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Piers Morgan Interview with Rachel Jeantel; Protests Over Zimmerman Verdict Grow; Anderson Cooper Interviews Juror B-37

Aired July 16, 2013 - 11:00   ET

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

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Hello everyone. I'm Michaela Periera. I'm in for Ashleigh Banfield this week.

A couple of quick headlines to get you started this hour. First, the search of a North Korean cargo ship suspected of carrying drugs turned up something far more alarming. Panamanian officials siezed the ship that you see here as it approached the Panama Canal from Cuba, discovered hidden behind -- get this -- a large container of brown sugar, guess what they found?

Undeclared weapons, including apparent missile parts. We're going to have more details for you coming up later in the program.

One of Mexico's most feared drug lords is in custody. This man, Mexican authorities captured him, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, early Monday in a pickup truck near the U.S. border.

He was known as "Z-40," Trevino, head of the ultraviolent Mexican drug gang called Los Zetas.

And in Cairo, a night of deadly clashes between police and supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy. The health ministry reports at least seven people were killed, some 261 injured.

The Muslim Brotherhood blamed police, saying they fired on Morsy supporters during Ramadan prayers.

Against this backdrop, Egypt's interim government is taking shape. The new cabinet will be sworn in today.

To Moscow, fugitive Edward Snowden might be running out of options. CNN has learned that Snowden applied to Russia for temporary asylum while he awaits safe passage to Latin America.

Snowden faces espionage charges in the U.S. for disclosing a secret domestic spying program by the national security agency.

All right, now to the aftermath of the George Zimmerman not guilty verdict, later this hour, we're going to hear some of Anderson Cooper's conversation with juror B37. She's the only one to speak out about this case so far.

Our Piers Morgan, though, had a very special interview with this young lady, Rachel Jeantel. She was on the phone with Trayvon Martin that fateful night, and she took the stand at the beginning of the trial. Piers joins us live now in studio, and I've got to tell you, Piers, that was amazing and compelling. I can't imagine it was easy to get her to do that interview in the first place.

PIERS MORGAN, HOST, "PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT": When she arrived at the studio, she was very tense, very nervous, very like the Rachel Jeantel that we saw on the stand, and giving an impression she didn't really want to be doing this again.

But I sat her down in my office. We had a long conversation, maybe 20 minutes. And I said to her, look, you've seen all the social media reaction to your appearance. A lot of people think you're stupid.

I looked her straight in the eye. I said ...

PEREIRA: How did she react to that?

MORGAN: She reacted very well. She said I know, they do.

I said, so this is your chance to prove that you're not and to prove that you're actually a smart young woman who became part of this huge story without any willingness to do so or wanting to be so.

And I said this is your chance to really tell us the reality of what Trayvon Martin is really like, your feelings about this case, about George Zimmerman.

And I thought it was pretty compelling stuff that she came out with.

PEREIRA: None of us could tear our eyes -- we talked about it today with some of our colleagues and we couldn't tear our eyes away from it. It was a very compelling interview.

We're going to play a fair amount of that conversation you had today, starting with Rachel on the jury, the generation gap, the "N"-word.

And look, we're going to talk about a conversation that a lot of you are going to find offensive. It's a conversation that is very difficult to even have when we talk about race, and this language used to describe some of these words.

We want you to take a listen to this, and we're going to have some people join us on the back end.

Let's play a good chunk of this conversation from Piers Morgan's one- on-one with Rachel Jeantel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL JEANTEL, FRIEND OF TRAYVON MARTIN: Nigga.

MORGAN: Why?

JEANTEL: People -- the whole world say it's a racist word. Mind you, around 2000s, that was not -- they changed it around I think.

It starts spelling N-I-G-G-A. Nigga ...

MORGAN: What does that mean to you, that way of spelling it? What does that word mean to you?

JEANTEL: That means a male.

MORGAN: A black male?

JEANTEL: No, any kind of male.

MORGAN: Black or white?

JEANTEL: Any kind. Chinese could say nigga. That's my Chino nigga. They could say that.

MORGAN: And rappers and everything use it in the music and that's ...

JEANTEL: They use it.

MORGAN: ... what they mean.

JEANTEL: Yes.

But nigger is not about black people because they're not going to have it like that because that's a racist word.

