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U.S. Mom Jailed in Mexico on Drug Charges; Michele Bachmann Says So Long, Capitol Hill; Blake Shelton's "Healing in the Heartland"; Doctors Say Baby Found in Pipe Doing OK; Behind the Decision-Making for Death-Qualified Jurors
Aired May 29, 2013 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield.
And coming your way this hour, move over Lindsay Lohan. Amanda Bynes is stealing the headlines with her wild wigs and her Twitter tirades and a growing rap sheet. Is this a cry for help? We have called in Dr. Drew.
Also, we now know how this newborn baby got stuck in a sewer pipe. The story behind his amazing rescue, amazing survival and then the very sad details of who is responsible.
And listen to this. Literally thousands of rapes could have been prevented. The rapists, instead, rotting in jail not walking the streets if only DNA evidence was looked at instead of being sealed up and stashed away in supply closets across the country.
First up this morning, she is not your usual suspect. A smiling, happy mother of seven is instead, this morning, locked away in a Mexican prison. She's accused of being a drug smuggler. And not just a small-time smuggler, either.
The marijuana stash that the police say Yanira Maldonado was trying to bring across the border was more than 12-pounds, hidden under the seat on the bus she was riding in.
But her family says there is simply no way that it's hers. Casey Wian has more.
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CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yanira Maldonado's family hoped she would be released at a court hearing in Nogales, Mexico, Tuesday. But the Mormon mother of seven, accused of smuggling marijuana, will remain in a Mexican jail at least another day.
The family insists she has no involvement in drugs and is being framed.
ANNA SOTO, YANIRA MALDONADO'S DAUGHTER: Whoever was the cause of that, that's who I'm angry at. The people that put my mom in prison without having evidence.
WIAN: Maldonado was arrested last week after Mexican authorities said they found 12-pound of marijuana under the seat of a commercial bus she was riding home in from a funeral with her husband, Gary.
Gary Maldonado said he was asked to pay a $5,000 bribe for his wife's freedom. As he tried raise the money, she was shipped off to jail.
The family was happy about the evidence presented in court so far. In Mexico, there has been a struggle to modernize the corrupt judicial system.
PROFESSOR GEORGE GRAYSON, COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY: And the judicial system there is even more corrupt than the police and, when you are brought into a judicial proceeding, you don't get to face your accuser. You don't have an automatic right to a lawyer. You may be held before you're brought to trial for some weeks and it's a closed proceeding.
WIAN: In this case the judge has the power to hold Maldonado in prison up to four months before trial. That would likely only bring more pressure from U.S. authorities.
The office of Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona says Senator Flake has been in contact with the family as well as officials in Mexico and the U.S. regarding the case. He will continue to monitor the situation.
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BANFIELD: And Casey Wian joins us live now from Goodyear, Arizona.
What's going to happen in this case, and how soon is there going to be some movement for Yanira Maldonado?
WIAN: Well, Ashleigh, what's going to happen this morning is probably very critical. Officials from that checkpoint, the Mexican military personnel, are going to testify at a court hearing. They will be cross-examined by Yanira Maldonado's attorney.
It's expected that a decision will be reached by the judge to whether to continue to hold her by Friday. But this is a very slow, painstaking process.
As it's described to me by family members, they are actually typing up statements on a manual typewriter as the prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney look over the typist's shoulder and suggest and argue about changes and correction and accuracy.
So it's a very, very slow process. But according to the Mexican embassy in Washington, D.C., they are expecting a ruling on her immediate future very soon.
BANFIELD: So at this point, are the U.S. government officials getting involved? Are the embassy officials, you know, coming anywhere close to this jail to meet with her? What contact has she had with Americans? WIAN: It's a very limited basis. Right now, the U.S. consulate says it has met with Mexican authorities on this case, but it's referring all questions to Mexican authorities and to Yanira Maldonado's Mexican attorney, Ashleigh.
BANFIELD: Casey Wian, thank you. Thank you for that, Casey Wian, reporting live for us this morning.
And for more on this case, I want to bring in our top legal team. Lisa Bloom is the legal analyst for Avvo.com, and Christine Grillo is a prosecutor right here in New York City.
Lisa, let me start with you. These sound to me to be very serious charges. It's not a small amount of marijuana. It's over 12-pounds, and it was right at the border.
