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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

South Carolina Police Officer Charged With Murder. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired April 08, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you know it well.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Exactly. It's great to see you, Sanjay. Thank you so much.

GUPTA: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: All right and thanks all to you. Thanks for joining us AT THIS HOUR.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: "Legal View" with Ashleigh Banfield starts now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

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

We are following breaking news out of South Carolina. It's police officer, to accused murderer, in the blink of an eye. A shooting near Charleston is once again igniting the debate over excessive force by police. Officer Michael Slager is behind bars right now and he's charged with the worst of the worst, first-degree murder. That for killing this unarmed man, 50-year-old Walter Scott, father of four, and a U.S. Coast Guard veteran. Disturbing bystander video shows the shooting in graphic detail. Slager shot at Scott eight times as Scott was running away. Five of the bullets hit Scott, killing him. Slager says he feared for his life when he fired those shots, but the video shows a very different account.

I'm about to show you the entire video of the incident that was shot by that bystander. Everything happens very quickly and it's not always easy to make out what's happening. So I'm going to draw your attention to a few things to watch for as you watch this incident play out. There is a very slight struggle that can be depicted for a fraction of a second at the beginning of the video. Then you can see an object flying behind the men. The officer appears to drop something near the body, maybe a Taser. It's unclear at this time. But I also want you to pay attention, when you see this video play out in real time, to how the officers do not provide any medical assistance to the victim. And I want to warn you, this is very disturbing video. You are about to see a man shot multiple times who died.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, (EXPLETIVE DELETED). (EXPLETIVE DELETED). (EXPLETIVE DELETED). (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Oh, (EXPLETIVE DELETED). (EXPLETIVE DELETED). (EXPLETIVE DELETED). (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:04:58] BANFIELD: And there you have it, truly disturbing video of what seems to be an unnecessary killing. Again, you saw that all raw as the person who witnessed it shot it. And I wanted you to see it that way for a reason. Moments ago the mayor of North Charleston and the chief of police visited Mr. Scott's home to pay their respects to his surviving family members. Yesterday, that police officer appeared before a judge for a bond hearing. And here's the video of it. The judge did ask him a question, in fact, about his family. And the officer told the judge about his stepchildren and an unborn child on the way. Listen carefully. It's very quick.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OFFICER MICHAEL SLAGER: I have two stepchildren and one of the way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: And that's all we hear from this officer now charged with murder.

CNN's Martin Savidge is live in North Charleston, South Carolina.

Martin, I don't even know where to begin but this is such a fast moving story and the developments and the charge of murder very quick in itself. What's happening today?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Today there's a lot of things going on. We're expecting, in about an hour from now, a news conference to be held by the mayor and by the chief of police to once again presumably update the status of the investigation, where things stand, maybe to talk about the interaction that they had with the Scott family this morning. This was something the city had said they wanted to do and apparently were able to work that out and meet with family members and express condolences, it is believed, and to also express how sorry they are for the loss of life.

There were protests that took place in front of city hall. There were several dozen people that showed up, many of them carrying signs that say, "black lives matter." We've seen similar protests before. It was, I would say, very carefully organized, but it was also very peaceful. There were a lot of speakers. It appeared that just about everybody was local. In other words, it wasn't like outside interlopers coming here. And after they finished - it went for about an hour - some of those protesting actually went out into a main street next to city hall and shut down traffic temporarily while they said a prayer. And then they have moved on.

So that's where things stand. The community right now is still very much trying to take in all that has been revealed in the last 24 hours. But, of course, the shooting goes back to Saturday, Ashleigh. BANFIELD: And that community, Martin, involves the officer's

representatives. There are oftentimes, in a circumstance somewhat like this, an officer's union and a representative that will come out and perhaps speak on the officer's behalf. But we haven't seen or heard anyone at this point who is doing such a thing, speaking on his behalf.

SAVIDGE: No, not as yet. We have not had anyone really come forward and try to speak to Officer Slager. Presumably, that is going to happen at some time, even if it is just his legal representation, which, we understand, he's undergone a change in that. So it's not quite clear who's representing him at this particular time.