MORGAN: They're two different words and they have different meaning in your community.

JEANTEL: No. In a generation, 2000s.

MORGAN: To young people, you mean?

JEANTEL: Not young people. Old people use that, too.

Well, the jury, they see their side. No offense to the jury, they old. That's old-school people. We in a new school, our generation, my generation.

MORGAN: Let's talk about creepy-ass cracker. People have said that that is a phrase used by black people, cracker, to describe a white person. Is that true?

JEANTEL: No. Like I said ...

MORGAN: How do you spell it, first of all?

JEANTEL: Cracka. Well, you could ...

MORGAN: There's no E-R, right?

JEANTEL: No. It's an A at the end.

MORGAN: C-R-A-C-K-A.

JEANTEL: Yeah. And that's a person who act like they're a police, who -- like security guard who acting like -- that's why I said to them, Trayvon said "creepy-ass cracka."

MORGAN: It means he thought it was a policeman or security guard.

JEANTEL: Acting like a policeman, and then he keep telling me that the man still watching him.

So if it was a security guard or a policeman, they would come up to Trayvon and say, do you have -- do you need a problem? Do you have a problem? Do you need help? You know? Like normal people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you feel that your testimony strongly impacted the case at all?

JEANTEL: Yeah.

MORGAN: In a negative way?

JEANTEL: No. It might have said why her education or why she kept it too honest.

But people -- too honest? You can't be too honest. You can't say "cracka," "nigga," all this, and the jury's so shocked, what I said.

And they're acting like the generation we got now don't say that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: All right, let's talk generational. Let's talk about this tough conversation that we're going to have, a frank discussion.

Piers Morgan with me here in the studio. Also joining me, Joe Hicks, vice president of Community Advocates, Inc. in Los Angeles, and Khary Lazarre-White, attorney and co-founder and executive director of the Brotherhood-SisterSol a leading advocacy organization.

Piers, I'm curious to hear from you what the audience's reaction to this generational definition of what are considered to be really offensive terms ...

MORGAN: I think you saw in that ...

PEREIRA: Yeah.

MORGAN: You could see on some of the clips that the older people in the audience were kind of not reacting. The younger ones were racing to applaud.

This was a very generational issue, I think, and I really felt, looking at Rachel last night, if that Rachel Jeantel had given evidence in that way, what difference could that have made.

Now, as she said, you know, she believes there was a complete disconnect between this predominantly white female jury and the world that she and Trayvon Martin come from.

I suspect there's also a disconnect from Rachel's world to the world of those jurors.

So there's a double disconnect here, and that must have played a part I think in the deliberations and this verdict.

PEREIRA: Joe, I want you to sound off on that, too. What is your reaction? I hope you were able to hear that sound from Rachel as well.

JOE HICKS, VICE PRESIDENT, COMMUNITY ADVOCATES, INC.: I was, but see, I don't -- obviously, there is a generational issue going on here.

But what really happened was that they didn't find her credible. They didn't find her especially truthful, even though she seemed to think that she was being brutally honest and maybe she was.

The point is both her demeanor on the stand as well as some contradictions in things that she'd said made her come across as not credible to the jurors and, frankly, to a lot of people.

It was interesting to understand she's got an issue that causes her to speak partially the way she does, and I think she came across -- Piers was able to make -- find a way to make her much more sympathetic individual.

But the point is the court reporter was having difficulty understanding her and kept interrupting to say would you say that again.

So there are ...

PEREIRA: We're going to talk ...

HICKS: ... a number of issues that were problematic.

PEREIRA: We're going to talk more, we're going to dig in a little deeper on that coming up in a few moments here.

I want to bring Khary into this conversation. He with talked a little about this yesterday. I want to repeat it.

Is this a discussion about white or Hispanic on black crime or is this about the justice system?

KHARY LAZARRE-WHITE, ATTORNEY: Well, I think this is definitely about the justice system. It's about issues of race. It's about issues of gun control.

I think that the comments yesterday from Rachel really illustrate that there are these two foundational issues that America still has not come to terms with, and one is that this country was founded on issues having to do with race and the enslavement of black people and that that continues to have a racial legacy today.

The second is that it's a country founded on the possession of guns, on a revolt that still today we haven't dealt with what gun control looks like in this present day. And so these two foundational issues of gun control and what that means and the issue of race, which clearly runs through this case, as we saw in the comments of Rachel last night, are two issues we have not come to terms with. And that's why we continue to revisit these issues.

