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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Dallas Ebola Patient Dies; Airports Start Ebola Screenings; "7th Heaven" Dad Accused of Child Molestation

Aired October 08, 2014 - 12:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

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

We begin this hour with another life lost to Ebola. And this time right here in the United States. Thomas Eric Duncan was the first person to come down with the Ebola symptoms right here inside the United States. As you probably know, he got sick in Dallas, Texas, just days after arriving on connecting flights from Liberia in West Africa. Our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joining me live now from Dallas. And I'm also joined live in New York by CNN's legal analyst Paul Callan, and joining us on the telephone is Dr. Ian Lipkin of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

And first to you with the news, Elizabeth. This is not the kind of news that any hospital wants to have to announce, but they certainly just did that within the last few hours.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: They certainly did. They said that Thomas Eric Duncan died at 7:51 this morning Dallas time. And they expressed their condolences to the family and said that the staff here, the staff that's been taking care of him now for more than a week, is also grieving. I know that the family has a lot of questions because I've been talking to them. They want to know why, when he came to the hospital on September 25th with a fever, abdominal pain, he'd said he'd just been in Liberia, why wasn't he admitted? They want to know why it took more -- almost a week to get him an experimental medication, where as other patients in the U.S. got it much more quickly? And they also want to know why he didn't get a blood donation from an Ebola patient, which other patients in the U.S. have gotten. So I know the family in their grief has a number of questions.

BANFIELD: And do we know anything about the family at this time? Have they come to the hospital? I mean clearly this is not a -- this is such an unusual case as his remains are so deadly themselves right now.

COHEN: Right. And so his body is going to have to be removed and prepared very, very carefully. Handling the bodies of people who have died from Ebola can be extremely dangerous. You know, we have seen so many health care workers get sick and die from this virus, they're going to have to follow precautions. The CDC has very detailed guidelines on what to do with the body of someone who's died from Ebola. They're going to have to follow those to the letter.

BANFIELD: And maybe, Ian Lipkin, if you can weigh in on that, and let me know just exactly what will that hospital have to do now given the fact that we have heard of a number of medical professionals and nursing assistant -- two nursing assistants now in Spain who are affected by this, what's going to happen with the body of Mr. Duncan now inside that hospital?

DR. IAN LIPKIN, MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, COLUMBIA UNIV. (via telephone): Well, it is an extraordinary concern. And in the United States, it's unprecedented, but not in other parts of the world. So there are ways in which we can remove bodies safely using the appropriate personal protective equipment, which is the same sort of equipment they were using in West Africa.

And I'm not clear on what's going to happen to the body. There are obviously ways in which one could dispose of bodies quite safely, you know, using cremation as an alternative. You would not need to worry about any sort of spread of virus. But that may not be acceptable to the family. In which case, there may be alternatives offered, such as embalming and perhaps bleaching the surface and so on, which would need to be considered. It is going to be a very difficult minefield, I think, for people culturally as well as medically.

BANFIELD: Well, speaking of that, Paul Callan, medically, does culture sensitivity even come into play here when you have a potential deadly epidemic? And when I say that, I mean it as sensitively as possible. A man has just died within hours and yet doesn't the greater public health have to kick in no matter what?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, the public health issues would predominate. Certainly you would consider cultural sensitivities and what the family wants. But in the end, if it's a deadly virus that may spread unless you use a certain disposal method, public health concerns will predominate.

BANFIELD: And when you say that - that kind of - and I hate to even use that kind of a term, a disposal method, but a medical -- something that is as pristine as possible, is the only option - and maybe, Dr. Lipkin, maybe this is a question for you, is the only option here a cremation that's ultimately 100 percent safe? And even that isn't 100 percent safe.

LIPKIN: I don't think that's clear. I think there are one - there are alternatives. They would be very cumbersome and they would be very, very difficult because it would require using bleach, which we do know is a satisfactory way to decontaminate bodies and decontaminate fecal material and vomit and the other things like blood, which are associated with infectivity. This is something that's going to have to be explored or discussed. Now, the family may have no objections to cremation. I don't know that for a fact.

