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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Father of Cooper Harris Indicted in Hot-Car Death; Death Row Inmate Released because of DNA Evidence; "Lady Valor" Premiers Tonight

Aired September 04, 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: A major announcement in the case of a father accused of the unthinkable, leaving his 22-month-old son to die in a hot car.

And just a short time ago, a grand jury in the case indicted Justin Ross Harris on eight counts including malice murder in the death of Cooper Harris.

Our Martin Savidge is live outside the Cobb County courthouse in Marietta, Georgia. Martin, run down these charges for me and tell me exactly what he's facing.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, very quickly, the first count here is malice murder. In other states it might be called murder in the first degree, felony in the first degree.

Felony murder on count three, you've got two counts of cruelty to children, first- and second-degree. And then you also have criminal attempt to commit a felony, sexual exploitation of a child. That goes to the sexting that has been implied in this case.

This was a case that began in the minds of many people as a horrible tragedy. But authorities quickly said no, it was far more sinister. Here's a look back.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SAVIDGE: It all began with the anguished cry of a father in a parking lot nearly three months ago.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He just screamed, "What have I done?" loudly.

SAVIDGE: Thirty-three-year-old Justin Ross Harris says after taking his son to breakfast the morning of June 18th, he forgot to drop off 22-month-old Cooper at day care, leaving him in an office parking lot in 90-plus-degree heat for close to seven hours, discovering the mistake after leaving work that afternoon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hopped out of the driver's seat, opened the back door, pulled his child out, laid him on the concrete, tried to resuscitate him.

SAVIDGE: Cooper was dead, and within hours his father charged with murder and child cruelty, held without bond.

The public outcry against authorities was swift. An online petition demanded the charges be dropped, saying they only added to a family's heartbreak over a terrible accident.

But investigators painted a different picture. In a warrant authorities said during questioning Ross Harris admitted to researching online child deaths inside vehicles and what temperature it needs to be for that to occur.

Then what came next took the case from conversational to sensational.

DETECTIVE PHIL STODDARD, COBB COUNTY POLICE: He was having up to six different conversations with different women.

SAVIDGE: In a pretrial hearing, he shattered his images, portraying him instead as a man yearning to be single, involved in online relationships.

STODDARD: Evidence is showing us that he's got this whole second life he's living with alternate personalities and alternate personas.

SAVIDGE: To the gasp of the courtroom, investigators said Harris was sexting women, sending lewd messages as his son was dying, trapped in that car seat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were photos being sent back and forth between these women and the defendant during this day while the child's out in the car?

STODDARD: Yes, there are photos of his exposed penis, his erect penis, being sent. There were also photos of women's breasts being sent back to him.

SAVIDGE: Harris's called the sexting claims "irrelevant" and had nothing to do with the child's death.

He said his client is not guilty and instead outlined what is likely to be Harris's defense if the case goes to trial.

MADDOX KILGORE, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: It's not criminal negligence. It's a horrible tragedy and an accident.

SAVIDGE: Martin Savidge, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: And for the LEGAL VIEW on this, I want to bring in Phil Holloway who is not only a lawyer but also a former police officer, criminal defense attorney at that.

Phil, when I look down the lineup of eight different counts that this grand jury decided to indict, three of them are for murder, one malice and two felony.

Clearly it's the malice murder that is the most problematic for this defendant.

PHILIP HOLLOWAY, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: That's absolutely correct, Ashleigh. Under Georgia law, malice murder is as bad as it gets. If the facts can be proven, if it's horrible enough, if it's torturous enough, things of that nature, it might even qualify for the death penalty.

However, one thing that initially jumped out at me when I read this indictment here, is that count three, which is a felony murder count, is based upon criminal negligence. It's based upon cruelty to children in the second-degree.

So they're charging it both ways. They're charging it alternatively as maliciously having been done as well as negligently having been done.

You know, malice requires premeditation and deliberation. It requires something that shows an abandoned and malignant heart. On the other hand, criminal negligence, by definition, means it wasn't intentional.