I don't think it's a generational issue when we talk about the words that Rachel mentioned yesterday. It's an educational issue because these words have been around for hundreds of years.

This is not a new phenomenon. It's just that a any generation has embraced it in a way that previous generations didn't. This has been around for a long time.

And it's about education in America and coming to terms with those foundational issues.

PEREIRA: We have seen mostly non-violent protests so far. We've seen some incidences arising in various areas across the country, windows being broken, et cetera.

In fact, Joe, we've seen that in L.A. There have been pretty loud demonstrations outside the CNN bureau in Leimert Park.

There is concern by some of the voices that violence and protests like this just fuel these kinds of stereotypes.

HICKS: Well, in fact, I am here in Los Angeles, and I drove past part of this protest at an earlier stage. Obviously, rampant hooliganism going on here.

And the problem is if you look at -- we're seeing now on the screen pictures of Trayvon on banners and that sort of thing. But you can find placards with almost every conceivable issue in the world.

And I think we heard it from your other guest in many ways, that this case, the vindication of George Zimmerman has become a Rorschach test for people then layering in all sorts of issues.

This was fundamentally a murder trial, but you have people now talking about gun control, issues of how this country was founded, all kinds of things are being layered in because there are certain folks around the movement in this country that want to find through this trial a way to talk about their issues, having ...

PEREIRA: That's a good point.

MORGAN: Hang on. Let me jump in there. OK. Let me jump in there because

I don't think gun control has been forced into this debate. This is a reality situation.

George Zimmerman was carrying a concealed weapon, marching around like some kind of Charles Bronson vigilante who comes across a boy who appears to be walking home to his family and an altercation is created.

Now, without that gun, I don't believe George Zimmerman would have felt emboldened enough behave in the way he did. He probably wouldn't have gotten out of his car. So let's not pretend the gun is not an integral part of this story.

PEREIRA: Sure, sure, sure.

MORGAN: The gun is a crucial part of this story.

HICKS: If I could just jump in here, very, very quickly.

PEREIRA: Actually, Joe Hicks, we are going to end it for now. We are going to have more of this conversation coming up.

Let me thank Joe Hicks and Khary Lazarre-White for their contributions and their voices.

We're going to take a short break. Piers is going to stay with me and I hope you will, too.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: All right. Welcome back. Earlier we heard from Trayvon Martin's friend Rachel Jeantel about some of the colorful language she used on the stand during the Zimmerman trial. It's all part of her exclusive interview with Piers Morgan. He's here helping take us through it.

It's really interesting that you were able to talk to her in a way that the attorneys were not able to.

MORGAN: Well, it's interesting to me. I think that the defense, Don West in particular, went after her in a very aggressive manner and she reacted in a very defensive manner to that, and that created the dynamic we saw in court. Because I wasn't so hostile towards her, I was able to draw out perhaps a much more realistic picture of what Rachel Jeantel's like.

PEREIRA: Well, we want to play a little more sound now of Rachel talking about the stress of the trial, reaction to the testimony and Zimmerman's attorneys. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

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

JEANTEL: Don West.

MORGAN: What is your --

(LAUGHTER)

What is your view of him? JEANTEL: I'm going to have to say, he lucky I'm a Christian.

(LAUGHTER)

MORGAN: I want to clear up one thing before we come up to Don West. A lot of people have mocked you or they called you all sorts of things, you know that, on Twitter. I came to your defense at one stage. I found it so disgusting. They called you stupid. They were very racist to you, the people I saw on Twitter. A lot of people were very racist to you. But they also mocked you for the way that you spoke.

JEANTEL: OK.

MORGAN: Now explain to me the background to that.

JEANTEL: The way I speak? People -- a lot of people have the same issue I have right now. OK, how I can say this? I have this situation since kindergarten to figure out how to speak. I have an underbite. For me --

MORGAN: Which is a dental condition for your teeth?

JEANTEL: No, a bone.

MORGAN: A bone.

JEANTEL: They got to push back. And --

MORGAN: You had to have surgery for it?

JEANTEL: Yes, I had to have surgery to push it back, and right now I don't want to do it, because it will take a year to heal. And a lot of people have that situation. Words I can say, it can't come out right. But --

MORGAN: Have you been bullied for that before?