BANFIELD: Right. And we don't know that either.

LIPKIN: So that would certainly be the way of choice.

BANFIELD: Dr. Lipkin, I heard another medical professional earlier on the air suggesting that a body can actually still incubate the virus for approximately, I think, three days, is that accurate?

LIPKIN: Well, incubation typically means that the virus is continuing to grow. The virus requires live cells in which it can grow. So I don't think you'll be seeing additional virus propagating, replicating, reproducing itself within the dead body. But, yes, the body itself will still be contagious for some period of time. So it will be necessary to take extreme precautions in handling this material.

BANFIELD: And, Paul Callan, I want to bring you into something Elizabeth has been reporting since this happened and since this news broke just within the last hour. And that is that it took a long time for this man to get treatment. And there were breakdowns in many different instances with this hospital. They turned him away. He lost a lot of important time there in treatment. He did not get the brincidofovir (ph), that experimental treatment, early enough in the game. He did not get a blood transfusion at all from an effected Ebola survivor. All of these things, is it a cocktail sort of in the making for a wrongful death suit against this hospital?

CALLAN: Well, I've been looking at the Texas laws relating to medical malpractice lawsuits. And I've got to tell you, Texas is a very hard place to bring such a lawsuit, especially against a hospital. There are two things you have to prove. Number one, you have to prove that one of the doctors who was treating him, or the hospital, departed from good and accepted medical practice. And then you have to prove, number two, that that proximately caused the death and substantially increased the likelihood of death. The W.H.O., the World Health Organization, reports a 70 percent fatality rate in Ebola cases currently.

BANFIELD: But it's more like 50.

CALLAN: Well, I -- I'm just looking at what they say -

BANFIELD: Sure.

CALLAN: What they have been reported recently. And it's been as high as 70 percent. So you have to look at the case and say, if there's anywhere from a 50 percent to 70 percent chance of death, what's the likelihood that a Texas jury would award a lot of money in this case? And the second thing is, Texas caps awards. They cap the pain and suffering and they cap even the amount of economic damages.

BANFIELD: Yes.

CALLAN: So it's - it's a tough place to win a malpractice case.

BANFIELD: The approximation I completely understand that. What - you know, would Thomas Eric Duncan have died anyway. But you cannot rule out the notion that he had no Social Security Number when he went to the hospital with a fever and had a strong, thick West African accent and his partner even said, he's from Liberia. She says she told them twice. The hospital even admits that they knew that. That a nurse knew it and it didn't make it up the chain of communication. I mean isn't that enough right now to suggest, look, you can treat these people. Everybody else in America so far has -- it's been successful. We're not out of the woods completely. But with the right kinds of treatment and the right kinds of hydration, as Elizabeth has been reporting, early enough in the game, you can survive this.

CALLAN: Well, you can - yes, you can treat them and you can increase the likelihood of survival. There's no question about that. However, in Texas, they have a strange law. One of the things the law says that you have to prove that the hospital acted, quote, "with malice" with respect to how it handled the patient, which is why most -

BANFIELD: Malice has to be a part of it?

CALLAN: If you're going to sue the hospital successfully.

BANFIELD: Wow.

CALLAN: Which is why most of the time - most of the time the doctors -

BANFIELD: Wow.

CALLAN: The treating doctors are the targets of the litigation rather than the hospital itself. But I'd have to look more into the inner workings of this particular hospital to see how it would play out.

BANFIELD: Yes, I don't think anyone's going to suggest for a moment that this hospital had any malice at all in their hearts when these sort of breakdowns all happened.

Paul, stand by, if you would. We're continuing our coverage. Of course, this breaking news, how do you prevent the cases of Ebola from spreading? Today there were new procedural announcements for American airports. And if you plan to fly in the next few days, you may just witness them. We're going to tell you what they are, what they mean for your next flight and incoming flights coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Before we got the word out about the passing - before we got the word about the passing of Thomas Eric Duncan, our Elizabeth Cohen, senior medical correspondent, broke the news that United States airports are going to begin screening passengers arriving from Ebola- ravaged countries in Africa as early as this weekend, in fact. CNN's Rene Marsh is standing by at Dulles Airport in Virginia with that story.

