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Peaceful Night in Ferguson; Differing Eyewitness Accounts of Michael Brown's Shooting; How Accurate Are Witness Accounts?; U.S. Attempted Rescue for Foley

Aired August 21, 2014 - 09:00   ET

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


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Kate, thanks so much. NEWSROOM starts now.

(MUSIC)

COSTELLO: Good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

We begin in Missouri, where for the first time since unarmed teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed, protests remained relatively peaceful in the streets of Ferguson. Overnight, the familiar sounds of tear gas and chanting crowds replaced by the blare of a summertime thunderstorm.

Police made just six arrests compared to 47 the night before, a sign that even though tensions remain high, calm is returning to the community, at least for now. Overnight, supporters of Officer Darren Wilson took to the streets, but as you can see from this video, cops were quick to whisk them away.

We're also hearing from a new witness. He's debunking the theory that Brown bum-rushed the officer who shot him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL BRADY, WITNESS TO MIKE BROWN SHOTTING: About the time I gets outside, he's already turned around and facing the officer. He's balled -- he has his arms under his stomach and he was halfway down, like he was going down. And the officer lets out about three or four shots at him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: And on the same day Attorney General Eric Holder visited Ferguson, promising a fair and independent investigation, Brown's mother viewed her son's body at a local morgue for the first time.

Let's get the latest from Ferguson from CNN's Chris Cuomo. Good morning, Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": Good morning, Carol. She had to wait 12 days. No matter what you think about the situation or the investigation, has to be very difficult for a mother. And there is no question that last night things were better. The question is, will the investigation inspire the confidence to keep them that way?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO (voice-over): Overnight in Ferguson, the first real hint of calm.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am!

CROWD: Mike Brown!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are!

CROWD: Mike Brown!

CUOMO: Since Michael Brown was shot and killed 12 days ago.

CAPT. RON JOHNSON, MISSOURI HIGHWAY PATROL: You can often tell how the night is going by the radio traffic and, tonight, the radios were mostly quiet.

CUOMO: One brief confrontation when demonstrators and supporters of Officer Darren Wilson collide.

A very different scene from the night before, this video showing an angry St. Ann police officer pointing his gun at the crowd.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My hands are up, bro. Hands are up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hand up. Gun raised and point, raised and pointed at.

POLICE OFFICER: I'll (EXPLETIVE) kill you, get back. Get back.

UNIDENTIFEID MALE: You're going to kill him.

POLICE OFFICER: Get back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's your name, sir?

POLICE OFFICER: (EXPLETIVE).

CUOMO: A St. Louis County police sergeant steps in to defuse the situation, forcing the officer to lower his weapon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Put that (EXPLETIVIE) gun down.

CUOMO: That officer now suspended indefinitely. Attorney General Eric Holder is here meeting residents, hoping to ease tension.

ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: We want to help as best we can and we also want to listen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Policeman pull up. You all called the police?

CUOMO: This as another video surfaces showing the moments St. Louis police shoot and kill 23-year-old Kajieme Powell Tuesday. POLICE OFFICER: Get your hands out of your pocket.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He got a gun out.

POLICE OFFICER: Get your hands out of your pocket!

KAJIEME POWELL: Shoot me! shoot me!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh (EXPLETIVE). Oh (EXPLETIVE). They got their guns out.

(GUNFIRE)

POLICE OFFICER: Drop the knife!

CUOMO: Police had said he came at them with a knife after stealing from a convenience store. The incident --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We at war with the police.

CUOMO: -- further fueling controversy about excessive force here by the police.

UNIDENTIFEID MALE: That's all they want. That's all they want.

CUOMO (on camera): Do you believe the cops want to shoot?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's what they're doing. That's what you see. That's what we see. That's what we're waking up to.

CUOMO (voice-over): St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dodson tells us the officers acted appropriately.

(on camera): Couldn't you have done something else in the situation other than kill him?

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: He brings up a very god point. What about why use bullets? Why not use a stun gun?

