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Holder Attacks Sentencing Guidelines; Judge Shuts Down "Stop And Frisk"; "Whitey" Bulger Found Guilty; Kidnapping Victim's Dad To Speak; Riders Hailed For Helping To Save Girl

Aired August 12, 2013 - 14:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Evan Perez. Evan, welcome to CNN, our new justice correspondent. Talk me through with this plan. How does this work?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, it's basically -- Holder is basically announcing a plan in which they're going to use prosecutorial discretion, essentially. In the case of someone who is, for example, being charged with trafficking, say, five kilograms of cocaine, they might not mention that in the charging documents. Instead in that way they can avoid, for example, a ten-year minimum, which is what you would have for five kilos.

So now there are some conditions on all this. For example, you have to be nonviolent. You can't have been dealing to children, for instance. You can't have been selling drugs to children and there can't be any guns involved. So there are -- there are some conditions. I think the Justice Department feels that if you do this, then fewer people will be heading to federal prison. They'll be going to drug court, for instance or perhaps getting ankle bracelets, GPS ankle bracelets. That is a better way and a cheaper way to deal with this.

BALDWIN: Which saves us money as we mentioned, $80 billion spent in 2010 alone. Evan, thank you very much. Let me just bring back my legal ladies, Ashleigh Banfield and Sunny Hostin. Ashleigh, you've read through all this. You listened to the attorney general. How big of a deal is this?

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, ANCHOR, CNN'S "LEGAL VIEW": Well, I love that the Attorney General Eric Holder said rethinking, not redoing. Because what that says to me, Brooke, is the legislature has passed the law. Congress passed the laws. They worded the laws. They made these mandatory minimums part of the laws. I'm going around that. Now I'm rethinking. Not redoing.

So what it means basically as Evan just said, he's telling his federal prosecutors across the country, stop writing in the amount of dope that your guy was caught with because it triggers the minimums. It triggers those mandatory minimums. So now basically the only thing that's changing here is behavior, not law.

Prosecutors are going to stop doing certain things when they write up that indictment that could make it really awful for, say, a first-time offender, a nonviolent offender, a person who has no idea what a cartel is, but yet got caught with heroin and maybe kind of more than he or she should have. So it's that option to try to take those people out of our prison system and spend money on them when we are bursting at the seams.

BALDWIN: I guess, Sunny, my other question on the flip side though, if you take away some of these federal guidelines, would this then lead to huge disparities with state laws?

SUNNY HOSTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: You know, I don't think so. I mean, I think that this has been a long time coming, in the making. Federal prosecutors and federal judges, quite frankly, have for many, many years been upset with the federal sentencing guidelines because it really takes your discretion away from you both as a prosecutor and as a judge. Our discretion should be with judges.

So I think you'll find in certain states that they have -- they haven't had sort of these mandatory minimums and crime has -- people have been appropriately sentenced. And so I think, one, this is the right thing to do. Two, certainly it is being done all over our country on the state level. And why shouldn't the federal level catch up?

And I think to Ashleigh's point about sort of this go around of Congress, that's exactly what I see this as. We know that there's been such a log jam in Congress when it comes to changes in legislation. And I think the attorney general as part of his legacy wants to address the federal sentencing guidelines in large part because of his practical experience as the U.S. attorney of D.C. where I was an assistant U.S. attorney.

He knows because of D.C. it's not a state, so you practice federal and local law. You prosecute these low-level offenders and you see the ramifications of women who have been girlfriends of drug dealers being put in jail for ten years because they mailed a package or children would mothers and without fathers systematically being orphaned, almost, by the system.

So I think this is -- decision has been really informed by Eric Holder's real prosecutorial experience at the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office. And this is a good thing for the U.S. attorney's offices.

BALDWIN: From what I can tell with this prosecutorial discretion and not necessarily, I guess, having to go through Congress, it also just this whole idea behind it has bipartisan support. So as this continues to go through, Sunny, I want to ping-pong back to you, actually, just as a New Yorker, big ruling today. We've talked about this on this show. The New York judge ruling that the stop and frisk is unconstitutional. Were you expecting that?

HOSTIN: I was expecting that. No question about it. We know this judge held hearings on this, had some pretty harsh words for the New York Police Department. But what I think we need to make clear, Brooke, when we look at her order, and I've been looking at it. It's about 198 pages.

