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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Protests in Baltimore. Aired 12:30-1p ET.

Aired April 30, 2015 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Protesters again filling Baltimore streets after dark last night but this time it was exciting. There wasn't tear gas. There were no flash grenades that we saw earlier this week. Instead, a lot of peaceful marching and not just in Baltimore, people in other cities are protesting too. They are also angry at what they say is a police injustice that they see. They say they're showing their solidarity with the people of Baltimore.

A Baltimore City councilman had said to me that he doesn't want Baltimore to go back to normal after this investigation. And while you might shake your head, think about it, after these protests and after all of this international attention, he says normal in Baltimore is exactly what caused this explosion and anger and frustration.

I want you to have a look at, as the two of us, walk through the areas of all of that looting and rioting. Councilman Carl Stokes and me just a short time ago walking to that neighborhood and I just want to draw your attention as we talk about the release of a report tomorrow. Wen this morning when we walked, that report was due tomorrow. Instead, we have it today, yet the issues are all the same. Have a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARL STOKES, BALTIMORE CITY COUNCILMAN: You too. We good? Thanks man, appreciate you.

BANFIELD: This is the heart of it. This is where it all happened, and then...

STOKES: Yeah, absolutely. So we are talking to meet people through the media mostly. We're sending out newsletter from my particular office that lets citizens know that we're going to continue to protest and demonstrate against roughly to a lot of injustices not just Freddie Gray because that Freddie Gray is the last upper water that tipped the glass over.

Frankly, there have been so many series of incidence going on in our town.

BANFIELD: You and I had a talk yesterday about the word thug and how it misrepresents because we're talking about people who have been underprivileged, uneducated, and really been given a rough go.

STOKES: Right. BANFIELD: And these are the same people we're now expecting to understand a very complicated justice system.

STOKES: Right, right.

BANFIELD: Justice doesn't always go your way.

STOKES: No, it doesn't.

BANFIELD: I mean justice doesn't happen.

STOKES: Right.

BANFIELD: How are you...

STOKES: Again...

BANFIELD: ... going back to an insurmountable talk with this, how are you going to get that information to people that they need to be patient, they need to wait for investigative work to actually happen before they demand heads of the state.

STOKES: I think people are more attuned than we may give them credit for. I think that people do understand. First of all, that's why they came out provisionally. They understood. They didn't come out just wild and crazy because Freddie was murdered.

BANFIELD: Well, they're mad. I mean, they come out because they're mad. They came up because they're frustrated.

STOKES: Right.

BANFIELD: They came out because they feel...

STOKES: Oh yeah, absolutely.

BANFIELD: ... like they just are underserved.

STOKES: That's right, underserved and treated unjustly.

BANFIELD: And much has focused of their ire has been, you know...

STOKES: Right.

BANFIELD: ... towards men and women and the police force who...

STOKES: Some up here...

BANFIELD: ... many work hard, some don't, but that's the same issue everywhere.

STOKES: Right.

BANFIELD: And again, the complicated task of getting this kind of information into communities that's struggling to even to educate at this point. This is a really tough order. How you're going to do it? STOKES: Yeah, so most of Baltimore respects and love their police officers, they absolutely do. They don't have any tolerance for the few bad officers that we have. And they are -- their expectations have always been that the police will enforce the law in their communities just as they enforce the law in other communities in Baltimore City.

BANFIELD: As we got people behind us and I want to take us across the street and head over to sort of the epicenter for people who have been watching on the news. This is really the spot where it all happened.

STOKES: I got you. I got you.

BANFIELD: And I want to take us across the street if we can continue our conversation.

STOKES: So my point, I think people are more attuned and able to understand better than we may give them credit for. Because they are poor, I know they are.

BANFIELD: Are you sure, because everything behind us is betting on it because if this, you know...

STOKES: I know they are.

BANFIELD: If tomorrow comes and...

STOKES: I know they are but listen, let me -- let me...

BANFIELD: And there aren't announcements of arrest, are you concerned that this place is going to blow up again.

STOKES: No, no. It won't blow up. It didn't blow up.

BANFIELD: Because there's not going to be arrest...

STOKES: No, we had a few hundred people out of thousands of people do some bad criminal actions. We call it a blow up. I got it. You looked that way.