SAM DODSON, ST. LOUIS POLICE CHIEF: Tasers aren't 100 percent. If the taser misses, that subject continues on and hurts an officer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO (on camera): Now I think, Carol, we're at a little bit of a turning point in the story right now. I don't think it was just the storm last night. People are exhausted. These are long nights. Kids aren't going to school, people aren't being able to do their jobs, stores aren't open, life isn't moving for a section of the community here in Ferguson.

One of them held up a sign, I think you have video of it, holding up a sign saying, "Go get ISIS. Leave us alone."

And the story has needed attention, but now it is coming down to not the media attention of what went wrong, but what will make it right. The investigation and the leadership that's needed here, both within the community and the government, to make changes to the policing culture with the community, so that these types of things don't happen going forward.

COSTELLO: Couldn't have said it better. Chris Cuomo, thanks so much. We'll get back to you.

Now, let's hear more from the latest witnesses to come forward about what they saw the day Michael Brown was shot and killed. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "AC360": You couldn't tell exactly what was going on.

BRADY: Yes, yes, but I just seen some kind of tussle going through the window.

COOPER: OK.

BRADY: So, but, like I said, he had a friend also and he was standing in front of the police cruiser on the bumper side, on the passenger side, but like five feet away from it though. And like I said, all of a sudden, they just take off running.

Mr. Brown, he just runs directly down in the middle of the street and his friend, there was a car that was parked on the sidewalk. The Ferguson cop, his vehicle was in the middle of the street diagonal. So like I said, they take off running.

About the time I gets outside, he's already turned around, facing the officer. He's balled up -- he has his arms like up under his stomach and he was like halfway down, like he was going down. And the officer lets out about three or four shots at him.

So like I said, just like the body, I took a few pictures and a video, about how his body is on the ground just like with his arms tucked in. That's how he got shot or whatever. But like I said before, he went down, he was already like this and he took like one or two steps going towards the officer. And like I said he let go about three or four more shots.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK, so this latest account is slightly different from what we've heard before. Michael's friend, Dorian Johnson, says after being chased, Brown turned around with his hands up to tell the officer he was unarmed. Another witness, Tiffany Mitchell, says Officer Wilson was shooting just as soon as he got out of his car while chasing down Michael Brown. Piaget Crenshaw, who shot the aftermath from her apartment balcony, also says Michael Brown was running away while the officer continued firing at him. But a friend of Officer Wilson, who calls herself Josie, says Michael Brown shoved the officer back into his car and grabbed his gun, and then Officer Wilson shoved Brown away and shot in self-defense.

So how could these varying eyewitness accounts complicate the investigation? A lot. CNN's Kyung Lah has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Police shot this boy outside my apartment.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Seconds after Michael Brown was shot, witnesses from three different angles recording, with wildly different accounts of that critical moment. From this recording, audio from an unseen nearby man who says he saw Brown moving towards the officer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE). He started running, kept coming towards the police.

LAH: But Brown did not run towards the officer say two women recorded from these two other angles.

TIFFANY MITCHELL, EYEWITNESS: He turns around, faced the officer, puts his hands up and the officer continues to shoot him until he goes down to the ground.

PIAGET CRENSHAW, EYEWITNESS: So while he was running away from the officer, trying to get away, he was getting shot at.

LAH: Who is telling the truth? Maybe everyone -- or at least they believe they are.

ELIZABETH LOFTUS, UCI PROFESSOR: Just because somebody tells you something with a lot of detail, just because they say it with confidence, just because they express it with emotion, it doesn't mean that it really happened that way.

LAH: Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus says she's testified in 300 cases since 1975, and says over and over again eyewitnesses are often wrong.

The Trayvon Martin case, one witness saw a black man with a hoodie on top of a white man, while another witness recalls a man with a white shirt on top of another.

The 2002 D.C. Sniper shootings, multiple witnesses described a white van or box truck. Police shut down freeways to frisk scores of van drivers, but the real car used? A blue Chevy four-door sedan.

