a dedicated family man. He loved our family, he loved our boys, he loved me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: That was from Bardstown, Kentucky. So far no arrests have been made in that officer's killing.

Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik getting out of prison today. That's according to local news reports. Mr. Kerik has spent the last three years at a federal prison in Maryland. That's because he was convicted of tax fraud and for lying to the federal government. Remember, Mr. Kerik was also in line to be President George W. Bush's Homeland Security Chief and then all of a sudden, corruption allegations put a big old stop to that. So there you go. Bernard Kerik getting out of prison.

An incredibly terrifying rescue to show you in China. What you're seeing here are doctors cutting away a ceramic sewer pipe because there is a newborn baby lodged inside. Apparently the neighbors were hearing cries from an apartment toilet and they called the fire department. They couldn't get the baby out. Look at the pictures. Absolutely incredible. The fireman just grabbed the pipe. They rushed the actual pipe to the hospital with the baby still inside and they did get that child out. Here's something even more remarkable. After all of this, the baby is said to be stabilized. No one has come forward to claim that baby.

Storm chasers with some really remarkable video from right inside the eye of a big tornado in Kansas and you are the beneficiaries of the video. Look at this. Very few people can say they have ever seen this sight before. The road just disappears into the swirl of rain and filth and dirt. And then the swirling debris, as you can see overhead.

The guys who shot the video say that those wind speeds were upwards of 150 miles an hour. How did they get it? Good question. That is how they got it. It's called a tornado intercept vehicle. In case you're wondering, it's very heavy -- 14,000 pounds -- and has big spikes that dig in more than three feet into the ground to try to anchor it in place.

Our meteorologist Chad Myers got to check this out when it came to the CNN center just a few years ago. And Chad right now is in the Weather Center to explain this to me. If a tornado, Chad, can completely blend a two-story brick building, why isn't that a Tonka Toy despite those big things that it sticks in the ground?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I thought your question was would you ever get in that thing? And my answer is no.

BANFIELD: I know what the answer was to that question. I didn't bother.

MYERS: Well, the size, there are skirts that go down to the ground to stop air from getting under the car, or under the vehicle, because it really is a truck under there. And then the spikes go into the ground to anchor it to the ground. And they put this thing in the way. They know where the tornado is headed. They drive to the exact location on the same road that it's going to go over and they want to be inside.

The wind speed up on top was 150 only because, at 150, that's when the instruments got torn off the truck. So it was an ugly day yesterday across parts of the Plains yesterday. More tornadoes today. We're going to talk to these guys later on today because I can't believe they actually survived a 150 to 160 miles per hour tornado.

BANFIELD: You said more -- the Oklahoma area, right? Again? Are they getting hit again with bad weather today?

MYERS: They certainly will and again tomorrow. There's a slight risk of severe weather for a lot of people. Forty-eight million people in the path of severe weather today. Some tornadoes, lots of hail, and some wind damage, but all the way from Nebraska to Texas, all the way almost to Buffalo, New York, is where the slight risk is today. Forty-eight million people live in this area today. We'll keep you advised this afternoon if we get any tornadoes on the ground, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: They need it the least. As if anyone needs it, but they certainly need it the least. Chad Myers, thank you.

And as Chad just mentioned, very important to remember that in the 1:00 Eastern hour, the people who actually braved that vehicle, the storm chasers who just got inside the eye of a tornado with their big Darth Vader-like vehicle, is going to talk to us about how they did it, what it was like, whether they would do it again after what they've been through.