JEANTEL: Look at me, no. No. (LAUGHTER)

MORGAN: So you seem to me a very different character tonight to the one we saw in court. You looked like you didn't want to be there. Is that how you felt?

JEANTEL: It's not that I didn't want to be there, it's a lot of stress. I was dealing with a lot of stress for 16 months, I think?

MORGAN: And you were grieving a friend.

JEANTEL: I was grieving. And I had to deal with around February, my birthday, his birthday. My mother's birthday. There's a lot of birthdays up in there. So death creep me out. I don't -- I don't do death at all. I even told my parents I'm not going to their funeral. I'm not doing none of that; I don't like funerals.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: Piers, once she got started, she seemed eager to clear the air.

MORGAN: Very much so.

PEREIRA: To be seen, to be heard.

MORGAN: Yes, she was angry. She was upset. You've got to remember, she lost one of her best friends. She told me that when the phone records came back for the week before Trayvon died, she couldn't believe how often they'd been speaking. It was almost a constant dialogue between her and Trayvon.

She was also brutally honest about certain things which we were led to believe were going to be very contentious like Trayvon's drug use. She was straight off the top, look, he used to take weed. A lot of kids -- I don't, she said, but a lot of kids in my group do.

PEREIRA: Twice a week.

MORGAN: Twice a week he'd take a bit of weed. Well, guess what, everyone? Weed is now legally acceptable in a number of American states, recreationally and medicinally, and will probably become more so. This is not a huge scandal.

She also made the clear point that Trayvon, when he took cannabis, was never aggressive. In fact, all he ever was was a bit hungry occasionally, hence probably the trip to buy some Skittles. But I found that kind of searing honesty, directly confronting that kind of thing, very authentic. You know, I found her authentic when she took the stand. But I could see she was very defensive about the way Don West questioned her.

But last night we saw a warmer side to her. I thought she was very honest and very credible. And that's the one thing the juror that talked to Anderson said she didn't find her.

PEREIRA: I actually want to play that sound because you felt compelled to come to her defense. She has been criticized as being a lot of different things and I want you to hear what this woman, the very first juror that we've heard from, Anderson Cooper had a chance to sit down with her, Juror B-37. Let's listen to what she said about Rachel Jeantel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUROR B-37, JUROR IN GEORGE ZIMMERMAN CASE: She just didn't want to be there, and she was embarrassed by being there because -- because of her education and her communication skills, that she just wasn't a good witness.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MORGAN: I mean, look. I find that incredibly patronizing. I actually thought the juror gave a very good interview to Anderson, was very articulate and very thoughtful and I got a real understanding of what that jury had gone through and their process in their heads. And I have a great deal of respect for any jury, by the way. It's a very difficult job. I have a problem with the law that they had to meet the criteria for but not the jury and their deliberations.

But when she talks about Rachel Jeantel being uneducated, this and that, it's almost like she's putting her hand on her head and saying, "There, there, little girl."

Rachel Jeantel is not uneducated. She's a smart cookie. What she didn't like was the environment that Don West created in that courtroom of hostility. That's a different thing.

PEREIRA: More behind the scenes with her. Did you get a sense of things that she still wanted to say, that she would have liked to go back and redo?

MORGAN: I think she regretted the fact, and this may have come out more from part of the interview and also when I spoke to her, that George Zimmerman had a number of people who appeared in court who gave great character witness for him. And that clearly impacted on the jury.

You could hear that juror last night talking about George this, George that. She felt an engagement with him on a human level, which I don't think any of them felt with Trayvon Martin because the -- again, I blame the prosecution for this. I blame them for many things. You know, overcharging in the first place. Had they gone for manslaughter, they may have gotten a conviction. I think the way that they built up a picture of Trayvon was unsuccessful.

Rachel Jeantel told us more about Trayvon Martin last night in 25 minutes than I heard in the entire trial. And you got a picture not of an aggressive thug but of a rather sweet, quite quiet young teenager going about his business. Never been in much trouble. Took a little bit of weed. Well, you know, a lot of teenagers do that. A lot of adults do that. Somebody who was very unlikely to be the instigator of a violent act that could lead to the killing of George Zimmerman. And I thought that was really important and critical testimony that unfortunately she gave outside the courtroom.