The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Loftus testified in the criminal case, and says a key eyewitness rented Timothy McVeigh the Ryder truck that carried the bombs used in the attack.

LOFTUS: That Ryder truck employee remembered that McVeigh was with another person, and there was a mad hunt for John Doe No. 2 but there was nobody with McVeigh the day he rented that Ryder truck.

LAH: That witness was not intentionally lying, says Loftus. Memory is flawed and affected by stress. When eyewitnesses become courtroom witnesses, flawed testimony leads to bigger problems. LOFTUS: The major cause of wrongful convictions is faulty eyewitness

testimony. That's the major cause, and it's responsible when maybe about three-quarters of the cases.

LAH (on camera): As time grows from the shooting, witnesses might unknowingly shape and adopt their own memories of what happened based on what they see and hear in the media. Truth, often only found in the evidence recovered.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, so how do jurors determine who is right and who is wrong? Up next, we'll ask our legal panel how investigators will factor in all these different eyewitness accounts and what it means for the future of the Brown case. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: As you know, a grand jury in Missouri has started hearing evidence in the shooting of that unarmed teenager, Michael Brown. The grand jury's also expected to sift through eyewitness accounts over the next few months. And here's the hard part -- as we told you earlier in the NEWSROOM some of the witnesses tell very different versions of what exactly happened. So how will that complicate the investigation and the possible decision by the grand jury to send this case to trial?

Let's bring in our legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson. We're also joined by CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Paul Callan, and you were also a prosecutor, so that's very helpful in this situation.

Joey, I want to start with you. How can you rely on eyewitness accounts when there are differing versions of the events that contradict one another?

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning, Carol. Good morning, Paul. Generally what happens -- and, Paul, I'm sure would agree with this - is that different witnesses see different things and come into event at different times. And so whether you're a prosecutor or defense attorney, it is not uncommon at all. In fact it's likely that different witnesses will tell differing versions.

Now, in taking that into consideration -- and Paul will appreciate it -- I tried a case last month in Brooklyn -- Paul, you were a homicide prosecutor there. Four different witnesses seeing four different things, your job as defense attorney is to exploit that.

From a prosecution's perspective, Carol, you're going to reconcile that briefly. In the event you look in Michael Brown's case and says a witness I didn't see his hands up at the time he was shot, it could be the witness was focused on the officer's actions, such that he didn't see the hands up. But by the time he looked and saw Michael Brown, the hands were down. Doesn't mean Michael Brown's hands were not up. It means the witness the time they focused on Michael Brow, they weren't up at the time.

So, what you'll see, Carol, is the prosecutor reconciling these conflicting versions and you'll see the defense exploiting these versions should he be indicted and it go to trial.

COSTELLO: Wow. So, let's get specific and, Paul, I know did you your homework. You come up with seven or eight discrepancies of the eyewitness testimonies that will likely be used to break down their credibility if of course they're called to testify.

So, let's run through some of these discrepancies.

So, Piaget Crenshaw, she says Brown was running away and Wilson continued shooting. Other witnesses tell a different story.

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, and this is always the case when you have so many witnesses. Being a prosecutor in a homicide case, the first thing I hope is you got some witnesses and all of a sudden, you have too many witnesses and they're contradicting each other because they look at it from different angles.

And the other thing you have to worry about, are they influenced by what they're hearing on the news media or from their friends or in the community? You have all of these problems.

Now, we could just look at a few of these witnesses. Michael Brady was interviewed last night by Anderson Cooper. I don't know if you saw the interview, Carol. I thought it was a compelling interview.

COSTELLO: I did.

CALLAN: He's older than a lot of the other witnesses, and sounds like a serious guy. I'm watching and I'm saying boy, this guy is a really good witness and he basically is very bad for the cop, because he's got the cop being shot, you know, while -- he has the cop shooting at an inopportune time, at a time when Michael Brown is surrendering.