But you're right, we haven't heard from any say police union or any police kind of organization. I think a lot of people are looking at that video and finding it very difficult to try to defend in any particular way. And, of course, those that were demonstrating would say, see, this is exactly what we've been talking about, not just here but also in other examples across the country where African-American males have been killed in police - or at police hands. They say only just because now you have irrefutable evidence are most of the nation really waking up to this problem.

BANFIELD: I want to just point out one similarity between the alleged perpetrator and the victim in this crime. They are both former service members with the Coast Guard. And one very big difference is that one man is black and one man is white. And yet still it is unclear, with the fact pattern known at this early time in this case, whether race played any part at all in this killing and yet we're already seeing the roots of some of the demonstrations that you saw about "black lives matter." Where is that part of the story going? Is that becoming a fast-moving issue in this case?

SAVIDGE: Well, I would say that, you know, the - first of all, state the fact that the police force here is a predominantly white police force and yet you've got a community that is 50 percent African- American. So there are critics who say it doesn't reflect the makeup of the community.

On top of that, there are others, especially those connected with the NAACP and other organizations similar to it, that have maintained the department here has a history of profiling African-Americans, and, in particular, stopping them for relatively minor violations, and remember in this case it was supposed to be a broken taillight, for the purpose of actually trying to search them, say, for drugs or some other suspicion.

So they say this just fits the profile. Of course, it went horribly over the top with a killing. They say this is a problem that has existed in this community for a long time.

BANFIELD: Martin Savidge live for us in South Carolina, thank you for that.

[12:10:02] For the next 20 minutes or so, I'm going to do something to help navigate everyone through this case. I'm going to go over the video of this shooting, critical moment by critical moment with a team of experts who know all too well what evidence says and where it leads. HLN legal analyst Joey Jackson is with me, former federal prosecutor Dan Schorr is here, and law enforcement expert Dennis Root, who has trained officers in how to properly, properly use deadly force.

Welcome to all three of you.

I want to start by basically sort of going frame by frame, gentlemen, if you'll permit me. Take a look at this first image that's frozen. It's at the very beginning. It's about a split second of the video. And it shows that there is some kind of struggle that went on between this victim and the police officer. They are in some way connected at this very point. I'll ask you, Dan, right away, what significance does this play, if any?

DAN SCHORR, FORMER PROSECUTOR: Well, there's some kind of struggle. And that precipitated the events that happened later. They didn't justify them by any means, but that's what led to the beginning of the confrontation. There was a chase first that led them to this area. There was originally a traffic stop.

Now, they might be fighting over a Taser. Based on the officer's statements, we know a Taser was involved. He later said that the suspect grabbed his Taser from him. Maybe that's what he's referring to. But in no way does it justify what we see later.

BANFIELD: All right. So let's move on. The struggle - actually we're going to play this out for you in a slow motion so you can really get a clear sense, because it happens very, very quickly. You can see a dark object falling, in fact, right there under the highlight. There's a dark object. There's another dark object that flies to the back of the officer. It's highlighted as well. And that rolls off sort of behind.

Then you can see the officer, who had his hand on his gun at the very last moment of the struggle, is now clearly getting that gun in position.

Joey Jackson?

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: Ashleigh, what happens - when you evaluate this, you have to evaluate it in three different ways. The first thing is you have to look at the immediacy of the threat. And when you see the threat moving away from the officer, it becomes very problematic. Why? Because then the threat is no longer immediate and posed to the officer.

The second thing is, is now you look to the proportionally of the force. For whatever reason, Ashleigh, the officer is drawing his firearm and perhaps you could say it would be justified in drawing the firearm to say, hey, freeze, stop, do what you do. The discharging of it is what becomes problematic.

Final point, Ashleigh, and that is, you look at the reasonableness of the conduct also. And certainly in the drawing of the firearm and then - and beginning to discharge it at this point, is that reasonable under these circumstances? That's the problem.

BANFIELD: And - and if I could ask our control room to just freeze that frame where you see the officer going for his gun. And there is sizable difference, between five and 10 feet, depending - there's a lot of space between this officer and the victim in this case.