So what exactly are we going to start seeing at the nation's airports?

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION & GOVT. REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, we can tell you this, Ashleigh. We are hearing that, again, it could happy as early as this weekend or next week. And what we would see is passengers coming from those Ebola hot zones. They would get their temperature essentially taken once they arrive here on U.S. soil. Of course, it will be Customs and Border Protection at the front lines doing all of these temperature checks.

We don't know exactly what kind of equipment that's going to be used, but there are thermometers similar to this one, a laser thermometer in which they would be able to tell what a passenger's temperature is without even touching the person. Perhaps we could see something like this being used once passengers arrive from those countries here in the United States.

What I can tell you is that those changes, as you just stated, haven't happened yet. What's happening right now as we speak at airports like Dulles, where that Ebola patient first landed in the United States, is that CBP officers, Customs officers, are essentially looking at people, looking to see if they look like they're sick. But these new measures are a lot more aggressive. They are now going to be using thermometers most likely.

BANFIELD: So, Rene, OK, that makes perfect sense until we get to the point where airports are not quarantine zones. So, and I get it that they're going to look at people coming in on direct flights and those who have connecting flights coming from West Africa. And what happens if they find someone with a fever? None of those people has gloves on. Nobody's suited up. Then what happens to the person?

MARSH: Well, we do know that there are some 20 quarantine units at airports. Twenty international airports across the country. So there are CDC representatives on hand 24/7. And so that Customs and Border Protection officer simply is the first line of defense here. Once they find something, that's when that CDC representative is called in and they take over from there. Of course, they're trained. They know how to do that. That person is then escorted to a quarantine unit right here on airport grounds. They get a more thorough examination. And if necessary, they are then rushed off to a hospital. So that is the process and that's how it will work, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: OK, Rene Marsh doing the job for us at Dulles Airport. Thank you for that, Rene.

We also have this issue of who gets treatment if someone gets sick. I want to bring in Art Caplan, who's the director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, the professor of bioethics as well.

This is the big issue because there's a big complaint that this victim who died this morning, Thomas Eric Duncan, was turned away at the hospital to start with, lost precious time for treatment, did not get brincidofovir (ph), the experimental treatment, for quite some time, a lag in the treatment process, and then did not get a blood transfusion from a survivor of Ebola, which apparently the properties in that blood can help to fight off Ebola.

ARTHUR CAPLAN, DIR., DIV. OF MEDICAL ETHICS, NYU: Right.

BANFIELD: If someone else gets Ebola in the United States, what are family members and that victim supposed to think about treatment options? Is it the loudest voice? Is it who you know? Is it the government or is it just willy-nilly? CAPLAN: Well, it's going to be a little bit of willy-nilly, a little

bit of who you know. But let's be clear, these are not treatments. They're experiments.

BANFIELD: Experiments.

CAPLAN: So what you're doing is throwing the kitchen sink against the disease. The sicker you are, more likely you're going to see some of these medicines tried. I think if somebody has just got a fever or maybe flu-like, they may not be using them --

BANFIELD: Doesn't that defy logic because the earlier in the process the treatment is actually administered, the better your hope for survival?

CAPLAN: It is. But some of these things may make you sicker and the supply is short. You're probably going to be people rescued from death's door rather than saying, I hope you down slide down that path. We try to make sure they have good nutrition. That's been done --

BANFIELD: Not in Mr. Duncan's case. He suffered unnecessarily.

CAPLAN: That case was botched. No doubt about it.

BANFIELD: None of us is able to answer this question right away, including people steeped in knowledge of Ebola, its effects and what happens in the aftermath. And it's very clinical to discuss this, but since this is such a critical social issue, Mr. Duncan's body is in that hospital right now and it is highly infectious and contagious.

CAPLAN: Correct.

BANFIELD: What will happen -- what do you know about the ethics of treating the dead? How do you deal with the family? What happens now?

