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A New Side of Rachel Jeantel; Analyzing the Verdict in the George Zimmerman Trial; Report: Chinese Woman Dies Using iPhone

Aired July 16, 2013 - 09:30   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Also, just minutes from now, the Reverend Al Sharpton will step in front of the U.S. Justice Department building and call for action in support of Trayvon Martin. Today's event comes as Sharpton's group, the National Action Network, is planning a series of "Justice for Trayvon" rallies and prayer vigils this Saturday. Some 100 cities expected to host those rallies.

Now to get a check on your money. Wall Street poised for a mixed open this morning. We've got some positive earnings reports, but investors are still waiting to hear from Fed chief Ben Bernanke when he speaks to Congress tomorrow. Alison Kosik is in New York. Has the bell rung?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: The bell has rung, it has. I'm not at the New York stock exchange, so I had to look at the time to check. Looks like stocks are pretty much flat at the open here. Kind of like deja vu, all over again. The Dow and the S&P 500, they closed at record highs once again yesterday, makes it the 26th time this year the Dow has done that.

Today could be one of those mixed sessions, though. Stocks, as I said, are hovering at the flat line. May be caution coming into play today as investors anxiously await what's going to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow, Fed chief Ben Bernanke heads to Capitol Hill. He will be giving his semiannual congressional testimony. Wall Street has been on the edge of their seat about Bernanke lately, and what he may say about stimulus. But even if stocks make teeny tiny gains, it could mean record clsoe.

Meantime, you mentioned earning. Earnings came in from big investment banks. One of them, Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs beat estimates on both profit and sales, joining JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup that did the same. We are watching shares of Goldman Sachs right now, little bit flat. Carol?

COSTELLO: All right. Alison Kosik live in New York this morning.

Just ahead in the NEWSROOM, she was the star witness for the prosecution in the Zimmerman trial and Rachel Jeantel was ripped apart on the stand. Now she talks about that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Earlier this hour we heard part of CNN's exclusive interview with a juror in the George Zimmerman case. She's the first person from that panel to come forward. Now we want to hear from the prosecution's star witness in another CNN exclusive. Rachel Jeantel was on the phone with Trayvon Martin in the moments before that deadly fight. She says she believes racism drove George Zimmerman to profile and ultimately kill her teenage friend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PIERS MORGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And be honest with me, Rachel, do you think that was racially motivated or more a case of somebody he thought was a young thug, black or white?

RACHEL JEANTEL, FRIEND OF TRAYVON MARTIN: It was racial. Let's be honest, racial. If he was -- if Trayvon was white and had a hoodie on, would that happen? Because that was around 7:00 or something. That's around that people walk their dogs, people still outside, all that.

MORGAN: The jury, the juror tonight made it clear the jury never really discussed race as being a motivating factor here.

JEANTEL: Remind you, they are white, well one Hispanic.

MORGAN: Do you think they understood the world that you and Trayvon come from?

JEANTEL: No.

MORGAN: Don West gave you a very hard time, the defense attorney.

JEANTEL: Don West.

MORGAN: What is your -- what is your view of him?

JEANTEL: Like I have to say, he's lucky I'm a Christian.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: In Orlando we have Mark Nejame, a criminal defense attorney and CNN legal analyst and here in Atlanta, Jason Johnson, an HLN contributor and political science professor at Hiram College. Let me ask -- let me startm ratherm by asking both of you to watch this next clip, then we'll discuss it on the other side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEANTEL: It's just shock, like, wow. You can't believe, like, you can't believe what just happened. You were just on the phone with the person and you sound normal and then a situation happened, and then I'm finding out two days later he dead. And I have to be -- by a friend telling me, oh, do you know he died at 7:17, and I had to look at my phone, my phone say 7:16. And people got the nerve to tell me, oh, why didn't I come to that funeral? I didn't put Trayvon at that funeral. I didn't put Trayvon in that casket.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COSTELLO: So, what strikes me about this, why didn't we see that Rachel Jeantel on the stand, Jason?

JASON JOHNSON, HLN CONTRIBUTOR: Because the prosecution did a terrible job. I think we can all agree that Rachel Jeantel probably was more hostile and aggressive and rude than she needed to be on the stand, but this woman, obviously, had a story to tell and we saw in this interview last night, she is much more thoughtful, much more eloquent, and much more well spoken than anything that the prosecution managed to bring out of her. It's an absolute failure on their behalf that we didn't see this Rachel Jeantel and hear her talk about this Trayvon Martin when they were in the trial and when it actually mattered.