BALDWIN: Whoa. HOSTIN: She makes it very, very clear that she's not saying that stop and frisk is outlawed in the land or outlawed in New York because the Supreme Court has found that stop and frisk is okay if done constitutionally. What she's saying is the New York Police Department got it wrong. They aren't just stopping people based on reasonable suspicion. They're stopping African-Americans and Latinos at a rate so -- so disparate to others.

And they are stopping them, perhaps, just because they're African- American and they're Latino. So there's a real component of racial profiling, she said, took part in this. And that is a violation of your constitutional rights, your fourth amendment rights, your 14th amendment rights. So this is a sweeping indictment of the New York Police Department's stop and frisk policy --

BANFIELD: There's another side to this.

BALDWIN: Go ahead, Ashleigh. What?

BANFIELD: Yes. I mean, Sunny, my concern very much is for the victims of these crimes. And the NYPD came into this court case saying, we go to areas that are high crime and we fight the crime there. The fact that they overlay with high populations of black and Hispanic people means that just by design, we will be stopping and frisking more people who are in that community.

And what they said was that there are an extraordinary and inordinate number of black and Hispanic victims of these crimes as well. They cited a number of statistics that show the crime rates have dropped. Guns have gotten out on the streets. Yes, nine of the ten who have been stopped have been black or Hispanic.

Those numbers sound horrifying. But when you're in a community that has a higher percentage of black and Hispanic people as well, those numbers should be higher. So Sunny, I don't know what the monitor can do. My fear is that it's a picric victory because what happens if the NYPD just can't function anymore and they have to pull back from those communities that so desperately do need the crime fighting?

HOSTIN: Yes, I think the arguments that were made by the New York Police Department during the hearings were quite disingenuous, quite frankly. Because certainly, you can still, again, conduct stop and frisk based on a reasonable suspicion. You just can't stop anyone because they are African-American or because they are Latino.

And so, yes, if you are policing these areas that are predominantly African-American or predominantly Latino, that doesn't mean that their constitutional rights get kicked out of the door or out of the window. What that means is, if you find there's a reasonable suspicion, this is someone who you see dealing drugs. This is someone you see making a furtive movement towards a gun.

This is someone that you see using all the sort of the indicia that police officers use to properly stop people, you can still do that. You can't do what the New York Police Department did, which is because you're black or Hispanic, I'm going to stop you. BALDWIN: Sunny Hostin, Ashleigh Banfield, stay with me. We will be right back. Quick break. We are back on the Whitey Bulger story. As we've been reporting, he has been found guilty. We are awaiting our correspondent to pop out of that courtroom and give us a little bit of color as far as how this verdict was read, the reactions among victims' family members inside this courtroom, and of course, that of the reputed mob boss himself, Whitey Bulger. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: I want to take you back to Boston and our breaking news. Before I explain -- before we listen to this man, Whitey Bulger was accused in the deaths of 19 people. One of those individuals is a woman by the name of Debbie Davis. So the jury had to go through each of these accusations. They did not find enough evidence to tie Whitey Bulger to Debbie Davis' death. That is this man's sister. Let's dip in.

STEVEN DAVIS, DEBRA DAVIS' BROTHER: He's not going to see the street and I think it's to his benefit.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The other day when we talked to you --

DAVIS: Honestly, I told him if I ever needed him, could I get a discount. And I said he did a good job and he said the first one's on him. So it's -- I congratulated him. He gave up a good fight. It's just like when you see a fighting match. Two guys pouncing on each other. At the end of the fight, they're shaking each other's hands. They're going out for a drink. You know, he put up a good fight. He's a good attorney. I'd hire him in a second.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Whitey Bulger is now a convicted murder. You can finally speak your mind. What would you like to have said despite that you don't have justice today?

DAVIS: Why? You know, just the whys. He had everything anybody in this whole audience would want. He had the money. He had enough money to live on an island somewhere by himself and he chose -- it was greed. He should have stopped when selfish greed set in. I just -- what I would say to him, you know, when is enough, enough, you know what I mean?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you feel about the fact that --

BALDWIN: When is enough, enough, the words of a brother who lost his sister some years ago. Debbie Davis, she was one of the 19 that Whitey Bulger was accused of killing, but as I just reported, the jury found in his sister's case not enough evidence to link Bulger to her death.

Ashleigh Banfield rejoining me and to your point earlier, when it comes to these different murder charges, obviously this is incredibly, incredibly personal for these families.