CAPLAN: This is a very important point. And I think it's one that we all have to understand. In a time of an epidemic, you're going to lose your rights to control the funeral, you're going to lose your rights to have the kind of ceremony you want.

His body is going to be incinerated. His clothes, his personal property, anything that he might have gotten liquid on, all to be destroyed.

So you're not going to be in control. That's how you have to deal with a public health crisis, you're going to lose that liberty. It's a fundamental freedom. Not going to happen.

BANFIELD: I want to see my --

CAPLAN: I want to hug and touch -- not going to happen.

BANFIELD: That's so tragic. Our hearts go out to the family members. Some here in the United States. Clearly other family members of Mr. Duncan in Liberia where he's from.

Any chance that his body could be flown back for burial?

CAPLAN: Don't see it, none.

BANFIELD: Didn't think so. Art, thank you.

CAPLAN: My pleasure.

BANFIELD: We have another big story we're following as well today, a really shocking allegation, a confession that was made by an actor who portrayed a beloved father on television.

Ahead, we'll play the alleged taped conversation that "7th Heaven" actor Stephen Collins had with a therapist and his wife.

A legal panel is going to weigh in on the issues about like, isn't that privileged information and since that information was so awful, what about that anyway?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: So it is one of the biggest and most shocking falls from TV grace if the allegations turn out to be true. Stephen Collins, the pastor-father from the hit show "7th Heaven" purportedly heard on audiotape obtained from TMZ, confessing to his estranged wife and a therapist that he molested and/or exposed himself to three little girls somewhere between 20 and 40 years ago.

Faye Grant is the estranged wife. She says she recorded this conversation with Collins during this therapy sessions back in November of 2012. She says she then handed over the recordings to authorities that year, per their request, and now it has shown up on TMZ.

Just yesterday, in fact. Ms. Grant told E! News that she had, quote, "nothing to do" with its release.

CNN has not confirmed whether the recording is Collins' voice or whether or not that recording was edited.

I want you to listen to part of it. We are not playing the most graphic parts of the conversation. But you may find it disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAYE GRANT, HUSBAND OF STEPHEN COLLINS: OK. How many times with (bleep)?

STEPHEN COLLINS, ACTOR: Once.

GRANT: And -- you said that there was another girl. How many girls altogether?

COLLINS: That's it.

GRANT: No, you said there was --

COLLINS: No, help me out here. There was (bleep), sister then there was (bleep).

GRANT: So (bleep) sister who was 10, because she wrote me -- (bleep) -- 10, 11, 12 -- around several years.

COLLINS: There were, I think -- yes, there were like three incidents over about three years.

GRANT: OK. So - and then there was the girl across the way at -- (bleep) on (bleep).

COLLINS: That's (bleep).

GRANT: And then so it's just three?

COLLINS: Yeah.

GRANT: You're sure.

COLLINS: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Our Sara Sidner is following this story. She joins me live now from Los Angeles.

It should be noted that this couple is involved in a very contentious divorce right now, and we're hearing from his attorney about this. What's being said about this?

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Look, Ashleigh, we've been trying to talk to Stephen Collins himself and any of his representatives. They have not gotten back to us.

But TMZ says they did talk to Collins' lawyer, Mark Vincent, who gave this statement. He said, "Over the course of my representation of Stephen in the divorce case, Faye" -- that is his estranged wife -- "has repeatedly threatened to give this audiotape to the media unless Stephen agreed to pay her millions of dollars more than that to which she was legally entitled.

"Though we would like to address the tape itself, the circumstances dictate that we must regrettably refrain from doing so at this time."

Now, Ashleigh, what is interesting to note in this statement is that Collins, nor his lawyers have yet denied any of the allegations or the authenticity of the tape that you just ran for the first time there on CNN.

So I think we have to ask more questions as to exactly what happened, if he is indeed denying it. We do know he has resigned from the SAG National Board. He was also let go from a role that he was going to be playing in the upcoming movie, "Ted 2."

But we have not heard from him or any of the people that represent him as to whether or not any of this is true or if he's admitting that this tape is indeed him. Ashleigh? BANFIELD: Sara Sidner reporting live from Los Angeles.

