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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Teen Charged As Adult in Stabbing Death of Reported Bully; Central Park Five Settle for $40 Million; Police Killings Go Unprosecuted

Aired June 20, 2014 - 12:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to LEGAL VIEW. I'm Ashleigh Banfield.

A 14-year-old boy from Bronx in New York City, a boy who should have graduated middle school this week, is instead behind bars today, in grown-up jail. He is charged as an adult with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of another 14-year-old boy named Timothy Crumb.

And if this is just a story of a school yard fight gone bad, that would be tragic enough, but there's another story behind it, a big layer, a young defendant's lawyer saying this may be a tragedy several times over and that bullying might just be at the heart of this.

My colleague Jason Carroll joins me with some of that. We're also joined in Orlando by CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Mark O'Mara who knows a lot about bullying and is working hard to get a bill introduced that's anti-bullying.

First to you, Jason Carroll, what are we hearing from this kid and those around him about what led to this? What are the circumstances?

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Basically, according to his attorney, these two boys used to be friends. Three months ago, they had some sort of a falling out, and that is what his attorney says led to the bullying, bullying, death threats, coming to the boys apartment, urinating on the door of this boy's apartment.

He talked about this when I spoke to him on the phone just about an hour ago. Also held a press conference telling reporters here what happened. Take a listen to that first.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC POULOS, ACCUSED KILLER'S ATTORNEY: Here's a child being threatened, people coming to his door, continually, saying, "We're going to kill you, you're dead," showing the extreme lack of respect by urinating on his door.

And the police response was, "Don't open the door."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Oh, boy.

CARROLL: So it wasn't just the police here, where the attorney says there was a problem. Apparently, three months ago, the child's father tried to get him taken out of the school. It went nowhere.

So the attorney is saying this is something that could have been avoided, had the police acted, had the school acted.

We did reach out to the board of education, have not heard back from them yet, but apparently, this is something that the attorney says is a tragedy that could easily have been avoided.

BANFIELD: Something interesting in this case, because clearly when you see somebody charged with an adult crime, you assume right away they're in an adult facility. It turns out he's actually in juvenile -- I misspoke at the beginning.

Juvenile facility, adult crime, circumstances that are certainly not very adult, although, Mark O'Mara, I'm going to bring you into this. We've seen adults act like this, and I think it's something that they call stalking and harassment.

Does any of that matter when you're talking about trying to establish, I don't know, a diminished capacity for this boy or downward depart on that charge? What are you looking at?

MARK O'MARA, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Stalking, when it happens with adults, is a crime and it's charged.

If you look at what happened to this young boy, Estevez, if that had happened, Ashleigh, to you, if people at CNN had done to you what these boys had done to him, H.R. would be involved, somebody would be fired, something would be done about it.

Yet in the school system, because they don't feel like they have the right tools to address it, it's literally just touched over and ignored. And it got to the point finally with that type of harassment where a crime occurred, a murder, which probably could have been avoided at any costs if the police or the schools could have gotten involved earlier.

BANFIELD: All right, Mark O'Mara, I have to leave it there. Jason Carroll, thank you to both of you. We'll continue to watch the story to see if anything changes. Have a good weekend.

Coming up next, the end of the Central Park Five saga. New York City agrees to a many, many million dollar settlement with five men wrongly convicted of a terrible crime.

And then this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Open the register. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, OK, hold on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move, move. How do you get it open?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my god.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you get it open?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: You are looking at a robbery in progress caught on camera. Wait until you see how this crook brutally and violently attacked this woman who simply went to work at a store that day.

We got the video. It shocked us. We think it might shock you. You're going to hear about it. Guess what? They got him. What's going to happen to him? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: They're known as the Central Park Five, five men who were exonerated in that brutal rape of a female jogger in Central Park back in 1989, and they are settling a massive lawsuit against New York City.

How massive? $40 million massive. That settlement marks the end of a long saga that brought race and corruption to a boil in the city.

At first, the crime symbolized New York's extreme crime problem in the '80s. The five men are either African-American or of Latino descent, and they were convicted in two separate trials back in 1990. DNA evidence proved their innocent in 2004, while also proving that another man, a serial rapist, was the person who committed that awful crime.

Joining me, CNN's Susan Candiotti. I cannot believe it's a 24-year-old conviction, it's a 25-year-old case, and it's been five years since the district attorney in this city discovered something's wrong, we need to fix it. Twelve years, and now they get the money. What happened?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what happened is they said that the confessions were coerced, they were unfair, but finally, because they discovered the DNA of someone who was actually at the scene after he confessed --

BANFIELD: Why did it take so long? What are they saying about this? Are they happy?

