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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Police Find Missing Boy in Basement; New Search Area for Flight 370; New Criminal Warrant in Baby's Hot Car Death

Aired June 26, 2014 - 12:30   ET

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

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: You've got a stepmother in place, and you have an ex-wife in place.

The police probably are not sure who has the right to grant full permission for a search, and they're afraid that if they dig up evidence relating to the stepmother or the ex-wife, there will be a claim that it was an illegal search.

So let's cover ourselves. We'll get a warrant and then any evidence that's seized will be legally admissible. That's my theory.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD: The fruit of the poisonous tree, avoiding that --

CALLAN: That's right.

BANFIELD: -- which is good.

If you want to be really careful and ultimately, preserve any kind of prosecution, if there is one, and we are not suggesting there is one at this point, they are just being extraordinarily careful with a high-profile case.

CALLAN: And by the way, we're going to solve this easily. Just ask the kid.

BANFIELD: And let's hope he's OK, and let's hope he OK enough to answer those questions.

And let's OK -- let's hope that they have also allowed some kind of representation, they don't mess up that portion of that.

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: Absolutely.

BANFIELD: Because when you're a minor and you don't get parents or representation, it can also be a mess.

JACKSON: It's strange to think what would have happened with an adult's intervention or oversight.

BANFIELD: I'm with you. I'm shaking my head along with Nancy Grace. I can't believe any of it.

Gentlemen, love you. Thank you, Paul Callan --

JACKSON: Thank you, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: -- and Joey Jackson, see you again soon.

It's been 111 days since Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 went missing. And now today -- today -- the Australian government is releasing brand-new information on the plane, brand-new details about the plane possibly being on auto pilot, and a brand-new search area nowhere near the last one.

What? A hundred and eleven days later? We'll get you up to speed on that in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, can you believe it's been 111 days since that giant airplane with 239 people on board simply vanished.

The pings? Oh, they are long gone, and that's if they were any to begin with. Underwater drone, the Bluefin-21, remember all that? It's still out there working, off and on. Sometimes they have to stop to fix it.

But the search has not ended even though the medium coverage has died away, 111 days, and today the Australian government released a lot of new information about that plane, about its flight path, and about some new theories about where it might be.

And, Richard Quest, our aviation correspondent, you say that this piece of work that you're holding is pretty remarkable and why?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: It's remarkable because it's the sort of document we should have had a long time ago.

BANFIELD: Why didn't we?

QUEST: We got it now because the ATSB, the Australian Transportation Safety Board, their equivalent of the NTSB, has really provided an interim report.

It's taken what we know, it's taken the search so far, it's explained how they did the search, it's explained about the satellite information, and it's told us about the assumptions they have made about where on those southern arcs the plane is.

So is the answer in this document? No.

BANFIELD: (Inaudible).

QUEST: Absolutely not. But it has told us in very clear terms why they believe where they're searching now.

BANFIELD: OK, but that's bothersome.

QUEST: No, it's not.

BANFIELD It is to me, and I'm sure to the people who lost their loved ones, they're wondering why we spent 111 days completely some where we shouldn't have been.

QUEST: Because you take the situation as you find it in the emergency of the moment. So you find out -- look, we haven't -- yes, these areas -- bring that map up again. Bring that map back up again.

So we're still in the same arc. Yes, we are a lot further north or south. We've moved a lot on the south now, but you're still on the arc.

Now the old search area was deeply flawed by the pings.

BANFIELD: OK.

QUEST: Clearly questions need to be asked. You can come back to me here.

Clearly questions need to be asked about why those pings were erroneously heard and why they misled the investigation for so long.

But if you go back to the core seventh handshake, that's when the plane to the satellite, it's just in this area.

The downside of all of what I'm talking about is the size of this. The old search area was 850 square kilometers.

BANFIELD: And this thing is massive. The size of West Virginia?

QUEST: Sixty thousand, so they are going to search the ground first and then -- do a survey and then go down.

BANFIELD: You'll continue to update us. I will take it.

QUEST: This is progress. This is progress on a most difficult investigation in aviation history.

BANFIELD: It's just hard to see. I understand it's hard to feel that, but I understand where you're coming from. It's the best we got.

QUEST: Yes.

BANFIELD: Best we go.

Richard, thank you. You're the best we've got. Thank you so much.

Another story that we're tracking for you today as well, the investigation into the death of a toddler who was left in a hot car by his father.

What new evidence and what new clues are police finding in this story? We've got those details for you, right after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BANFIELD: When does a tragedy turn into a chilling murder investigation, the alleged crime so heinous that it's hard to imagine possible a father who seemed at least from the pictures to love his baby boy, Cooper?

