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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Defeating ISIS Is More Than Bombs And Not Just America's Battle; Eddie Ray Routh Defense Attorneys To Use Insanity Defense In Chris Kyle Murder Trial

Aired February 19, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. This is LEGAL VIEW. I'm Randi Kaye, in today for Ashleigh Banfield.

It will take more than bombs to beat ISIS and it's not just America's battle. If there were any doubt the White House is looking for new solutions to what it calls violent extremism, President Obama just gave his second speech on the subject in 24 hours.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's not a question of Jews or Christians or Muslims. We're all in the same boat. And we have to help each other to get out of this crisis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: While the president was speaking, the Pentagon was said to be analyzing claims from Iraq that ISIS fighters burned alive as many as 40 police officers and tribesmen in a town it overran last Friday. Not just any town, but one on the virtual doorstep of a key Iraqi airbase that currently houses hundreds of U.S. troops.

CNN's Ben Wedeman joins me now from the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon for us, CNN military analyst Rick Francona weighing in now from Palm Springs and Michael Weiss is we me again here in New York. Weiss co-wrote the book "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror."

Ben, to you first on this one. This time yesterday Iraqi Kurds had just fought a pitched battle to keep ISIS away from where you are right now, the Kurdish capital. Are those defenses holding up?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they are. They -- we were in not that particular area, but along the front today. A thousand kilometer front that the Kurdish forces have with ISIS, and things seem to be holding. Our understanding was that there are a variety of coalition air strikes today killing somewhere between seven and eight ISIS fighters. We were also told that the air strikes took out a Humvee belonging to ISIS, as well as another vehicle. So the front seems to be holding and certainly the Kurds continue to complain about their lack of proper equipment to confront ISIS. But by and large, the situation seems to have stabilized at the moment.

Randi. KAYE: And, Ben, what about the Kurdish offensive to take back the ISIS held city of Mosul? Any headway to report there?

WEDEMAN: Certainly the lines are static at the moment. This is a long- term project. Mosul is a city of more than 2 million people. ISIS very well dug in, in that area. What we've seen over the last few months is that the Peshmerga have gained some ground around the city but they haven't been able to cut it off in any sense. There's still a lot of traffic going between ISIS - between Mosul and Syria.

But when I was in Baghdad a few months ago speaking to American military officials, they said it would take a year to prepare -- a year at least to prepare any sort of concerted push to take Mosul back from ISIS.

Randi.

KAYE: Barbara, at the top there we mentioned these 40 police officers and tribesmen burned alive. Any new information on this latest atrocity?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Randi, the Pentagon, the administration is looking at imagery it says of -- it has regarding this, trying to analyze it and see exactly what did happen. The information basically at this point comes from Iraqi officials who are saying these people were burned alive by ISIS. One can suppose it's always possible that they were desecrated after they were killed. But, look, U.S. officials are saying at this point they just don't put anything past this organization. Every week their brutality just seems to grow.

KAYE: Yes. And tell us about this stepped up U.S. military help for the enemies of our enemies in Syria, the so-called moderate Syrian rebels?

STARR: Sure. You know, it's interesting you put it that way, moderate -- so-called moderate Syrian rebels here. It's been a long-standing effort by the administration, get a program up and running to train about 5,000 of these people. They have to screen them, make sure that they're really motivated and that they are who they say they are, that they're training people who they can put back into Syria, who will go after ISIS.

Now we have some details. The training's going to start next month with the first groups of them, most likely in Jordan. They're going to be equipped with things like trucks, communication gear, radios, small arms, the things that they will need when they go back into Syria to try and defend their villages, their areas against ISIS.

A couple of interesting details. The administration is thinking about giving them the technical capability to assist in calling in air strikes, U.S. air strikes, on the ground. This becomes a pretty interesting proposition. The U.S., of course, had Peshmerga fighters on the ground in Kobani several weeks ago when it was bombing there to help the U.S. war planes, the pilots, pick out targets with minimizing the risk of collateral civilian damage. But giving that kind of call- in strike capability to fighters, Syrian fighters on the ground that you may or may not know exactly who they are, that could be an additional risk. And they also are considering what kind of support they do have to give these fighters once you put them back on the ground. They're going to be a great risk from ISIS. Do you have to give them direct air support overhead to keep them safe?

Randi.

KAYE: Yes, certainly a big question.

Ben and Barbara, thank you very much.

Let me bring in Michael and Rick.

Michael, to you first. I mean we've now seen three days of this White House summit on extremism. Do you think it's been worthwhile so far what you've seen?