BANFIELD: So these prosecutors are clearly allowing for a jury to feel one way or another and still come down with a pretty strong punishment.

That means these prosecutors are going for it. There is nothing in their kit that suggests they have to indict it for publicity's sake, but they really don't want this father to suffer any more.

HOLLOWAY: Well, I think you're right. This is a strategy that is often employed by prosecutors when they realize that they have a case where, you know, a jury might very well say, how could a father knowingly and maliciously do this to their child?

If they have people on that jury that can't quite reach a consensus on that, it gives them a fallback position that still carries a life sentence under Georgia law.

BANFIELD: All right. Well, Phil Holloway, obviously we've got a long road ahead with this particular case. You'll have to come back with us to see how it progresses.

Thank you, Phil Holloway joining us live.

HOLLOWAY: Thank you for having me.

BANFIELD: Live in Atlanta. Good to see you, as always.

Henry McCollum and his half-brother, Leon Brown, were teenagers when they were wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl, and it was 30 years ago that happened.

Today, however, they are finally free men. Details on the case and just how close the state came to executing an innocent man.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: A crime I'm about to tell you about was so horrible that a supreme court justice cited it years later to defend the constitutionality of the death penalty.

For example, wrote Antonin Scalia, quote, "the case of an 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat, how enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!"

And you very well might agree with that statement. Many people do.

But the two brothers who were tried and convicted and sentenced for that crime, and the man on the right, Henry Lee McCollum, spent decades on death row awaiting that lethal injection are no longer in that circumstance, because this week, a North Carolina judge ruled that McCollum and Leon Brown, his half-brother, were almost certainly innocent of the crime.

And CNN's George Howell shows us what happened next.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Stepping out into the world a free man after 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit, Henry McCollum did not show anger, did not seem bitter.

His first message to the cameras --

HENRY MCCOLLUM, EXONERATED DEATH ROW INMATE: They're ain't no anger in my heart. I forgive those people and stuff, but I don't like what they done to me and my brother because they took 30 years away for no reason. But I don't hate them.

HOWELL: An emotional reunion with family is just the beginning for this man who has so much to catch up on, even the simple things like how to put on a seat belt.

A photojournalist on scene shows him how.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You've got to pull it over like that. And then you pull it down like that and clip it into the belt buckle there.

HOWELL: Fifty-year-old McCollum and his half-brother, 46-year-old Leon Brown, spent most of their lives in prison, but Tuesday, a judge in North Carolina gave them both their freedom.

McCollum and Brown, both teenagers in 1983, when arrested for the rape and killing of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie, but 30 years later, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry discovers inconsistencies in their confessions, raising the possibility that the two may have been coerced by investigators.

They also determined DNA evidence from the crime could not be traced to either of the men.

Instead, the commission concludes the evidence on cans and cigarette butts matches the DNA of a convicted rapist and murder who lived less than 100 yards from where the victim's body was found. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our prayers are out for the Sabrina Buie family.

We're praying for them, and we are so glad that justice was served and the truth finally came forth.

We thank god for that, and we're going to go on with our lives.

HOWELL: Released from his life sentence, this photo captures Leon Brown's first steps of freedom just outside the prison walls. Their father never gave up hope.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We waited years and years. We have kept the faith. Waiting on God to make, he made the move, and they're released.

HOWELL: Two men, three decades in prison, finally free, and now not looking back.

George Howell, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: I want to bring in defense attorney and HLN legal analyst Joey Jackson to get me off the ledge.

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: Tough stuff.

BANFIELD: I'm going to repeat this.

JACKSON: A long time, Ashleigh, 30 years.

BANFIELD: I don't care what your politics or morals are about the death penalty. That is not part of this conversation.

What is part of this conversation that I want to have is how we screw it up. You can't execute innocent people.

JACKSON: It's a problem.

BANFIELD: It's a huge problem.

JACKSON: OK, here's where it starts. It starts where you can talk about confessions, and we can talk about that first. And when you have a confession, and I understand that police are under a lot of stress and anxiety to close a case, and many of them do, and most of them do it properly.