Given that set of facts, but also given the fact it was on a bus and under a seat, how strong a case do they have against this woman?
LISA BLOOM, LEGAL ANALYST, AVVO.COM: Well, it's the beginning of a case, and it's not insufficient in and of itself.
Twelve pounds is a large amount of marijuana. Did someone see her carrying it on the bus, affixing it under the seat? She just came from a funeral. She was presumably with family members and others the entire time.
It could have been, obviously, somebody else who put it under the bus. She could have been framed. It could be the bus company. There are a lot of possibilities here.
I don't think just the marijuana being found under her seat is going to be sufficient to get a conviction against her.
BANFIELD: Well, then but I would say here, you're absolutely right.
But Christine Grillo, you're a prosecutor here in America. What's it like there? How does the prosecutorial process really work?
CHRISTINE GRILLO, PROSECUTOR: Well, I can't speak for how it works in Mexico. I was only there vacationing. But all I can say is that here in America, especially in New York, anywhere in America, that's not going to hold.
You need some more proof. You need something else to connect her to the illegal substance that they found, the marijuana under her seat.
The only thing that I would say is, like Lisa brought out, 12 pounds is a lot. And, if she were -- if it were put in her bag where she didn't know about it, 12 pounds is a lot, so that's the only thing that would raise eyebrows. How was that put into your bag that you had absolutely no idea that it was there.
BANFIELD: You would think there would be a busload, literally, a busload of witnesses to see a small and, you know, you can see from her photographs, her wedding pictures, she is a very slight framed woman carrying a large 12 pound stash of marijuana would not be an easy feat to go undetected.
That said, Lisa, do have you any idea what happens when a circumstance develops like this where you have an American who is at the border, is in jail, is facing a different kind of -- I mean, this is a place where they don't have jury trials.
Do American embassy officials get involved right away? Do they have the kind of sway that perhaps we might think they do?
BLOOM: Well, yes, and you know, Ashleigh, I travel internationally frequently myself. The first thing any American should do if they get in trouble with the legal system in another country is to contact the American embassy. That's what they're there for, to help Americans abroad in any kind of a problem, but especially with a legal problem.
But having said that, of course, we are subject to the laws and the legal systems of other countries when we travel abroad. Mexico is notorious for corruption in their legal system, corruption by law enforcement.
I have experienced that personally. I live in Los Angeles. I used to go to Mexico a lot. I've had police officers pull me over and ask for bribes. It's a very disturbing situation.
So she's going to have to prove that. If the husband says that the police asked him for $5,000, that's unfortunately a fairly typical story.
But, nevertheless, she is going to have to prove that in Mexico. And she can't get a jury in Mexico just because Americans are entitled to jury trials here in the U.S.
BANFIELD: Casey Wian is watching this story carefully, so we'll see what comes up with today if she makes that appearance later today and what transpires.
But I'm going to ask the both of you to stick around. I have a lot more questions for you, Lisa Bloom, Christine Grillo, live with us on the hot seat, the journalist panel of lawyers.
In the meantime, I've got a couple of other stories I want to bring your way. Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann is saying so long, Capitol Hill. In a video that she posted, strangely, in the middle of the night to her campaign Web site, the congresswoman from Minnesota says that she is not going to run for re-election next year.
She has long been a harsh critic of President Obama. That former presidential candidate says, though, that while she will be stepping out of the political spotlight, she has no plans to fade from public view. So stay tuned for where Michele Bachmann will end up next.
More than half of the country is facing the threat of severe weather again today. Forecasters are warning of tornadoes, and large hail, and damaging winds, even flooding. Every state east of the Rockies, if you can believe it, is now on the alert. What you are seeing on your screen is some of these incredible pictures that have been able to be gathered over the last couple of weeks. This one's a tornado ripping across central Kansas just last night. The result? Six farms, very hard hit, one of them destroyed, in fact.
Tonight, country singer Blake Shelton is going to lead a wicked lineup, just an all-star lineup, a concert to raise money for those who were hit by last week's deadly tornado in Oklahoma. Shelton is a native Oklahoman, and he's going to appear with his wife and fellow country singer, Miranda Lambert. Also appearing on this lineup, it's an amazing ticket, Vince Gill, Usher, Reba McIntyre. It all gets under way tonight in Oklahoma City.