MICHAEL WEISS, CO-AUTHOR, "ISIS: INSIDE THE ARMY OF TERROR": I have not really heard anything new. I mean a lot of platitudes, a lot of, you know, public relations rhetoric. Necessary on the part of the president to, again, draw this distinction the west is not at war with Islam. George W. Bush said much the same thing.

But, look, here's what I didn't hear. Bashar al Assad's regime, which is largely responsible for the allowance - the proliferation of ISIS, which now controls one-third of the territory, Assad has not been at war with this group. Assad has been killing all the moderate Muslims that the president rightly says we need on our side. In Iraq, you have Iranian-controlled militia groups and proxies on the ground acting as death squads, in many cases using American military equipment intended for the Iraqi security forces. Human Rights Watch had an essay yesterday, said, this is why our strategy is failing. If you're a Sunni in Iraq, you have no incentive to turn against ISIS -

KAYE: Right.

WEISS: Because the other guys are just as bad, if not worse, if you're a Sunni. None of this is addressed by the president. He talks about Islam and Muslims. He's not drawing a distinction between Sunni and Shia, which, unfortunately, in this part of the world, matters greatly.

KAYE: Yes, sounds like you're hearing a lot of rhetoric and the same rhetoric.

WEISS: Yes.

KAYE: If I'm hearing you correctly there.

Rick, to you now. I mean do you fear that ISIS is overrunning the Kurds in Erbil as well. I mean, and certainly, what about that al Assad air base that's?

RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, they present a threat out there. You know, we see that the Pentagon claiming that ISIS is on the defensive, yet they're able to take over this town just nine miles from a U.S.-controlled or a U.S. present air base. They're able to launch an offensive in the Kurdish area. That certainly doesn't sound like they're on the defensive to me.

So they're able to mass troops where they need them. They're able to move them, even under the threat of coalition air power. So I think a reassessment of the strategy that's going on at the Pentagon is a good thing. They need to figure out how we can be more effective.

The comments about providing close air support to moderate fighters in Syria, raises a whole bunch of questions that also applies to Iraq. How do we become more effective with our air power if we're not going to put boots on the ground? One way is to do what we call the Afghan model, put special forces on the ground with the indigenous forces, with the Iraqis or with the moderate Syrians. Also, we see a lot of problems in the Iraqi army itself. And Ben is spot on, it's going to be a long time, more than a year before the Iraqi army is capable of going back up to Mosul. The most effective units in the Iraqi security forces right now are those Shia militias controlled mostly by an Iranian sponsored government in Baghdad.

KAYE: And, Rick, the officials in Libya, they want this lifting of the U.N. arms embargo to fight ISIS there, while next door in Egypt they're asking for this naval blockade to keep the arms out. So what's the answer there?

FRANCONA: Well, I think we need to work with the Egyptians more than we have and forget the talk that it was a military coup and cutting off their supplies. We need to be working with the Egyptians. We need to allow the Egyptians to expand their operations into Libya. We have to fight ISIS wherever they are.

KAYE: All right, Rick Francona, our thanks to you. Michael Weiss, you're going to stick around with us for the next block, talk a little bit more about this extremism summit as well.

Up next, President Obama lashing out against the unspeakable cruelty of ISIS and what he calls an ugly lie about the war on terror. But why is he avoiding the "i" word?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Obviously, there is a complicated history between the Middle East, the west and none of us, I think, should be immune from criticism in terms of specific policies. But the notion that the west is at war with Islam is an ugly lie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: President Obama less than two hours ago at the U.S. State Department. It is the second straight day that he's spoken on the subject of violent extremism. And notice I didn't say violent Islamic extremism because the word Islamic is not in the name of the summit and not a word that the president uses very often. Something his critics are very aware of.

I want to get Michael Weiss back in here. Also Dean Obeidallah, a columnist for "The Daily Beast" and a Muslim American.

Michael, let me start with you. So President Obama, he goes to great lengths really to avoid putting the words Islamic and extremism together. Why would it hurt if he did that?

WEISS: Look, I think the problem with the United States policy right now is we're spending so much time arguing over the lexicon and the optics of this coalition and this campaign. We're actually spending less time focusing on how to destroy this organization. The president calls them ISIL. What does ISIL stand for? The Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant.

KAYE: Right.

WEISS: But then he says it has nothing to do with Islam. It has something to do with Islam. Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, got a PhD in Islamic studies at the University of Smara (ph). He's not actually a lightweight in terms of clerical authority here. The problem is that this is an ultraist takfiri (ph) interpretation of the faith. And actually, even beyond that, there's a political project here. I mean, again, I keep coming back to this. This is about the restoration of Sunni power and Sunni prestige and Sunni privilege which was knocked out in 2003 by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They lost Baghdad. They feel like they're entitled to Aleppo and Damascus.