CANDIOTTI: They want to wait until the formal announcement is made. There will be a huge news conference. And then we'll get to hear their stories.

BANFIELD: You covered this.

CANDIOTTI: I did. It was a couple of years ago. I had the privilege of meeting one of these gentleman. He is quite a guy, Yusef Salaam. This is a man that we walked over to central park, this is where it happened. He said at the time it was going on, if people had their way, we would be hanging from the trees here in Central Park.

But having gone through the experience of spending years in jail, he said, it has left an indelible scar. It's like a nightmare. I don't know if we have a bit of what he told me a moment ago.

BANFIELD: Do we have that tape?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YUSEF SALAAM, ONE OF CENTRAL PARK FIVE: We've been exonerated and our records have been wiped clean completely. We've never -- we can't get past that. It's not something you can just say, oh, it never really happened. It happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: He spent about seven years in jail. One of his co-defendants spent I think 13. They were supposed to be about $1 million each per year in prison.

CANDIOTTI: That's what they're supposed to be getting. They're not expecting an apology, you know, and but -- but now they have to move on. We also reached out to Ken Burns and his daughter Sarah who made that wonderful documentary called "Central Park Five."

Sara told us in part this is a bit of closure for them. They did issue part of a statement that said they're thrilled to hear about this, but now it's a story of men who are maintaining their dignity in the face of injustice and now it's a story of the collective power to acknowledge and correct our mistakes.

BANFIELD: Boy, I'll say. $40 million worth of mistakes.

CANDIOTTI: It's a start.

BANFIELD: I am always on my high horse about wrongful convictions, especially when it leads to death penalty. This was not a death- penalty case. The jogger survived.

Susan Candiotti reporting for us.

A mentally disturbed man shot dead in the back, James Boyd's death was ruled a homicide and his shooting was captured on videotape, but no one has been charged. He was shot by police officers in Albuquerque. It's not the first time that something like this has happened. We're going to have the details and why the Justice Department is now getting in and taking a closer look.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: I want to begin this segment with a bit a warning for you because we're about to show you a report in which a man is shot and he will die. This is not something that we do lightly here at CNN, but we do feel that this is important to show you the symptoms of what some people are saying is a police force in this country that's trigger happy and that's out of control and that needs to be fixed. It's in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And here is our senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What you're about to see is horrific. This mentally disturbed homeless man, illegally camping in the hills above Albuquerque, New Mexico, will soon fall victim to police bullets.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm telling you. I'm the Department of Defense.

GRIFFIN: The justification for this shooting, according to police, those two small camping knives in his hands. After hours of negotiations and surrounded by heavily armed officers, James Boyd agrees to leave, then suddenly this. A flash grenade. Boyd turns his back, police open fire. Three shots. As he gasps for breath, police sick a dog on his leg. They fire bean bag at his arms. Then handcuff him as you hear the 38-year-old man slowly wheezing. Boyd was slowly dying. The next day, in a hospital, James Boyd became the 26th person in the last four years to die after being shot by Albuquerque Police. The autopsy reveals he was shot in the back. A homicide.

Boyd's is not the only questionable killing here. Twenty-seven-year- old Christopher Torres, a schizophrenic who lived with his parents, was shot and killed in his pajamas in his own backyard when two plainclothes police officers hopped this fence to serve a road rage warrant on him. Officers claimed he was armed and shot him in the back.

GRIFFIN (on camera): They encountered Christopher in the side yard. At most he's holding a broom?

RENETTA TORRES, CHRISTOPHER TORRES' MOTHER: A broom.

STEPHEN TORRES, CHRISTOPHER TORRES' FATHER: He had a broom stick, but he -- he - he laid the broom stick - the broom stick down. And he had no weapons. Was backing up from the officers when they - when they attacked him.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Stephen and Renetta Torres sued the police department on behalf of their son and won. A judge awarded them a $6 million civil judgment.

GRIFFIN (on camera): What happened to the two officers that killed your son?

S. TORRES: They got, what, three, four days paid vacation.

GRIFFIN: Are they still on the force?

S. TORRES: Yes.

R. TORRES: Oh, yes. GRIFFIN (voice-over): Despite $30 million in judgments against the

city. And an officer involved shooting rate twice that of Chicago. Eight times that of New York. Not a single Albuquerque Police officer has even been charged, let alone convicted, of using excessive force in the last 30 years. Not one.

District attorney Kari Brandenburg cleared the two officers who killed Christopher Torres, just as she has cleared every other police shooting in the city during her last 13 years in office. Her explanation in a news conference, she can only believe what the police tell her.

GRIFFIN (on camera): And do I understand this right, nobody from this department actually went out and talked to these two officers? You relied on the statements that these officers wrote up after the incident?