Here the two of them are at an Atlanta Braves game, dad Justin Harris on the right, practically glowing with little Cooper.

But last week that 22-month-old boy spent seven hours in his father's parked car on the day temperatures peaked 92 degrees. The temperature inside that vehicle could easily have exceed 130 or 140 degrees.

Justin Harris says he simply forgot his little boy was there. We certainly have not heard much from Justin's family, but we do have little Cooper's obituary.

"He was loved and cherished and protected by both parents and all family members for his short 22 months of life. Cooper loved trucks, cars and often told them 'bye as we left parking lots.

"He had just learned the color red. As we passed red vehicles he would tell his mommy and daddy, 'bye, red car.

"His 22 months of life were the most happy times of his mother and father's lives, and we'll miss him greatly."

Victor Blackwell is live in Marietta, Atlanta. I'm also joined now by HLN law enforcement analyst Mike Brooks, who's a former D.C. police detective.

First to you, Victor, there seem to be a lot of developments that are coming into this case by the moment. Can you update me what's newest?

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly. A new arrest warrant gave a lot of angles and information about the police investigation into Justin Ross Harris.

They believed before he went into work on June 18th that he was at a Chick-Fil-A restaurant. In fact, they say that he was seen there placing this 22-month-old in his car seat in the rear seat in the center facing the rear window, and then he drove to work, which is about a mile to his job at the Home Depot store support center.

He went in, but at lunchtime, they say that Justin Ross Harris was seen going back to the vehicle, opening that driver's side door, placing something in -- they don't say what -- closing the door and going back inside, leaving the child there.

We also know the charge of child cruelty was downgraded from first- degree to second-degree changing the burden of the state from malice to negligence.

Also, we learned from the medical examiner's office, Ashleigh, that the manner of death here they believe preliminarily is homicide. The cause of death, as many expected, is hyper- -- gosh, I've forgot.

BANFIELD: I'm going to look for it. I've got it here.

BLACKWELL: I'm going to say this. It's overheating of the body. That's what it is. Hypothermia. Hypothermia's the word I was looking for.

BANFIELD: Something else that's really important on that, that degrading of the child abuse charge may just be sort of because the statute's just that the higher level of the crime requires a certain kind of deprivation of food and water, so it may just be sort of a logistics thing as to why that charge was reduced.

But I actually I want to ask - I want to ask Mike Brooks this question about what the police are doing now. What they're looking for now. And my guess is that that home is being scoured, that hard drives are being scoured, and that there are copious interviews with people that he worked with at the Home Depot to find out what his demeanor was like -

MIKE BROOKS, HLN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Right.

BANFIELD: With people that he saw before and after this event. Walk me through the law enforcement aspect now.

BROOKS: Well, I'm going to be -- they served the search warrant on the house, Ashleigh. Also apparently they've gotten all the video surveillance from Home Depot. I would also think that as part of that warrant they would also get his work computer, any queries that may have been done on that. The home computer.

Also records from the Little Apron Academy where the little boy went to daycare on exactly what days he was there. Other things, his phone records, his phone pings from his cell phone that will give law enforcement basically the route that he would take every day. What was his history of dropping the little boy off? Where did he go? Which way did he leave that family's condo in Marietta on the way to the Home Depot.

All these are being put together because, you know, they're putting together now a pretty - they're putting together a pretty good timeline of what they think happened. And it's ironic, though, Ashleigh, because he left the Home Depot, he didn't even go to the academy. He headed home, but then made a right-hand turn and then he was on Acres Mill Road, where he got out.

The other thing, if that little boy had been in that car all those hours, as they say he is, it would have smelled so bad inside that car, Ashleigh, as that little boy was dying, as he was dying of hypothermia, that the odor would have been just unbelievable and he wouldn't have been able to even get in the car. So him not noticing that, I thought right from the very beginning was BS.

BANFIELD: Victor, I think that's a really good point that Mike brings up is that the - you know, the way the fact pattern is laid out, certainly doesn't pass the test right away. At the same time, what's going -- we have a child who's dead and needs to be, you know, memorialized and buried, et cetera, and ultimately he's still being held. Is he allowed to attend a funeral? Is there going to be the memorial service for the rest of the family? What's the story?

BLACKWELL: Well, I can start with, will he attend the funeral there. The last check we made with the D.A. and with officials at the jail, that there was no request submitted for Harris to attend that funeral. It's going to be in Alabama, where he and his wife lived before they moved here to the Atlanta area. We know that there will be a private viewing, then a public ceremony, but then a private burial for this 22-month-old.