However, I noticed when he was giving his interview, he was referring to other people hearing shots, OK? They were talking about did you hear the shot that was fired in the car supposedly? And he said, well, I know other people have said that. So I now know he's thinking and has been influenced by other people's testimony in the case. Now is that going to shape his testimony?

Very similar thing you look at Piaget and Tiffany, the two young ladies who testified and gave compelling stories that would indicate the officer deserves to be indicted but their stories have internal contradictions about when he put his hands up at what point in time, about whether a shot was fired at the car or not.

I also find that with respect to Johnson, the friend, that Johnson's account, one of the things that I'm troubled by is if you have this crazed police officer firing shots trying to kill you, and you hide behind a car, are you going to have your head up watching the incident or aren't you going to be a little afraid you'll get shot yourself.

But when you listen to his account, it's like he saw everything, 100 percent of things. While he was running to find a place to hide and he did hide. So, at some point, he's missing some things but he sounds very thorough in his analysis.

So, a good defense attorney like Joey Jackson I might say, and I think Jackson won that case in Brooklyn by poking a hole --

JACKSON: It was a hung jury.

PAUL: It was a hung jury. OK, so you win it next time. You spoke holes in witness testimony.

JACKSON: You do. But here's the point, with regard to witness influence, what happens is that when you're a witness, Carol, you give a statement. When you give that statement you will on record indicate what you saw. So, at the time of trial, if there is a trial, and there is an indictment, of course, people will convene, nine of which they say there's probable cause to believe a crime was committed, and Darren Wilson committed it, he'll be indicted, the process will move forward.

But when you're a witness, you give your account. That's on record. In the event during the course of a trial, you go off that, it's up to the attorney to what we call impeach you. That is to say, sir, you said this once upon a time, but now, today you're saying something else.

So, with regard to having you influence, the witness, that is, by another witness, there's a process to are that and it's called impeachment by a prior inconsistent statement. And so, ultimately, Carol, I do believe that as the matter goes forward, we'll see these inconsistencies. It's a matter of when a witness saw it, what the vantage point was of the witness and how was their ability and opportunity to observe?

Doesn't mean they're not telling the truth. Doesn't mean they're not crazy. Doesn't mean they're not reliable. They observed an event at a different --

(CROSSTALK)

PAUL: Here's what's turning into a nightmare in this case and I don't think you'll disagree with me on this.

These witnesses have given so many statements because they're doing the rounds, giving television interviews.

COSTELLO: On tape.

PAUL: You know, when you were a prosecutor and I was a prosecutor, the one thing we tried to do is keep control of our witnesses. You'd have them testify once in front of the grand jury and you keep the testimony brief because you didn't want it turned over to the defense attorney so he could beat up your witness at trial. Now, look at what happened in this case. They're going to give

statements to Eric Holder, you know, to the Feds. They're going to give statements to the local attorney. They're giving statements to all the television stations. By the time they get on the stand, there's going to be so much material to attack them. It's really a prosecutor's nightmare --

JACKSON: That's a fair point.

PAUL: -- the way this case has been put together.

COSTELLO: I wish we could go on with this but I have to wrap it up, guys. A fascinating conversation.

Joey Jackson, Paul Callan, thanks so you both.

JACKSON: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in THE NEWSROOM: a dangerous message when it comes to kidnapped victims overseas. The U.S. will not pay a ransom for your return. Other countries will. We'll talk about why that's putting Americans at risk, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Urgent pleas this morning for the release of another American journalist held captive by ISIS terrorists. Steven Sotloff was pictured in the horrible video right after James Foley was beheaded by his captors.

Sotloff is a contributor to "TIME" magazine. ISIS kidnapped him in August of 2013. His family and friends believe he will be the next to die unless the United States acts.

A petition to save Sotloff's life at any cost has popped up online. It now has 94,000 signatures.

But it's unlikely the United States can do much to save him. The White House said Special Forces tried to rescue journalist James Foley, but the mission failed. As for ransom? Forget about it.