KARI BRANDENBURG, DISTRICT ATTORNEY: (INAUDIBLE). So we have to rely on police reports. That's what we have to rely on. We're not an investigative agency.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Gordon Eden is Albuquerque's new police chief. His job is to change the culture here. That came into question just days after he joined the force and sided with the officers in the James Boyd shooting.

CHIEF GORDON EDEN, ALBUQUERQUE POLICE: I spoke prematurely and I shouldn't have.

GRIFFIN (on camera): There has not been a single (INAUDIBLE) prosecution of a police officer. And from what I understand, there might not have been any discipline doled out to a police officer.

EDEN: I can't only speak to since I've been here. I can't speak at all to what has happened in the past. But I can assure you that through the changes that we've made in our internal affairs process, we're holding people to a higher degree of accountability.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): The truth is, Chief Eden and the Albuquerque Police have no choice. The U.S. Department of Justice is negotiating the final terms of a consent decree that will place the Albuquerque Police Department under federal supervision.

Drew Griffin, CNN, Albuquerque.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: A brutal robbery caught on tape. Take a look at your screen. A man approaching a pregnant store clerk and absolutely clocking her, breaking her nose. Remember, she's pregnant. All so he could empty out the drawers of the cash. So, guess what, not only was this caught on tape, that man was also caught. Who is he? Where is he now? And where do you suspect he's going to spend a long time? That's just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BANFIELD: So here's a story that has a lot of us talking today. A store, robbed. It's caught on camera. And there is a shocking act of violence. And we might not know about it but for this video. Pensacola, Florida, cell phone store. A woman working behind the counter. And she's pregnant. In comes the customer. She's very friendly. She has no idea that she's about to be robbed by that man. He's pretending to be interested in the cell phone products. Help does not have a weapon, but he does have a pair of fists. And he also has the element of surprise. And I'm going to play now the entire robbery beginning to end. And watch how this victim handles herself during this terrifying crime.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi. It's warm out there, huh?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, ma'am.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How can I help you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It looks like it's going to storm.

How can I help you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Open the register.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. OK. Hold on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move your hand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hold on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you open it? How do you open it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my gosh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you open it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hit the button.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which one?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The button at the bottom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't you move.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. OK. OK. I'm pregnant. Please, please don't do anything to (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE). Don't you move.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I won't dare do anything, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't you move. Don't you move. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Give me the cell phone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please, sir. Please, just go. Everything is fine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) on the ground. Lay down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: So you're looking at 41-year-old Vincent Johnson as he just calmly walks out of the store and leaves that woman. Good thing he was arrested and charged and he is now facing strong-arm robbery, felony assault and burglary. That woman went to the hospital with a broken nose. And he may be going to the slammer for a very long time because concurrently those three charges could put him away for up to 15 years. And there you go.

It's a big problem at the CDC, the place where they store deadly germs and viruses. About 75 people who work there may have actually been exposed to anthrax. According to the CDC, there's no risk to the general public but earlier this month workers in a lab there accidentally, quote, "mishandled" some anthrax spores. They did a major decontamination, but are still treating and watching the people who may have been exposed.

I want to draw your attention to the left-hand side of your screen. You're about to see that man on the motorcycle fly - oh - through the air, cartwheel through the intersection in Clearwater, Florida. It's bike versus car and, believe it or not, police say he was not hurt at all after that. He walked it off. The driver of the car got a ticket for making a bad left turn and the mother of the guy who flew through the air was heard to say simply, oh, my God, when she saw the video.

You know, we do see a lot of crazy mug shots on this program. It is called the LEGAL VIEW, so lots of mug shots pass by here. But there is one mug shot that is breaking the mold. And we must show it to you only because of this. The perp is just ridiculously good looking if you forget the whole convicted felon thing. This is Jeremy Meeks' mug shot from the Stockton, California, Police Department.

And the reason I'm showing this is not just because he's good looking, it's because somehow this fellow got 64,000 likes on the police department's Facebook page and got thousands of comments from lady fans too. Somebody even photo shopped his mug shot into this, a fake Calvin Klein ad. They scrubbed out the teardrop and the tattoos and they said what could have been I think up on the top. But our affiliate KXTV tracked down in California for a little jailhouse chat. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEREMY MEEKS, CONVICTED FELON: I just visited my wife and she said that I like blew up all over Facebook. But I just want them to know that this is really not me. Like, I'm not some kingpin.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: No, Mr. Meeks, you are not a kingpin indeed, you are facing six felony counts related to street terrorism and weapons charges and you have your day in court today. And me thinks the judge does not care what you look like. Just saying.

Thanks for watching, everyone. Have a good weekend. "Wolf" starts right now.