COSTELLO: Mark, aren't lawyers supposed to prepare witnesses to take the stand?

We're having audio problems with Mark. We're going to get that fixed, but I'll pose that question to you, Jason. I actually talked with Rachel Jeantel's attorney, who said she wasn't really prepared in any way.

JOHNSON: Yes, and that's -- this speaks to the cynicism that many people have expressed about this entire legal system -- from the failure of the police to do an adequate job, to the sort of, you know, hackneyed problems that we saw in the prosecution, their inability to bring their story out of witnesses.

How could you put a 19 year old who has speaking difficulties on the stand to be interviewed by an excellent defense attorney and you didn't tell her how she needs to communicate, how she needs to behave? It's an inexcusable failure and I think the Martin family should be disgusted they were represented so poorly, at least in this particular area.

COSTELLO: Do we have Mark? We still don't have Mark -- okay, I want to get the other side from Mark. We're going to try to get his microphone open soon, but Jason, we heard from juror number 37, she said she didn't find Rachel Jeantel's testimony credible. She felt sorry for her.

JOHNSON: Right, because she's condescending and snide and probably had some very strong preconceived notions. I thought it was fascinating to listen to her, not just that she talked about George, the woman came half a step away from saying "those people." People know how you're supposed to speak in public, but it was very clear the kinds of jurors she identified were the kinds of jurors who were from her background, speaking to a guy who was in the Vietnam War probably reminded her of uncles and grandfathers. John Good, I'm not saying John Good wasn't a credible witness, but she identified with the people she recognized from her life, and people like Rachel Jeantel she probably thinks are sad basket cases from the hood and, therefore, she wasn't going to listen to her.

COSTELLO: Well, in defense of this juror, Rachel Jeantel, I mean, she didn't do a good job. I'm just going to play this clip to remind our viewers what Rachel Jeantel was like on the stand. Let's listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MORGAN: What is your view of George Zimmerman?

JEANTEL: Weak. Scary. High. Friend of (ph) his father.

MORGAN: Why do you say that?

JEANTEL: If you're a real man, you would have stand on that stage and tell what happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. Actually, she was describing how she felt about George Zimmerman in that clip, Jason, I want you to pause, I want to get Mark Nejame's microphone fixed, so we're going to take a break. We'll come back with much more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Okay, the technical gremlins have left the studio in Orlando. We have Mark back, thankfully. Mark, I'll ask you the question, if jurors had seen the Rachel Jeantel that was on Piers Morgan last night, instead of the Rachel Jeantel at trial, could it have made a difference?

MARK NEJAME, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Could have made a difference. This is just another failure on behalf of the state to properly represent Trayvon Martin. That woman last night was a sweet, funny, engaging person. That's anything but what people saw when she took the stand, and if that's her true personality, which it surely seems to be, then the state should have sat down with her and explained what court was about, because it's a very intimidating process.

She'd never been to court before. She'd never experienced anything like this, let alone any case, let alone this case. So for people to criticize her without understanding that the state did not sit down with her and explain to her or at least get her ready for her testimony, doesn't mean you change your testimony, you just take the pain away from it. You take the surprise away from it. And the challenge with that is that the jurors only see a snapshot of people and that's when they are on the stand. So that's all the jurors saw.

And culturally, we know that they did not relate to her any more than she related to the jurors. And people shouldn't be pointing fingers because that's just prejudice across the board. People need to understand that we do have a cultural divide, and in fact what the jurors saw when she appeared on the stand was because of her -- in my opinion her lack of preparedness by the state attorney who prosecuted this case.

That woman last night if she had been on the stand and the juror would have seen that, they would have come away with a completely different impression, in my opinion, about who Trayvon Martin really was.

COSTELLO: In the entire trial, Mark, did we ever get a sense of who Trayvon Martin was?

NEJAME: Not according to what we hear from his parents, not according to what we hear from Ms. Jeantel. Now, the state opted not to put any other family members on. We didn't see any of his friends being put on. We didn't -- we didn't get a picture of Trayvon Martin, at least from the state perspective.

You know, let people ask the state, why did they not put on other people who could give a better picture, a better composite of who Trayvon Martin was? You can't fault the defense for having done that for George Zimmerman. That's their job. The question people need to ask is why did the state not do that?

COSTELLO: Well Jason so can you blame the jury for coming to its conclusion?

JOHNSON: Well, I don't think blame is necessarily the word. I think the bigger issue here is just how the presentation did not match the seriousness of the crime and how the presentation paled in comparison to what the defense did.