PEREIRA: After the trial had finished.

I want to thank you for coming and talking about it with us here and for such a great interview with her and giving her a chance to be heard. I think that's something that we all desire in life, isn't it?

MORGAN: I'm pleased she had that chance because it's a very different Rachel Jeantel now in the public eye to the one we thought from that court appearance.

PEREIRA: Certainly. Piers Morgan, what a delight to have you here. Our first meeting. The Commonwealth together.

MORGAN: I'm very excited to meet you.

PEREIRA: It's very exciting. You should come on NEW DAY.

MORGAN: And you're even more glamorous in the flesh. PEREIRA: My goodness. Such flattery. It will get you everywhere. Be sure to catch another very special Piers Morgan tonight, "PIERS MORGAN LIVE," of course. He'll be talking with jurors from the O.J. Simpson trial to get their take on the Zimmerman verdict. That's tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.

Come back anytime.

MORGAN: I'm yours.

PEREIRA: You heard it here. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Well, the anger over the verdict at times seems to be growing in the form of protests, some of them violent. In Houston, hundreds of people showed up for a Justice for Trayvon rally, actually shutting down the freeway -- or the highway, rather. In Los Angeles, police are getting strict, saying that anyone blocking streets without a permit could go to jail. Meanwhile, in Atlanta, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the CNN center. So far the demonstrations in that city have been pretty peaceful.

Celebrities also chiming in. We want to show you some video on YouYube shot at a Stevie Wonder concert in Quebec, Canada. He told the audience he wouldn't be performing in Florida until the state's Stand Your Ground laws are repealed.

An incredible look into what happened inside that deliberation room as the jury of six women decided George Zimmerman's fate. One of those jurors, who identified herself only as Juror B-37, spoke exclusively to our CNN's "ANDERSON COOPER 360" last night. She's the first juror to speak publicly about the case. And from the start of deliberations, she believed that Zimmerman was not guilty.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: George Zimmerman obviously did not testify, but his testimony essentially was brought into the trial through those videotapes, a number of videotapes. He walked police through a re-enactment of what he said happened. How important were those videotapes to you?

JUROR B-37: I don't really know, because I mean, watching the tapes, there's always something in the back saying, is it right? Is it consistent? But with all the evidence of the phone calls, and all the witnesses that he saw, I think George was pretty consistent and told the truth, basically. I'm sure there were some fabrications, enhancements, but I think pretty much it happened the way George said it happened.

COOPER: When George Zimmerman said that Trayvon Marten reached for his gun, there was no DNA evidence. The defense said, well, had testimony in, well, it could have gotten washed off in the rain or the like. Do you believe that Trayvon Martin reached for George Zimmerman's gun?

JUROR B-37: I think he might have. I think George probably thought that he did, because George was the one who knew that George was carrying a gun. And he was aware of that.

COOPER: You can't say for sure whether or not Trayvon Martin knew that George Zimmerman was carrying a gun?

JUROR B-37: No.

COOPER: So you can't say for sure whether or not Trayvon Martin reached for that gun?

JUROR B-37: Right. But that doesn't make it right. I mean, it doesn't make it -- there's not a right or a wrong. Even if he did reach for the gun, it doesn't make any difference.

COOPER: How so?

JUROR B-37: Well, because George had a right to protect himself at that point.

COOPER: So you believe that George Zimmerman really felt his life was in danger?

JUROR B-37: I do. I really do.

COOPER: Do you think Trayvon Martin threw the first punch?

JUROR B-37: I think he did.

COOPER: What makes you think that?

JUROR B-37: Because of the evidence of on the T, on the sidewalk, where George says he was punched, there was evidence of his flashlight and keys there, and then a little bit further down, there was a flashlight that he was carrying. And I think that's where Trayvon hit him.

COOPER: So you think, based on the testimony you heard, you believe that Trayvon Martin was the aggressor?

JUROR B-37: I think the roles changed. I think, I think George got in a little bit too deep, which he shouldn't have been there. But Trayvon decided that he wasn't going to let him scare him and get the one- over, up on him, or something. And I think Trayvon got mad and attacked him.

COOPER: Do you feel like you know for sure what happened in the altercation? And did the other jurors feel for sure that they knew what happened?