BANFIELD: Yeah.

STOKES: But it happened for a few hours and then it was over, and then people came out at 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. the next morning and started cleaning up their community, started getting it back.

Now, listen, a lot of people want Baltimore to return to return to normal. I don't, and most of the citizens are telling you that and telling me that we don't want normal. This is normal.

BANFIELD: Because this is normal. And let me just point out what you said, so much of what's boarded up and broken isn't as a result of the rioting.

[12:35:02] STOKES: No.

BANFIELD: This is the way it looks.

STOKES: This is the way it looks everyday.

BANFIELD: Before it happened.

STOKES: Everyday this is the way it looks and everyday people are trying to, you know, earn a living.

BANFIELD: How do you communicate to the people of Baltimore who are so disadvantaged and upset that sometimes justice is not the way you see it and sometimes it looks different and sometimes it doesn't go your way, but it doesn't mean that the systems didn't play out.

STOKES: Right. We are patient people. Pardon me for saying this but we are religious people also. And so, we understand justice and when it should come. Many of us expect that justice is not immediate. We expect it to come when it comes. That's our faith. That's our culture frankly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Councilman Carl Stokes, kind enough to invite me live on the area yesterday to come to Baltimore. And I did that and he met me and he had some pretty profound words. I hope that his constituents will listen to him and others who appeal for calm.

So there is one woman who has a very, very big responsibility right now. She's got the weight of the world on her shoulders right now in making the decision as to whether to charge or prosecute police officers who are involved with Freddie Gray the day that he ended up in a coma and the day ultimately that he died. Is that their fault and will she make that determination. Will she go with what people want? Will she go with what the facts say? And exactly what does she have on her death right now?

People who know here will speak about it next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Very soon a make or break moment for Baltimore's chief prosecutor and that moment is deciding whether or not to pursue criminal charges against any of the police officers who are involved in the death of Freddie Gray.

[12:40:05] Now, that person's name, and get used to hearing it, is Marilyn Mosby. Who is she? She's a 35-year-old wife and mother of two. She comes from a long line of police officers including her grandfather, four uncles, and her mother as well. She has only been on the job since January and during the campaign speech, she talked about how she witnessed the murder of her cousin on her front doorstep and what she learned from that tragedy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARILYN MOSBY, BALTIMORE CITY STATE'S ATTORNEY: I learned very early on that the criminal justice system isn't just the police, the judges, and the state attorneys, it's much more than that.

I believe that we are the justice system. We, the members of the community, are the justice system because we are the victims of crime.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: As Mosby gained so much confidence from the community that she was easily elected and Freddie Gray's attorney is optimistic that she is going to serve this case well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM "BILLY" MURPHY JR., GRAY FAMILY ATTORNEY: We're enthusiastic about the new prosecutor. She is newly elected and she comes to the office with a belief in the integrity of these kinds of investigations. We have much more confidence in her than we have in the police because there's never been any level of confidence nor should there be in the police investigating themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Well, I want to bring in civil rights attorney, A. Dwight Pettit. He is a huge supporter of Ms. Mosby. He actually worked on her campaign and he endorsed her.

Also with me is another of the Gray family attorneys, Mary Koch, and thank you to both for being here today.

A. DWIGHT PETTIT, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Absolutely.

BANFIELD: Let me start with the new information and Ms. Koch, I'd like you to weigh in on this if you can. You heard alongside us just within the last hour and a half that the police have turned over the case to the state attorney and there is new information about an additional stop that that police van made. How did you process that?

MARY KOCH, GRAY FAMILY ATTORNEY: Well, some of the information that I received is that that may have been an interim report and not a final report. So, I think that needs to be clarified whether or not that is the final report of the police department because that's going to change the timeline. So it's the first thing.

BANFIELD: But at least the -- these I don't want to say bombshell because it feels like every piece of information is a bombshell, but it's pretty significant that the police, the commissioner himself would come out and hold a news conference to give this clarity to say that up until now we had not known about this forced stop, that there wasn't additional stop that came to our attention via private cameras, not necessarily by witnesses, not necessarily by the police van and its log, from a private camera. What does that tell you about the case you're facing with the Gray family?