BANFIELD: It is everything that this brother has been thinking since he became one of that terrible club that never wants to convene, family members of murder victims. You heard him say -- in fact, I'm not sure. It might have been right before the break before we went live. But, Brooke, he said, no, it's not good enough that there was no finding on my sister.

I want to take this to the state level. There's no federal murder statute. You know what? On the state level that's what he wants. He wants justice for his sister's murder. The guy's going away. He's never getting out for his lifetime, but it is not good enough for that personal link to justice.

BALDWIN: Ashleigh, thank you. You see on the right hand side of your screen an incredible crush of media here reporting on this story, the 31 of the 32 guilty counts for James "Whitey" Bulger. Deborah Feyerick has been tweeting, has been inside this federal courthouse there in Boston. She is now out. She is joining us live.

Deb Feyerick, take me back to the very beginning inside this courtroom when the verdict was read.

BALDWIN: Well, I'll tell you, the families were really ready for a verdict. They've been waiting for five days to hear what the verdict found in connection with their loved ones, who they believe Whitey Bulger killed, but in the end this was so mixed. You could just feel the emotion in that courtroom. Eleven people, 11 of the victims, it was found were murdered by Whitey Bulger, that he had some role, whether as a principal, a co-conspirator, whether he aided and abetted.

But there were seven families who have no resolution. The jury simply could not find enough evidence that, in fact, Bulger was involved. The ruling of one person, Steve Davis, as you heard, you were talking just now. Well, there was no finding in his sister's case, which means they simply could not find enough evidence either way that, in fact, he was involved or he wasn't involved.

You had families who were hugging each other. Those who -- who it was found there wasn't enough evidence. They were in a state of disbelief. Several of them cried. Those whose family members were found to have been murdered by Bulger or his gang, well, they also cried. It was just -- it was so mixed. It was unlike anything I've ever seen because they weren't -- he wasn't accused, he wasn't charged with murder.

He was charged with supporting acts of being involved in the murders. So for these families, you know, one woman whose father, she was in this court representing her father, and she said to me, this was so painful. Prosecutors had approached her. They had subpoenaed her. Gotten information from her so that her dad's name could be counted as one of those Bulger was involved in killing and she has no resolution.

She was beside herself. She just didn't know what to do or even how to handle it. Because, she said, I wish they had just left me alone so she wouldn't have to be dragged through this. So Whitey Bulger, he sat there. He didn't say anything. He didn't betray any emotion. His brother was in the courtroom with him. The only sort of real outburst that we heard was one of the -- the daughters, the grown daughters of a murder victim.

She basically repeated something that Bulger had been recorded on audiotape saying. When Whitey Bulger was in prison, he described the murder of her dad, Eddie Connors, going rat a tat tat. That's how he died. She yelled that out as he was leaving, rat a tat tat, Whitey. Right now he has been found guilty on 31 of the 32 counts.

That doesn't give some of these families any peace of mind whatsoever. He may be going to prison for the rest of his life. But for them what it means is that the deaths of their fathers are still cold cases, unsolved -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: And as we talk about Whitey Bulger, the fact that he's 83 years of age, who knows what the rest of his life in prison, how many years that may entail. But, Deb, you've talked about this. This is a man who is small in stature, looms large, I know, in this courtroom. So much of this defense was about his legacy.

FEYERICK: Yes, absolutely. That's really what his lawyers were fighting for. In fact, look, the longer this jury took to return a verdict, really it gave his own defense lawyers a sense that they had done the job that they were hired to do. That was cast doubt on some of the things that he was charged with so that the jury didn't rule unanimously on all of the counts in terms of those acts that we were talking about.

They did on the 31 counts, they did. But, yes, this was something, you know, I think they didn't expect. Look, Whitey Bulger was fighting for his reputation, was fighting for his legacy. Brooke, you remember. You and I were here in 2011 when Whitey Bulger -- we were live, do you remember, when they brought Whitey Bulger into this courtroom. Now this verdict has been rendered against him. He's going to turn 84 in just a couple of weeks. He is going to spend the rest of his life imprisoned, likely in solitary confinement.

You know, he wanted to be portrayed as somebody who didn't kill women. In fact, the jury found enough evidence that, yes, in fact he did kill one of the women. So that was one of the key sticking points in his mind. As I sat there listening to this testimony, you know, you think about John Gotti. Some of these old time mafia dons. Whitey Bulger never reached that status. Whitey Bulger, listening to all that evidence that was presented, was a killer, and was a gangster.