But I, you know, it sort of seems like something like a child would say. Wait a minute, we're calling them the Islamic state but denying that there's any cast of Islam. No country in the Middle East, by the way. No Arab country, part of this coalition, denies the Islamic component to this. That's why they use salafis (ph) and Islamists to argue against ISIS.

KAYE: Right. Right. So - but I guess the White House has been saying that, you know, using that word would be playing into the hands of ISIS. So would that give them legitimacy, do you think, saying radical Islam?

DEAN OBEIDALLAH, COLUMNIST, "THE DAILY BEAST": I think - first of all, there's no such thing as radical Islam. There's Islam. There's one Islam. There's radical Muslims. There are Muslim terrorists. There are people who think they're doing things in the name of the faith that might not be justified by the faith.

I think, to me, and I was at the White House summit yesterday, from the speakers I listened to, as well as I interviewed, the idea of using Islam legitimizes their claims that they're actually acting in accordance with the faith. It helps them recruit. It helps them fundraise because they can say, I'm defending Islam against the west.

Also, secondly, they wanted to call it Islam here in America because there's a backlash to American Muslims and Muslim minority populations in Europe because people go like, look what Muslims are about. Then we get demonized here. The result is marginalization which leads possibly to radicalization. So words are very, very important. Westboro Baptists, they're not Baptist because they put the word Baptist in their title. No Baptist would ever say they're about being a Baptist. The same thing is - it's very effective use of the word Islam.

KAYE: Right.

OBEIDALLAH: And I will agree, ISIS uses Islam every way they can.

KAYE: So how - I guess the questions though, I mean there's certainly been critics of the administration, of the president, for not using the word right now but - and they've been asking the question, how do you defeat an enemy that you don't look in the eye? How do you defeat an enemy that you don't name? I mean what do you make of that?

WEISS: Well, look, I think this is a well-intentioned campaign. Do I think that an anti-Muslim biggot is not going to murder Muslims in any part of the United States because we decide to call ISIS, you know, the black night tin (ph) tomorrow or give it some other farcical or ridiculous name? No. I mean, you know, let -- we just have to sort of stare this square in the eye.

And again, if you look at the broad Muslim population, nobody really says, oh, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Koran and the Hadith (ph). They justify taking sex slaves. They justify and beheadings. They justify crucifixions according to Islamic theology. Now I would argue, Dean would argue, most Muslims in the world argue, this is a perversion, a denaturing of the faith. That's not really in dispute. But the problem is, ISIS is able to attract recruits, they're able to attract followers because they're presenting a geopolitical reality. The geopolitical reality is, the United States is in bed with Iran to murder and ethnically cleanse and dispossess Sunni Muslims. It doesn't matter what you call them.

KAYE: Right.

WEISS: It's not going to change that conspiracy that they're selling. And that's how they get their rank and file soldiers.

KAYE: All right, many thanks to both of you. Michael Weiss, Dean Obeidallah, it's great to see you guys.

OBEIDALLAH: You too.

KAYE: Another story that we're following today, in eastern Ukraine, diplomats are trying to hold together is cease-fire that has been severely tested by ongoing fighting. The railroad hub of Debaltseve (ph) has been the focus of much of the violence. Today, CNN's Nick Paton Walsh was able to return to the city after a two-week absence. He found destruction on a wide scale. Many residents lining up for food and looking for a safe place to stay after their homes were destroyed. Russian separatists now control the city after Ukrainian forces pulled out on Wednesday.

Up next, the bizarre things the defendant said and did leading up to killing the "American sniper" certainly suggests that he was insane, but proving it in a murder case isn't nearly that simple. The legal view on insanity and the latest from the trial, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAYE: Welcome back.

Defense attorneys in the "American sniper" trial have a difficult task ahead. They are not disputing Eddie Ray Routh shot and killed ex-Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and his friend, Chad Littlefield. Instead, they are trying to convince the jury that Routh was legally insane the moment he shot the two men. It is a defense that rarely works. Routh's attorney started representing their case yesterday and they got right to the point, calling his ex-girlfriend, on the left of your screen there, and his sister, on your right, to the witness stand. Both women testified about his erratic behavior leading up to that shooting.

Jennifer Weed, his ex, told the court, quote, "I asked Routh if he was seeing things and he said 'yes'." She went on to say, "and then I asked Routh if he was hearing things and he said 'yes'."