Foley's family appeared sadly resigned.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DIANE FOLEY, MOTHER OF JAMES FOLEY: He was strong, courageous, loving to the end. I mean, we just highly recognize our little boy. I mean, he just, he was just a hero.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you know from the videos that his last words were "I wish I had more time to see my family."

FOLEY: So, Jim had a big heart.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COSTELLO: The Sotloffs are praying their son will not meet the same fate as James Foley. But is there anything the United States can really do to rescue Sotloff at this point or any of these 10 Americans still being hold hostage overseas.

Let's talk about this. Michelle Kosinski is our White House correspondent. Barbara Starr covers the Pentagon for us.

Welcome. Thanks to both of you being here.

Barbara, the United States did try to rescue James Foley at some point. Why are we hearing about it now?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, it did happen last summer, Carol. It was over July 4th weekend at a place called Daraka (ph) in Syria in the north, and we are hearing about it now because a number of news organizations were on to the story and about to publish about it, so the administration made the decision to acknowledge what it could and yet not give all the details.

Any hostage rescue situation especially by U.S. Special Forces, which unbelievably went into Syria to try to do this, is really the most sensitive information, to reveal any classified tactics or procedures that they try and enact to make these missions successful is really very problematic in the view of the Pentagon, because more Americans are being held, because they may want to try and do this again. That said, there's an awful lot out there in the public arena about how these missions go down, because unfortunately, so many of them have taken place in recent years.

So, people have a fair understanding, but we believe there are a lot of classified details, the pentagon still trying to hold close to its vest in case they want to try this again.

COSTELLO: I understand.

Michelle, the United States does not pay ransom for hostages. According to Foley's employer, "GlobalPost", ISIS wanted $135 million for Foley's release.

The thing is, other Western countries like Spain and Germany do pay ransom to get their citizens returned.

David Rohde, who was kidnapped by the Taliban, says this sends a dangerous mixed message. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID ROHDE, KIDNAPPED BY TALIBAN IN PAKISTAN: I don't think the United States should and I think the broader problem is that there is no coherent strategy between the U.S. and Europe about what to do about this problem. Kidnappings are working. Al Qaeda affiliates raised at least $125 million from kidnapping in the last five years, they raised $60 million last year.

France denies, Germany, Spain, and other countries, they ransoms. There were journalists from France and Spain who were held with Foley by the Islamic State, ransoms were paid for them, they're home safe now. Jim Foley's dead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So, Michelle, why isn't there any coherent strategy between countries?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the U.S. doesn't like to try to influence another country in a situation this sensitive and this dire, but we have reached out to the White House for more clarity on this, now that this has come up.

I mean, I think David Rohde got it exactly right, it does happen so that continues to encourage terrorists and that has been the U.S. stance that it's a bad idea to do that but while it keeps going on, you could argue that it does keep encouraging the same.

At the same time, though, I mean, there's a huge argument for it being a real moral problem. If you rescue one of your citizens, but you're giving the terrorists $100 million, aren't you then contributing to the deaths potentially of other people? Although it wouldn't be in such a direct way. That's why these terrorists, they know what they're doing.

They know that they can play on people's emotions and their needs to get their own citizens home, and that's why these things work with certain countries. That's right.

You would say there ought to be a cohesive strategy, but not every country likes to follow the pack and everybody likes to treat these things on a case by case basis.

I think what's also interesting, that this new situation has brought up is that you can't reasonably expect that ISIS would think that the U.S. government would either pay a ransom that big. And remember, we don't know for sure that they asked the U.S. government for that amount. We know that they asked Foley's employer, "GlobalPost", for that amount. And they can't expect that the U.S. would change its policy and change its course of action.

Why are they asking and then murdering this American citizen on tape? Well, it seems like they want to get their point across, and that they know the attention that it will garner will be global, and maybe that's simply what they're after, because you can't imagine that they would think anything would change based on their demands, Carol.

COSTELLO: Who knows what goes on in the minds of ISIS terrorists? I don't know. Michelle -- but I get your point. Michelle Kosinski, thank you. Barbara Starr, thanks to you, too.