And one other thing that I'd like Mike Brooks to weigh in on here as well is that there's that detail of Harris putting his son in the car seat in the center of the backseat. Mike, I know you've seen this SUV. Those windows are so heavily tinted. We know that there is surveillance video that was handed over to the police department from Chick-fil-A. Must there also be an eyewitness to know that that was placed in the center of the car, because you couldn't see it through that back window.

BROOKS: Most likely there was video surveillance there at the Chick- fil-A. I know most Chick-fil-A's do have video surveillance there in their parking lot. But, you know, we did a test with one of these Hyundai Tucsons, Ashleigh, for HLN, for - you know, on the case. And we got in the car and there's no way that he could have even missed right in the center of the backseat someone being in that car seat. There's no way, even with it facing backwards, that he would not have known. So he knew the baby was in there. He put the baby in there. And it shows it on the video surveillance from the Chick-fil-A.

BANFIELD: All right, I've got to cut it there, but clearly there are so many more questions to be answered. Victor, great work on this story. You've been on it since the beginning. And update us when you know more.

And, Mike Brooks, thank you for your input as well.

BLACKWELL: Sure.

BANFIELD: Clearly the police have their work cut out for them. My thanks to you both.

I have for you that that "Sixties Minute." It's a preview of our special exploring the decade that shaped America.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): Something happening here. But what it is ain't exactly clear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were marching today to (INAUDIBLE) to the nation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hundreds and thousands of Negro citizens of Alabama denied the right to vote. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're willing to be beaten for democracy. And you

misuse democracy in the streets.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are confronted primarily with a moral issue.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think you can keep (INAUDIBLE) in the present situation of segregation?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I may not be able to do it, but I'll die trying.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought we were going to be arrested and the major said, troopers advance. I thought I was going to die.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe the time has come for the president to step in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: "The Sixties," tonight at 9:00 on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: I love that little jingle.

One of the world's biggest soccer stars is about to pay very dearly for that little nibble that he gave to another player during a World Cup match this week. Luis Suarez from Uruguay. Well, he is not allowed to play in nine upcoming international games. In fact, he's not even allowed to go inside the stadium. So Sterling. Suarez allegedly bit another player hard enough to break the skin. He's not only banned from the games, but FIFA said he can't even do anything remotely soccer related for four months. He also has to pay a big old fine, more than $100,000.

"Law and Disorder." It's one of my favorite segments, I've got to be honest. Obviously you're not watching the World Cup because you're watching me. Big battle between USA and Germany. You'll get the highlights later. But we thought you might want to see some really awesome courtroom battles, like the courtroom pitch, shall we say.

First, to wet your whistle, remember the Florida teen who flipped off the judge? Penelope Soto. Penelope, really, not smart. You know, she got charged with contempt and she ended up spending a month in jail before ultimately she wised up and apologized and then that contempt charge was dropped against her. Dumb idea.

And remember this guy who decided to throw a bag at the judge? June Carson was just facing criminal trespassing charges, but after trying to attack the judge, he was sentenced to 30 days in jail for contempt.

So now we've got a new one for you. It is our latest sassy defendant who has found Internet infamy. His name's Christopher Colon. Yes, Colon. He was caught on tape after screaming profanities at a Florida judge. And if you don't believe me, listen for yourself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTOPHER COLON: Well, I'll see you guys and -- with a lawyer and a lawsuit too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, you - oh, wait, bring him back, please.

COLON: And you can go (EXPLETIVE DELETED) yourself too. Like I said, you guys can suck my (EXPLETIVE DELETED) while you guys have it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, the court, at this time -

COLON: I'm sure you will (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The court, at this time, is inclined to hold you in contempt of court. Your --

COLON: I don't give a (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Go ahead, I got lawyers. I got lawyers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your behavior - your behavior --

COLON: I don't got nothing to say, man. I'm telling you, all right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your behavior is disrupting in court.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Did he really just say "I got lawyers," I got lawyers," because if I'm one of your lawyers, I'm getting off your case, fellow. The judge decided that Mr. Colon was going to have a 364-day sentence for contempt. Strangely enough, dropped the charge, though, after he apologized for his outburst. Mr. Colon is still, however, being held on charges of aggravated battery of a pregnant woman. So the lesson for us all is, try to avoid the aggravated battery for starters and then please comportment. He's a judge, respect. You know what, respect for anybody. Your neighbors. I don't care.

Thanks for watching. "Wolf" starts after this quick break.

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