KOCH: I think that's highly unusual because, you know, you have a wagon man, you have an officer who is driving the wagon, he's transporting the prisoners. He's usually in the wagon by himself because it's a transport vehicle. So, I think it's unusual that there weren't any transmissions between that wagon man and anyone else in the police department to let them know that they were stopping that wagon.

So that's -- to me, that's unusual because you always want as a police officer, you're always going to transmit where you are and what you're doing so that the rest of the department knows what's going on especially the officers who are working and supported you. So, I find that odd that there's no transmission.

BANFIELD: Odd to say the least that there is so much information that needed to be processed in a relatively short period of time. It's been 18 days since this happened and it's been a week and a half since the death of Freddie Gray.

Mr. Pettit, your friend, Marilyn Mosby, I would not want to be her. She has an enormous task. She has an enormous responsibility. And I think it's fair to say that it's a blessing and a curse to have this job because there will be critics of her no matter what she does. But ultimately, to get this confirmation, what kind of a person is she? What kind of temperament does Ms. Mosby have? At 35, relative new in public office, how is she going to process this? How will she handle this?

PETTIT: Mosby is very dedicated in part of what she campaigned on that was is bringing integrity to the office. And so, I believe that she will move in a methodical way in the investigation until she -- and wait until she has all the material facts. And I think that she will follow up what the evidence leads.

BANFIELD: Integrity.

PETTIT: I do not think she will follow just public opinions of what she does.

BANFIELD: Thank you. So this is the issue is integrity. Because to some, integrity means there has to be accountability which equal to arrest and prosecution. To others, integrity means maybe there won't be. Maybe this won't be a perfect case. We have millions of cases that are so imperfect that there's reasonable doubt.

PETTIT: Well, she campaigned on the premise not that she's going to invite all the police, but part of her campaign was police excessive force and brutality. And what she campaigned on is that she was going to have a transparent and open investigation on when these questions came up, which is something that Baltimore City and my practice of 40 years, we haven't been used to.

[12:45:03] And so that's what she promised and that's what I think she's going to deliver on, that she's going to deliver on doing it right and getting it right. I'm confident in that.

BANFIELD: So Ms. Koch, getting it right, that has so many connotations depending on who you're talking to. You are an attorney and you know this better than anyone, sometimes justice is not what you want. Sometimes justice doesn't go your way. On every -- In every court room, half of that court room is upset, but it doesn't mean that justice wasn't done.

Is your -- Are your clients, the family of Freddie Gray, are they prepared for a very convoluted and very complicated case that may not got their way because it's just really a difficult situation with so many people involved, so many places involved and six different offices with different roles.

MARY KOCH, GRAY FAMILY ATTORNEY: What -- So our clients are still at the grieving stage, so I don't think they've gone that far in their thought process in terms of what's going to happen ultimately at the end.

At this point, what they want is they want a fair, thorough investigation, the appropriate people charged, the appropriate people tried, and then for those cases to be tried in a way in which any prosecution that results sticks. That it passes most are on appeal. That's what the family wants. The family wants the truth and they want it to be arrived at very carefully and that's not going to be an easy job for Ms. Mosby.

But I agree with Mr. Pettit that you know that's her job, that's the job she took on, she has a lot of experienced people in her office and so she's going to get a lot of assistance doing that.

BANFIELD: Bath it by fire, I mean welcome to the job, three months in.

KOCH: Oh, absolutely.

BANFIELD: This is something the entire nation if not the international community is watching what happens here. I wish the community here had you as a lawyer to walk into this process if it's -- if there is hard for people to understand how complicated this is.

I thank you both for your time, for your expertise as well, of your insights that's critical at this time.

I want to break from you for a moment only to talk about a moment that's -- I don't know, it just -- it sort of captured the nation's attention. It got on the front page of every newspaper. It was a mother, Toya Graham who went down to those riots and thought her son and grabbed him and took him home hard way.

We all wanted to know who she was and we met her. And we all really wanted to know who Michael was and now we do. And Anderson Cooper has spoken with Michael and you're going to hear that young man's words next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:50:54] BANFIELD: This is without question one of the most memorable moments and powerful images from this week's unwrapped in Baltimore, have a look.