This is something a lot of people have been discussing, whether it is with their family, whether it is with their doctors, whether it is with their office workers, the remarkable survivor story of a newborn baby boy rescued from this sewage pipe in China.
Now we're learning more about not only his recovery but his mother. That's coming up, next.
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BANFIELD: By all accounts this was a baby who should never have survived the ordeal of his birth, but a little baby boy in China is not only thriving this morning, he's becoming an international star after being cut from a sewage pipe just hours after his birth.
It was remarkable, this with firefighters and doctors in the hospital together doing that remarkable job.
Our David McKenzie joins us now, live from Beijing, with the very latest. So, David, first and foremost, give us an update on the condition of the baby.
DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What an extraordinary story, Ashleigh. And the doctors are telling us that the baby will survive, that he's, in fact, doing OK. This newborn, which doesn't even have a name, he's just known as Baby Number 59 because that's the number of incubator he was placed in a local hospital.
This really amazing story from the moment when neighbors heard noises coming in from the bathroom. They thought it might be a cat or something else.
Then they saw two small feet, called in rescuers. They literally had to hack away that pipe, take the entire pipe to the hospital, pries it open and find this young newborn.
So a very amazing story on the resilience on the part of that child, Ashleigh.
BANFIELD: And we're also seeing these pictures of the baby after this amazing recovery yesterday and rescue, of the little baby in incubator in the hospital. And his legs were all cut and bruised, but it's incredible that he's doing well.
What is the story of the mother of that little baby today?
MCKENZIE: Well, they're trying to piece together that information.
We spoke to police in the region and at the -- near the hospital, Ashleigh. They say that it appears that the mother's story at this stage is checking out, that she felt stomach cramps, that she knew she was pregnant, but wasn't expecting the baby to come.
Neighbors say she was very young from out of town, not clear what the circumstances are of the pregnancy or even of the birth. Now, they say to us that at this stage, they don't plan on pressing charges, but a lot outrage here in China particularly online and amazement around the world that these images, I think, those details will still come in. But the sense is that, at this stage, they're not going to prosecute the woman, which is very interesting, indeed.
BANFIELD: And then also, just one other detail that I found remarkable this morning, David, and that is she is the person who called her landlord and made the initial report that there was a baby stuck in the pipe. But going from there, is there much more that we know about her involvement afterwards?
MCKENZIE: Well, they do say the police say that her story checks out, as I said. They say that when the baby fell into this pipe - and it's kind of hard to imagine this, particularly if you have children, this actually happening in these circumstances -- she tried to get a stick and pry the baby out. There was too much blood. And she kind of panicked and called the landlord.
From there, it definitely gets murkier. It's unclear whether she was trying to get out of any kind of responsibility. Some reports suggesting that she left the scene, others that she stayed. This isn't completely unprecedented in China and in fact other parts of the world. There are instances obviously where people tried to abandon their baby on purpose. At this stage, it appears that isn't the case.
BANFIELD: David McKenzie, it's just an incredible story of one tough little baby boy. David, reporting for us live in China this morning. Thank you.
I want to update you on a story as well. Jodi Arias, today, she's sitting in an Arizona jail cell and she's going to wait almost two more months to find out if she's going to be sentenced to life or death in prison. All of this as members of her former jury are now speaking about the difficulty in deciding to send someone to their death.
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BANFIELD: As millions of people across the country tried to understand today how a jury in Phoneix deadlocked on the life or death question for Jodi Arias, especially after they all agreed that she was, indeed, a cruel killer, the people who tried in vain to deliver justice are now talking about why they just could not finish the job. Here's what they were asked in their jury questionnaire before the trial got under way. "If, after hearing the evidence, reviewing the instructions and deliberating with your fellow jurors, you believe a death sentence is the appropriate sentence, would you personally be able to enter that verdict? Yes or no?"
And to be death qualified, you have to answer yes. And they did, each one of them. But when it came down to really, really doing it, this was perhaps a much tougher choice than they had dreamed it would be. Have a listen.
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DIANE SCHWARTZ, JUROR 6 IN ARIAS TRIAL: I can't begin to express how hard it was. It was one of those factors when I filled out the jury questionnaire, I said I can I do it. This is something I believed in my whole life. If you do the time, you need to do the time. You need to be held accountable for your actions.