I want to bring in our legal experts on this story because this is a legal quagmire. CNN legal analyst Paul Callan, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, and CNN legal analyst and defense attorney, Mark Geragos.

So, Mark, I'm going to begin with you, and it's great that you both practice on both states on either side of the country, and we're dealing with two states here. There was a potential victim in New York and a potential victim in California, two in New York, I believe.

The statute of limitations, there's a real fog as to exactly when this happened, but it could go back as far as 40 years. What's the story on the statutes of limitations and when they might be extended?

MARK GERAGOS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: You can't extend them if they expire, and so that's been the subject actually of a California case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

So if the statute expired and then you try to revive it, that's been held to be unconstitutional. If this happened 20 to 40 years ago, which is what is being said at least in the tape -- and mind you, I would emphasize what you just did. Anytime you get something released on the eve of a divorce trial --

BANFIELD: It's suspect.

GERAGOS: It's suspect. It's always -- and you have to take a critical view of it. But there's no way that they're going to be able to prosecute criminally --

BANFIELD: Is New York the same in terms of extending statutes, given the nature of child sex offenses. People block these out for decades and then only realize sometimes in their 40s and 50s that they've been assaulted.

CALLAN: Well, from the standpoint of the criminal law, it's very rare that you would ever see a statute extended.

What you're talking about and what we've seen in other states is civil cases which can be brought for money damages. Many of the states have said you can revive those suits by the rule that when you discover you have been psychologically injured, at that point the statute on the civil side starts to run. And that's -- I think 28 states have statutes like that.

By the way, New York does not, and two of the victims here are in New York.

BANFIELD: Got just a stack of court documents here. But in the fine print, you can see -- not even so fine. It's actually pretty bold print. You can see his estranged wife has been fighting valiantly to say, I want to be severed financially from this person. I want to bifurcate this process because I don't want to be liable if any of these victims --alleged victims -- comes forward and seeks a civil remedy.

Can she do that?

GERAGOS: She can try. And I think that that's a ruse, frankly, for --

BANFIELD: Getting the information out.

GERAGOS: For getting the information out. She's been peddling, by all accounts, been peddling this story around.

BANFIELD: That's an allegation, too.

GERAGOS: Right. Exactly. But the fact is, as somebody once said, anytime you're in a divorce court, it's a battle of the perjuries, so that's one of the things you have to worry about.

BANFIELD: That's true. So many people online have had the same reaction I had when I first heard this.

First, it was revulsion that this could have happened. But then we think, wait a minute. That's therapy. That's supposed to be privileged.

How can someone, A, legally tape a conversation like that, and then, B, whoever disseminated it has to have some kind of attachment to criminality. That's a privileged conversation, Paul, isn't it?

CALLAN: Well, the rules on that differ, actually, from state to state. And couples therapy has become very, very popular throughout the United States, but depending upon who the therapist was and what state the therapy took place in, the rules are going to be different.

But there's another rule in criminal law. Let's say for instance the therapy occurred in California, but in New York, New York doesn't shield the admission in the therapy session. You still could admit it in a New York case whereas you couldn't get it in California.

BANFIELD: But the tape itself -- I think California is two-party consent state.

GERAGOS: It is. It is.

BANFIELD: She'd be the one party that consented. There's no notion at all to suggest that the therapist consented to this.

GERAGOS: To suggest that the therapist.

BANFIELD: And I doubt that that man consented to this.

GERAGOS: Correct. So that would be potentially a misdemeanor in California --

BANFIELD: However, I've heard there's exceptions as well.

GERAGOS: There are.

BANFIELD: If you're going for evidence for a violent felony, you could do that.

GERAGOS: Or extortion.

BANFIELD: Or extortion.

GERAGOS: Extortion is the other exception.

BANFIELD: And it could be admitted in New York despite the fact that it was obtained illegally in California because in New York it has a different rule.

BANFIELD: That's incredible. Paul Callan, Mark Geragos, can you still around? I've got a couple of other things I want to catch you on as well. Thank you.