I think just about everybody has seen this right now. The video of a mom who berated her brick-wielding son and yanked him literally by the sweater off the street because she spotted him on television taking part in a mayhem.

Now some people have criticized her but, if this scene doesn't put her into running for Mother of the Year, maybe this interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper will. Here is part of what her son Michael had to say about this encounter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: So what did you think when you heard that voice.

MICHAEL SINGLETON, PULLED FROM RIOTING BY MOTHER: I know that's my mama. I know it's my mama. I know by (inaudible) talk like that but my mama, so.

COOPER: And then what happened?

SINGLETON: It was just World War III from right there.

COOPER: That was World War III?

SINGLETON: Yeah. It was just like that.

COOPER: What did you think? Were you embarrassed?

SINGLETON: Yeah, I was embarrassed a little bit, until she just started talking to me when we got home. I was -- and tell me because why she did it because she cared about me. It was not just to embarrassment but just because she care.

COOPER: She was worried about you.

SINGLETON: Right. Saying what it means (inaudible) about law, saying don't want me to be like another Freddie Gray or anybody else that then got killed by the police.

COOPER: Do you regret wanting to throw rocks or do you think -- can you explain it?

SINGLETON: At first I was a little like, I don't care, like I don't care about the law, like police (inaudible). When my mama talked to me about it, she was just like, "What did they do to you? Did they ever hurt you?" I'm like, "No, they didn't hurt me, but I saw my friends not here because of what they did."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Michael Singleton. Amazing when you watch these pictures, he talks a lot about his mother's love and how he knew right away because of how she spoke with him when she took him home that he loved her and then that was most important thing.

Her actions, definitely one of the most talked about moments of the week. Some people calling her abusive, some people calling her overbearing. Many more holding her up as, as we said mother of the year and you can certainly be the judge of that and you can hear in her son's words it made a difference to him.

Also, top national and civil rights in local Baltimore state leaders are meeting with the mayor of Baltimore, (inaudible). That's happening today and decision has been to address plans moving forward to support the city.

This as a task force in charge of investigating the death of Freddie Gray has now given its reports to the prosecutors and the cry for justice continues.

Case groups from across the country are now working overtime. They are trying to figure out ways to avert a national crisis and heal the racial division in their communities. And I'm joined now by a key player in this, Bishop Harry Jackson, he's a senior pastor at the Hope Christian Church in Washington and the chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition and you've just returned from a summit of faith and community leaders that was in Orlando, Florida.

The big topic Bishop is how to heal the racial divide. Is this about race? Is this about poverty? Is it all the same? Is it all one?

BISHOP HARRY JACKSON, SR. PASTOR, HOPE CHRISTIAN CHURCH: But America really has a class, generational poverty and then a race problem. When the three converged, there's an explosion. So, there's a short term need for us to come together. Leaders representing over 40 million Christians gathered, Billy Graham Association was there with their Adopt a Block program focus on the family was among us, Bishop T.D. Jakes, he's one of the conveners in the African-American community.

BANFIELD: But what can you all do that you're not already doing?

[12:55:00] JACKSON: Well, what we can do is highlight best practices. For example, if we come together and multiply what we're doing and make it more multi-racial, we can touch a city.

There is a group called Somebody Cares Temple which at a certain day comes and gives food in poor communities. There are other examples of people that are reaching out.

In Orlando where we met, there is a transitional housing place of people coming out of prison that's up and operating. But what we have is all these tremendous works that are being done but they need to be focused like a laser beam at at risk communities.

Right now a team of people willing to come and support the faith community here by rebuilding some of the businesses that have been torn up and really bring service to the church, but one church doesn't have it all.

BANFIELD: One church and one voice, but with all of you together I wish you the best. So thank you for doing this kind of work.

JACKSON: Thank you.

BANFIELD: And we need more of you around. JACKSON: That's very kind of you to say.

BANFIELD: Best of luck as you move forward in this endeavor...

JACKSON: Thank you very much.

BANFIELD: ... with your colleagues as well. Bishop, thank you.

And thank you everyone. Live in Baltimore, I'm Ashleigh Banfield, please stay tuned though. Wolf starts right after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)