I felt that all the way through. And the day that it was turned over to us for the penalty phase, I went home and spent the whole night assessing how I could do it, if I could actually say she should be put to death. And I got to that answer.
BILL ZERVAKOS, JURY FOREMAN IN ARIALS TRIAL: When I walked into the courtroom the first time and looked at who the defendant was, you know, it's hard to put that in perspective, when you look at a young woman and think of the crime. And then you see the brutality of the crime. It just doesn't wash. So it's very difficult.
The responsibility was overwhelming. And I think that by the end of it, we were mentally, emotionally exhausted. I think we were -- we were horrified when we found out that they actually called a mistrial and we felt like we had failed.
We had to sit in judgment on another human. What she did was horrible. It was horrendous. And she has to be held accountable and responsible for.
MARILOU ALLEN-COOGAN, JUROR 16 IN ARIAS TRIAL: We were saddened. We were frustrated. It was -- we felt like we let the system down. We felt like we let Travis' family down, but because of the instructions that we were given, it ended up the way it ended up, which was not ideal, but it is what it is.
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BANFIELD: It is what it is. And that's just tremendous insight that we don't always get after a verdict, especially a controversial verdict. Dr. Drew Pinsky is the host of HLN's "DR. DRW ON CALL". And he spoke with couple of jurors, one of them in particular who voted for death, and Dr. Drew is live with me now.
Diane Schwartz, Dr. Drew, said that she believed in the death penalty her whole life, but that when it ultimately came down to make that decision, it's a whole other kettle of fish when are you in the room with that person that you're actually doing thumbs up our thumbs down to. Did that surprise you in the least?
DR. DREW PINSKY, HLN HOST (via telephone): It doesn't surprise me. In fact, the way you set that question up, it shouldn't surprise anybody. It's an extremely awesome responsibility, no matter how clear you are with the appropriateness of the death penalty itself.
Now, Diane was clear that the brutality of the murder -- though even she equivocated a little bit. Some of the instructions they were getting about the death penalty instructed them to look into the previous history of crime, the previous behavior. And there were several jurors who were not only convinced that this was a sort of an alchemy of that relationship, that she had antecedent history to suggest that she was likely to do this kind of thing.
But several jurors believed the abuse defense to some degree or another, so they were absolutely clear that they could give the death penalty to, say, a serial killer or to someone that met that criteria that they were given, but they were also very clear they could not give it to Jodi Arias. And so they were just deadlocked.
And to say -- I'm really troubled by people saying the system didn't work or it was a troubling outcome. No, things worked exactly the way they were supposed to.
BANFIELD: Yes, this is justice. This is justice. And you know what? For people who said they didn't get a verdict, they got a verdict. It was the third answer on the verdict form. This is a verdict and it's just not palatable to some people. But this is justice.
And I got to ask you, do you think, Drew, in our system, if we are going to employ a death penalty and then we're actually going to do what we call death-qualified jurors, do we need to get away from the euphemism of the word death? And do we need to use the word that her defense attorney used in court by putting her hands on her shoulder and saying, "Can you kill her?" Do we need to ask that question of jurors before we empanel them?
PINKSY: Well, maybe that's true. That's an interesting question. I mean, I think it's appropriate for the defense to put those words into the mix when the jurors are actually asked to do this.
But once again, let's remind ourselves, the four -- apparently there were four that decided against the death penalty -- they were very clear, they could have done it. They just weren't going to do it to Jodi based on the defense they heard.
So, once again, also the other thing that's really interesting is they were really clear with the wishes of the family. The family were impassioned in their desire for the death penalty. But, once again, our justice system has to intercede between the passions of the people who want retribution and the actual punishment. That's our system functioning. So I'm bewildered by people saying it didn't work. It worked exactly the way it was supposed to. It's cumbersome. It's expensive. I don't like that. But it's working the way it's designed to work. BANFIELD: But that's the exact reason that we have mitigators in this particular case, not just aggravators. We have the mitigators. They clearly looked at the mitigators.
Dr. Drew, it's good to talk to you, and thank you for your insight, especially after being able to interview them and then provide the insight that you have. Dr. Drew reporting for us live.
BANFIELD: A young actress taking her side of a very bizarre story and unleashing it on Twitter, lashing out at anyone in her path. The latest on a young woman named Amanda Bynes and her bizarre behavior since yet another arrest last week.
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