Joining me now to talk more about the defense's case is CNN's Ed Lavandera, who's live for us in Stephenville, Texas, at the courthouse, and along with our legal experts Danny Cevallos and Joey Jackson.

Ed, let me start with you here. You've been in the courtroom. Any compelling testimony?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a bit of a setback for the defense team this morning as they just found out that one of their medical experts, a psychologist, will not be allowed to testify. The judge ruling that he did not qualify. So they're moving on to some other testimony.

But really the focus has been the girlfriend of Eddie Ray Routh and his sister who were testifying. You know, one of the things that Eddie Ray Routh's girlfriend talked about is that the night before the murders she says that she asked Eddie Ray Routh repeatedly if he was hearing things and seeing thing. And then he said "yes." She also went on to say that they had gotten - that Routh got up and - and said they were listening to us. "When I spoke, he would cover my mouth because he didn't want them to hear what I had to say. He definitely had paranoia about the government." She says that when she talks about "they," he's referring to the government there.

And then his sister talked about the moment when Eddie Ray Routh drove over to her house in Chris Kyle's pickup truck shortly after the murders and confessed to her about what had just happened. She said, "he said he had traded his soul for a pickup. The person who came to my house is not who I know as my brother." And then she also went on to say -- told him before he left that, "I love you, but I hate your demons." And shortly after that, Routh left her house and she was the one that called 911 that put authorities on the pursuit of Eddie Ray Routh. And that was almost two years ago.

KAYE: Yes, certainly some compelling testimony there. Ed Lavandera, thank you. Let me turn to you guys here. So you have -- the difficulty here, Danny, is you have family, an ex-girlfriend testifying, and their setting the scene of, you know, of a babbling, incoherent, erratic Routh. And isn't that difficult because you don't know if they're just trying to protect him or if they're really telling what they thought was going on?

DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Jurors instinctually know what defense attorneys and prosecutors have known for years, there's probably no more or no less reliable a witness than the friends and family of the defendant because they have such a vested interest in the outcome. But it's important to know that when it comes to insanity, both lay opinion testimony, and that means people who are not medically qualified, and also expert medical testimony is relevant to deciding insanity. Because it's important to understand that you can suffer from a mental disease, you can suffer from a mental defect, but that fact alone, if it doesn't go to whether or not you knew right from wrong, you can suffer from that disease and still not be insane. Yet the Texas court have made it very clear that the jurors can consider what friends, family and other witnesses who are not medical experts observed about the defendant in forming their conclusion about whether or not insanity applies.

KAYE: Right. And, meanwhile, it sounds like today, Joey, that they're trying to figure out which medical experts can testify and who can't. Is this what the case is going to come down to? Will it hinge on their testimony?

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: You know, Randi, it will hinge on a number of things. Not exclusively experts, although they are important. And the interesting thing about experts, of course the defense will put their experts on and they'll say, you know what, he's insane and, you know, he couldn't distinguish between right from wrong. But, guess what, there's a rebuttal case that the state will have. And what will their experts say? He knew the difference between right from wrong or certainly they'll go to show facts that would suggest that. And so experts, sometimes they rule each other out.

But briefly on the family issue, I think in this case they're reliable. And certainly the jury's thinking, hey, wait a minute, they're biased, that's his family, you know. The ex-fiance wants to protect him. The sister wants to protect him. But one thing that I thought was critical and that was a 911 tape, Randi. 911 tape. The sister is saying, he's psychotic, he's insane, something is amiss.

KAYE: Right. That's not (ph) in front of the jury.

JACKSON: Right. So the reality is, is that I think, you know, what that issue is going to really resonate with them, but, you know -- and we also have to remember the standard. It's not the defense having to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, the defense just has to show by a preponderance of the evidence, which means in English, is it more likely than not that he was insane than sane? Did he know right from wrong a little bit more than he knew, you know, wrong from right? And so that's what they're considering.

KAYE: Thank you for clarifying that in English for us. I appreciate that.

JACKSON: Use legalese (ph), right, it's crazy.

KAYE: I love it. I love it. Joey, Danny, nice to see you guys. Thank you.

JACKSON: Thank you, Randi, you too.

KAYE: Coming up, one last big announcement expected from Eric Holder before he steps down as attorney general. Is the U.S. Justice Department about to bring a discrimination lawsuit against the Ferguson, Missouri, police department?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAYE: The Ferguson Police Department is potentially in for a rude awakening. A possible lawsuit courtesy of the U.S. Justice Department. Sources tell CNN, if the police department doesn't agree to change its ways, the Justice Department could sue