But when I ask you leading questions, so Ashleigh, you were there.

BANFIELD: But, p.s., wait. They're kids at the time without parents --

JACKSON: We'll get to that.

BANFIELD: -- or lawyers.

JACKSON: We'll get to that. But if I ask you, Ashleigh, you were there, correct? And it was nighttime, correct? And you were with two other people? Is that also true? And as a result of you being there, this is what you did? And this is how you did it? And now you put it in a confession. And then I say, here, sign this. And you know what, if you sign it, you're going to go home. That's problem number one.

Problem number two you already alluded to with respect to how old they were, young, 19 and 15 at the time. Clearly too young, you know. When you're sitting there, particularly, you know, when police are asking you these questions in a coercive environment. And then it gets worse than that because we talk about exculpatory evidence, fancy term for evidence that goes to show you didn't do it.

BANFIELD: Yes. Can I just -

JACKSON: And when that's not turned over to your defense lawyer to defend you, it becomes even more problematic.

BANFIELD: Let me personalize what that exculpatory -

JACKSON: Yes.

BANFIELD: Is a big word.

JACKSON: Big word.

BANFIELD: Exculpatory evidence. A fingerprint that was found at the scene where that cigarette butt had the DNA of the real killer --

JACKSON: Of someone else.

BANFIELD: Yes.

JACKSON: And you don't know that.

BANFIELD: So the cops -

JACKSON: And a beer can that has fingerprints also.

BANFIELD: Yes, the cops who are investigating this case asked the prosecutor to please test this fingerprint against Mr. Roscoe Artis, who's committed a number of sexual assaults in the past.

JACKSON: And they didn't do it.

BANFIELD: Not only did they not do it, they didn't even tell the defense attorneys that there was a request made.

JACKSON: Yes, that -

BANFIELD: And it turns out 30 years later this is the guy who did it, Roscoe Artis, DNA proved he was the one who did this.

JACKSON: Ashleigh, I feel your passion. And as a result of this, think about this, these are people who are still alive, OK.

BANFIELD: Thank God.

JACKSON: Absolutely. But if you look at the life lost, I mean look at two things. Number one, people who are actually executed where, for example, it could be -- it's so final, the death penalty, where years later it's determined, guess what, not you. And now you have people who have been in jail, who have lost their lives. And now it comes to show it wasn't them. That's an issue.

BANFIELD: Can I ask you about the prosecutor in this case. His name is Joe Freeman Brit (ph). Look, this is 30 years ago, so I don't know if he's still alive. We're looking into this right now.

JACKSON: Guinness Book of World Records for the deadliest prosecutor based upon his convictions and his conviction rate.

BANFIELD: So 50 -- nearly 50 death sentences he won during his tenure apparently. Almost all of them have been overturned according to "The New York Times" editorial board today which wrote a very powerful editorial about the death penalty. Again, before you tweet me and destroy my account, this is not the argument about the morality of it. You don't know how I feel about it. It is the morality --

JACKSON: I know how you feel about it. We talk about it off air, on air. Right, it's a problem.

BANFIELD: Yes. But the truth is, my problem is when you can't get it right, you can't do it. You can't do it if you can't do it right. You don't get a mulligan on a death penalty.

JACKSON: You don't. It's over. It's final. It's death.

BANFIELD: I'm done for today. I'm done for today. But we are not finished with this conversation. Mr. Jackson, thank you.

JACKSON: Thank you, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Appreciate it.

I've got another story coming for you that is just fascinating. Christopher Beck, 20 years as a Navy SEAL, and then decided that his identity instead was that of a woman. And now she is Kristin Beck and she will join me live to share her story and what kind of war she is fighting now since returning from active duty.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: A U.S. Navy SEAL, a decorated war veteran, wounded in combat. Chris Beck served more than 20 years active duty before retiring from the military. Only then did he go public with a secret that he had hidden all that time and longer. By now you've probably seen that Beck is the elite special forces operator now living the next chapter of life as a transgender person.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRISTIN BECK, RETIRED U.S. NAVY SEAL: Face it, in our country, there are many people that go about their daily lives and they never meet someone who's gay or lesbian, and they really never meet anybody who's transgender. I'll talk to people, just hang out, just be a regular person. They start doing their prejudice or that bigotry or whatever. I just try to be friendly and I just say, hi, how you doing? You know, good to meet you.