Dennis Root, I want you to work with me on this actual shooting. In real time, the shooting takes about 10 seconds to play out. That may seem very quick, but that's an eternity for some people. So as this is playing out, I don't want this to be gratuitous at all. I want you, as a trained officer who trains others in the proper use of deadly force, to tell me what, if anything, where is the devil in the details, where is there a possibility that this could be at all right? And we're going to roll the video while we're speaking of it.

DENNIS ROOT, LAW ENFORCEMENT EXPERT: You know, for me to be able to do that, unfortunately I can't. There is a training concept that if somebody is an aggressor and they're pointing a Taser or weapon at the officer, the officer is justified in elevating his application of force because he could be incapacitated by the Taser weapon. Clearly the video shows that that is not the case in this particular event. So once the Taser weapon is out of play and the person begins to flee from the officer, the officer's application that the shooting of the individual is unreasonable. There is nothing that I can find in the video that would justify the application of deadly force in this event. You know, there's no special circumstances known that I'm aware of about the individual that posed a threat to the public, if they were allowed to escape. More importantly, if we know who he is and it's a family-related court bench warrant for, you know, child support, there's nothing to substantiate any kind of real time threat to the officer or the community that would justify the application of deadly force. There's just no reason for the shooting.

BANFIELD: So let me - let me ask you this. The officer said immediately, he grabbed my Taser. Some people have said he stole, he took. The words are, he grabbed. I've listened to it several times. He grabbed my Taser. But there are other reports, Dennis, that show potentially the Tase had already happened. The cord from the Tase, it's almost inperceivable in some of the video, in some of the pictures, but there are reports that say witnesses and the officer himself said he Tased the man already. Does that not therefore render that Taser useless, not dangerous, even if the man took the Taser? It's been used. It can no longer present a threat, right?

[12:15:18] ROOT: Well, once the cartridge has been discharged, once he's fired the Taser weapon, the probes can't be reset into the cartridge. So what you basically have, without replacing the cartridge, you have a stun gun. It's a pain compliance tool. It can no longer be utilized to incapacitate the officer. So that variable in and of itself and the physical evidence at the scene will verify where it was deployed at because they have little aphids that come out whenever the weapon is utilized and these are little identifiers specific for that cartridge. That will show on the ground where the weapon was actually used. So if the cartridge had been discharged, now the officer knows that even if he had possession of it, it's not going to be incapacitating to the officer. So it is not a deadly force threat.

BANFIELD: So, Dan Schorr, is there anything that this officer could use in his own defense to actually convince anyone that in his mind - because this is always the standard - in his mind he felt that there was some kind of a threat either to himself or to others as this man was running? Perhaps something the man said to him. Perhaps a school across the street. That is not a fact pattern here. I don't know what's across the street.

SCHORR: Right.

BANFIELD: But what could be a defense?

SCHORR: So the Supreme Court standard is, an officer can use deadly force with a fleeing suspect if there's probable cause to believe they pose a threat of serious physical injury or death to someone else. There's nothing on this videotape that suggests anything of the sort.

Now, if there are facts that we don't know where the suspect mentioned that he was about to harm people, that might be a factor. But there's no evidence of that. If you just look at the videotape, it's shocking, it's disturbing, it seems like completely unnecessary shooting. And that's why he's been charged with murder.

BANFIELD: And it certainly looks to the naked eye indefensible even at this early hour. Joey Jackson, in a moment I want you to ponder something else, and that is what happened after - after the shooting, immediately after and within the ensuing minutes. We're certainly not finished with this breakdown of the shooting and this video.

Up next, we're going to get these three guests to look with their very trained eyes at what happened when the police officer then went over to the now slumped shooting victim. And then there's also the unarmed victim's family. They watched Walter Scott gunned down on video. And say whatever the shooter's story, the pictures do not lie. Their heartbreak, their disbelief and their words as they approach the press, that's all coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:21:02] BANFIELD: If you're just joining us, we have been breaking down this incredible and dramatic but certainly disturbing video of a police officer shooting at an unarmed man a total of eight times. Our team of legal experts is weighing in on these moments that are so critical because broken down they tell a different story than perhaps a very quick-moving phone video. HLN legal analyst Joey Jackson is still here, former prosecutor Dan Schorr is with me and I'm also joined by law enforcement expert Dennis Root, who has trained officers on the use of proper deadly force, meaning when it is appropriate and how to actually use that kind of force.