The only way he knew how to make money was to put guns in people's mouth and threaten them, extort them, or otherwise simply kill them. That's what you heard over and over again. Just this sort of small gang that he had and how cruel and how murderous and treacherous they were. There was no hierarchy. They decided somebody wanted to die -- or needed to die, they killed him. That's what they did.

They decided they wanted 200 grand. They made up these bogus arguments over property lines and stuck a gun in a man's mouth and demanded $200,000. Somebody wanted to get out of the business? Fine, give us half a million. You're out. We won't kill you. It was just crazy, listening to all of this over seven weeks. BALDWIN: And he goes away and he hides for 16 years, and they finally found him just in 2011. Incredible when that broke in Santa Monica. Deborah Feyerick, thank you so, so much for your reporting, for your tweets as well. We were living through that and trying to sort of connect the dots as far as what might have been happening in that courtroom.

Deb, thank you very much. The sentencing will be set, the sentencing hearing, I should say, November 13th. And the big question, of course, then will be will he testify. Deborah Feyerick, thank you. Quick break. Back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right, happening soon, the father of Hannah Anderson is expected to speak in just a couple of hours, just about 2-1/2 hours from now. Stay with CNN for that. Hannah's rescue has the nation praising the amber alert system and four horseback riders. Two couples from Idaho used to the nature and backwoods of that state picked up just how their word was unnatural a man and teenage girl seemed when they came across the pair on a mountain trail. It was a chance meeting that led to Hannah Anderson's rescue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNIFER WILLIS, KIDNAPPING VICTIM'S GREAT AUNT: Our baby girl! My God! I'm so glad she's safe!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Me, too.

MARK JOHN, HORSEBACK RIDER WHO SPOTTED KIDNAPPED GIRL: Just didn't fit that country. They -- they was out of place completely. They weren't dressed for the country or the area and then as we rode further on, we encountered the tent that they had set up, which was totally out of place. It was way on top of a mountain. Looked like it was -- would make a real good lightning rod. So we were discussing the fact that they didn't fit there. That something was wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Something didn't fit, he says. Hannah's alleged kidnapper James DiMaggio was shot and killed just on Saturday. The FBI says the kidnapper shot at them at least once. San Diego County authorities say on August 3rd he took Hannah after he murdered her brother and mother. And now we're learning that during the week in her captivity, Hannah did not know she lost half her family. Reportedly, she has been told now.

Let me bring in Stacy Kaiser, psychotherapist, to talk a little bit about what she must be going through here. Stacy, I can't help but think here, her life has absolutely been spared, saved by these, you know, folks on horseback, but at the same time, to wrap your head then around the fact that you've lost your brother and your mother. How do you cope with that?

STACY KAISER, PSYCHOTERAPIST: You know, there are so many layers to what is going on with that young girl right now. Because at the same time that she is relieved that she is safe, she's got to be suffering from what we call survivor's guilt, which is that feeling of why was she spared. What could she have possibly done to hopefully have kept them alive?

All of those things are going through her mind. What's going to have to happen for Hannah is she's going to need long-term counseling because there's going to be nightmares, anxiety, and depression. She's going to have a hard time trusting people. She's also going to have to have really solid support from close family and friends.

You know, she's known him for a really long time. That's part of what makes this challenging for her because she felt close to him. Even though there was that discomfort, he was part of the family. So it makes you suspicious of literally everyone you know.

BALDWIN: We wish her well. We wish her, you know, hope and positivity going forward. Then you have this story, we've learned about this, about this suspect, James DiMaggio. Turns out his father committed a similar crime. So the suspect's own father held a 16- year-old daughter of his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint back in 1989. Our affiliate KFMB actually spoke with the daughter, keeping her identity concealed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't believe that you're born this way, but really, to follow such a path as your father. It was almost deja vu. It was weird.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So -- and then you have James DiMaggio and a 16-year-old. Is this some kind of learned behavior from the father?

KAISER: I think there is a good chance it's learned behavior. You know, as a psychotherapist we look at patterns of behavior all the time. We say that people whose parents were addicts often become addicts. Abusers, people who have been abused often become abusers. It makes total sense to me as unusual it sounds that he would repeat the same pattern as his father.

BALDWIN: Stacy Kaiser, thank you very much for joining me.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, we're going to go back to Boston, more on the Whitey Bulger verdict including his reaction when the verdict was read inside that federal courthouse last hour. Stay with me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)