I was a Navy SEAL, you know, transgender. You might have seen me on TV. And they go, oh, oh, wow! And then they realize that maybe try to get in a fight with me wouldn't be a good idea. Maybe they should be nice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: And Kristin Beck joins me live now.

Kristin, first and foremost, thank you for your service to this country. That has to be said right off the bat.

BECK: Thank you.

BANFIELD: It should be said early and often. Secondly, and it is the biggest question I think so many people have, 13 deployments, SEAL Team 6, military contractor. It doesn't get any tougher than that. For someone who has said that you've been a man trapped in a woman's body, why did you pursue such a manly career?

BECK: That was my job. That was my passion. I just feel that some people are just born to be sheepdogs and to try to protect the innocent and protect the rule of law. I love the article you just did earlier and the passion that you have. That kind of passion is what we need. And some of us just have it. I'm going to fight for the rule of law. I'm going to fight for those who cannot defend themselves. And I did that as a SEAL, and I'm trying to do that now as I live today.

BANFIELD: And I've heard you interviewed before talking about how hard it was fighting war abroad, but that how coming back and finally coming into the person that you are now is actually a tougher war to fight.

BECK: Right. This is a tougher war. Our country has a lot of hang-ups and labels. We label everything from the color of our skin to the jobs you have, to how much money you have in the bank, to what car you drive. I'm tired of labels. So this fight I have right now is just trying to get rid of some of those labels and try to live a life as a human being and as an American. That's what we should be doing. I fight for --

BANFIELD: How is that - oh, I'm sorry to interrupt. I want to ask you, how is that fight going among the people who are closest to you, like your family and your friends? And, by the way, your SEAL mates, your ex-SEAL mates, how do they all feel about it?

BECK: It's a journey. I mean you can't expect to start running right away. You're going to crawl then you're going to walk and then we can start running. So it takes a little bit of time. I'm going to give everybody a chance. And as that learning curve gets better and better, we're all going to get better. We need to do that as a country. Sometimes we need to go back and say hey, you know what, we're going a little too fast. Let's slow it down a little bit and do a little better.

BANFIELD: One of your commanders I think said the word, that sister is my brother, and that must be very comforting for you. And I've actually spoken to some of your former SEAL colleagues who have said the same thing. The ones who know you best are very much in support of you. And the ones who don't are the ones who are the naysayers. But I want to ask you, despite the fact that you have that wonderful support group and family members who do support you, are you lonely?

BECK: I mean, it gets lonely sometimes. I mean, I had somebody in New York City approach me who said, one of the most populous cities in the whole country, in the world maybe, and you feel lonely in the middle of that city. Everybody gets those times. So you need your friends. You need family. A lot of SEAL team guys do support me because they know me. They know that this outside image, this body, all of this stuff, I'm wearing these clothes, this is all covering. What really counts is what's in here. What really counts is who I am as a person. They know that. And that's how they accept me.

BANFIELD: Well, I have an entire list of questions here that I could spend over, you know, a day talking to you about this. I find you a very fascinating person, and extraordinarily brave. I'm going to say it again, thank you for the service to your country. I think everyone owes you a debt of gratitude for what you did for 20 years for the freedom of Americans to make choices like you've made.

BECK: Thank you.

BANFIELD: And that choice being to be public about it, not about who you are. And by the way, I want to remind everybody, tonight you can see Kristin's story, 9:00 p.m., a brand-new CNN film called "Lady Valor." Be sure to tune in for that. Kristin Beck, thank you again.

And thanks for watching, everyone. "WOLF" starts after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, President Obama and other world leaders, they're gathering at a NATO Summit with a full plate of issues. The top of the agenda, Russian aggression and stopping ISIS' reign of terror.

Also right now, the president of Iraq asks for help from countries within NATO.