I want to talk about what happened immediately after the shooting now, gentlemen. And if you'll permit me to roll this part of the video, this is once those eight shots have been fired, you now see the actions of the officer. So as we go ahead, the officer has come over to the victim. He's already called in his issue to dispatch. And he's handcuffed Mr. Scott.

He now runs back to the place of the initial confrontation where presumably the Taser may be if that is what flew off the back of his right hip. He leans down to pick something up. Obviously this video is not perfect. It is as good as it gets and many people have been very thankful for it because but for this video, this may not have been as obvious a story.

Joey Jackson, what reason might an officer have to leave a handcuffed man who's injured, unattended, to go back to the site of the initial spot of the shooting? What might be a legitimate reason for that?

JACKSON: Well, unfortunately, in this particular instance, it does not appear, based upon my visual observation of the video, that any reason proffered here would be legitimate. Why? Because as we roll forward, Ashleigh, as I'm sure you'll show the viewers, apparently whatever that officer picked up at the location for which he left the man there, Mr. Scott, apparently dead at that point with his hands behind his back, he then goes --

BANFIELD: Or dying. Dead or dying.

JACKSON: Or dying. Dead or dying. He then goes and he puts what looks like a gun - don't know, but it certainly looks like a gun, a Taser, some object next to that body.

BANFIELD: I'm going to get to that. I will get to that because, again, each of these segments in their own right is significant. I just can't figure out why you'd leave a man who may be dying, could be dead -

JACKSON: You render aid at that particular point. That's the protocol.

BANFIELD: We don't even know - we don't' see the officer even checking to see if this man is dead or dying.

Dennis Root, if you could weigh in on that. I tried to think of, again, the benefit out doubt at all times, I tried to think of a circumstance where an officer might have to neutralize another dangerous situation, like a weapon that's left far away from him that someone else might be able to get. Is that a possibility here? Might the officer have thought, there's an active Taser, I need to get it before I can do anything else so that the situation is contained?

ROOT: Well, you're absolutely right that that could be a justification for securing a weapon. But you have to be able to articulate that there were people around, that it exposed them to unnecessary risk or the officer to unnecessary risk. And then on top of that, if it is just a Taser weapon and it doesn't offer the dangers of a firearm, for example, and you're dealing with a subject that you've just shots, the preservation of the scene, the crime scene, also becomes paramount. So if there's not an immediate threat or risk, the retrieving of that weapon from over there is inappropriate because that's part of the crime scene. That has to be part of the evaluation of the scene in its totality. I think that it's -

BANFIELD: Not to mention what you just told me, and that is that once you've deployed the Taser, it is no longer in need of neutralization, so to speak.

Hold the - hold the next thought for a moment because I want it to match the exact timeline of this video.

[12:24:50] Gentlemen, if you could all stay put for a moment because still ahead we have slowed down the recording to get a very good look at what was on the ground around Mr. Scott as he tried to run away, but also as he lay dead or dying because these are significant moments at what could be even a larger aspect of a crime.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: I want to bring you some updated information that we're just getting in to CNN about this shooting that happened between an officer and an unarmed man in South Carolina.

We're just now getting 90-plus pages of this officer's personnel record and it shows some very interesting revelations. Five years on the force for Officer Michael Slager. In that five years, he completed gun training and Taser training and had high scores in both. He also completed yearly training on the proper protocols for force, use of force.

We should also mention, you may have already heard this, but there have been two complaints were made against him. In one of the instances, he was cleared, he was exonerated. But in another instance, the complaint was sustained, although we are not clear on what kind of punishment Officer Slager received for that incident.

But that's sort of - those are the highlights, the very broad strokes of his five years on the force. He's 33 years old we should mention as well.

And if you're just tuning in, our team of experts here at CNN have been breaking down this very fast-moving and shaking video, albeit extraordinarily disturbing set of pictures of a South Carolina police officer involved in the shooting of an unarmed man, shot in the back - in the back as he ran away. This as the officer reported in his write- ups that he was afraid for his life.

[12:30:04] We are about to show you what could be some very damming evidence against the officer.