And I'll add this also and I think this is very telling, if we had seen that Rachel Jeantel from Piers Morgan's interview last night and then she had been transformed into the Rachel Jeantel we saw last week because of Don West's hostile cross examination, it probably would have been more effective. Because the jurors will said oh my gosh this nice kid she's being torn apart by this guy. So you know again, massive failures, I don't know that it would have changed the results, because you still have three jurors who initially wanted manslaughter to convict on something but it certainly didn't help.

COSTELLO: Yes go ahead, go ahead, Mark.

(CROSSTALK)

NEJAME: If I could -- if I could -- yes if I could add, look, I think this jury was very pensive and very deliberative. 16 hours they spent going through the evidence. And when you listen to B37's interview last night, she knew every fact of that case chapter and verse. I didn't hear one factual mistake that she stated that came out during the course of that trial, so you can't fault a jury for making a decision upon the presentation made by the state or by the other, by the lawyers.

That's their job is to take the evidence in front of them. They don't have the benefit of Twitter and Facebook and media when they are trying that case. They can only make a determination based on the evidence presented to them. And based on the evidence presented to them, there was reasonable doubt, because the rest of it was not in there for whatever reason. It wasn't there.

So to fault them for being deliberative and disagreeing with their opinion is not -- not the direction that the public who disagree with the verdict need to go.

The questions need to be posed to the prosecutor. Why do you go with second-degree murder when almost everybody knew that was a failed strategy? Why did you just not stick with manslaughter? Why did you not make the jurors more empathetic to Trayvon Martin, the young man who was dead?

Those are the questions that need to be posed, and do not, in my opinion, fault a juror for making a decision on the evidence presented. That infects and contaminates the entire jury system. This was not a quick jury. They -- you know a lot of people thought they were going to come back Friday night. They stayed the weekend.

COSTELLO: Ok -- they did, they did. And you know and that juror got very emotional about the decision that they came to. So I've got to end it there. We're going to have much more coming up, Jason Johnson, Mark Nejame, you'll be back.

But thanks for joining us at this moment.

We've been hearing from one of those jurors in the case. Juror B37 speaking exclusively to Anderson Cooper, you could hear more from her including what happened during deliberations tonight on AC360.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Fifty-two minutes past the hour, time to check our "Top Stories."

The right-hand man to former mobster James "Whitey" Bulger will take the stand this week. Bulger's former partner known as Stephen the "Rifleman" Flemmi will come face to face with Bulger for the first time since the early 1990s.

Jurors squirmed yesterday after the medical examiner detailed the gruesome wounds of 19 of Bulger's victims, most of whom were shot repeatedly in the head or the neck.

A woman in China is now safe and sound after getting stuck in a wall for seven hours. The woman was taking a shortcut on the way home when she got stuck in the wall. She was rescued by firefighters after neighbors complained they heard crying in between the walls of that alley on Saturday night. As you can see, she's out, and she's ok this morning.

An Illinois traffic stop has led to the arrest of a man for two double homicides over five years. Police were planning to arrest Anthony Joseph Garcia today but say he quote, "became mobile", prompting them to take immediate action. All of the victims were connected to Garcia's residency in the pathology Department at Creighton University.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: We've all done it used our Smartphone while it's plugged in and charging. But a Chinese news agency says a woman has died doing just that. The agency reports the woman was electrocuted after she answered her iPhone 5 while it was plugged into the charger.

Of course, we're asking this morning is that really possible? We hope not. Although we're sorry this woman died.

CNN money technology correspondent Laurie Segall has been following the story. So Laurie what happened?

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN MONEY TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Unbelievable to think that this kind of thing could happen. From just answering your phone, apparently she had an iPhone 5, she had an iPhone 5 charger. You know when and -- and she was electrocuted. This is an ongoing investigation.

We actually reached out to Apple. They're taking this seriously. Let me read what you they said in a statement. They said "We're deeply saddened to learn of this tragic incident and offer our condolences to the Ma family."

They also said they're going to fully investigate and cooperate with authorities in this matter. Obviously, Carol, not very comforting when you think of how many of us have iPhone 5s, how many of us talk on our phones when they're plugged in. Now that being said you know this isn't the first time we've heard of something like this happening. Batteries have exploded in the past.

So you know Chuck Schumer recently said we need to actually look at cell phone safety because it's becoming a huge issue as these phones are getting a little smarter and have more processing power -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Wow. Laurie Segall, thanks so much.

SEGALL: Thanks Carol.

COSTELLO: NEWSROOM continues after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)