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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Examining the Califonia Oil Spill; Some of Hillary Clinton's E- mails to be Released; Changes Made to Charges Against Baltimore Police Officers in Freddie Gray Death; Reality TV Personality Allegedly Molested Young Girls. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired May 22, 2015 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:32:05] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN HOST: Beaches in Santa Barbara County are usually packed for Memorial Day weekend. But unfortunately this coming weekend is going to be quite a different story in one particular area of your country, and that's the reason, take a look right there.

These beaches in Santa Barbara are a complete oily mess right now. Crews are working around the clock trying to clean up black sticky sludge. And this is how you do it, you scoop it, you bag it. Doesn't look much better from the air either as our drone shots shows, ah, oh, Lord, miles and miles of beach are like this.

This is what it look like in the sky, folks. There all those people working diligently. But look at the job that they have ahead of them. Man, that is just awful.

By the way, you're just looking at one small section. We're talking about beaches that stretch at least nine miles at last count.

Joining me live from the Refugio State Beach in California is CNN's Stephanie Elam. The picture we look at when we see your live shot it looks beautiful but I have seen close up shots of those waves turning black. The beaches that, you know, it looks like it's a needle in a haystack in terms of your little, you know, shovel trying to scoop it up. How much headway are they making in cleaning this up?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the good thing about it, Ashleigh, is that they were able to get out here right as this disaster started. So when you look out here now, you can see down along this little beach stretch that we're on that there's oil on some of these rocks. They've been out there since daybreak with shovels, with rakes, cleaning it up in their hazmat suits, doing their best to get it out of the way of the surf has it comes in and out.

But as you saw of those shots that we're showing you earlier, all kinds of marine life is bouncing around, taking to the water here.

And this oil that has been in the water has been permeating westward. It's been moving away from the shore out into the water which makes it a lot harder to find. So the beach is look a lot better. But, you know, it's little drops of oil that are still permeating this shore here, that can still have a huge effect on the marine life here.

BANFIELD: Oh, the marine life because I remember hearing a statement that was released saying that "No wildlife has been affected by the spill," but there been plenty of pictures rolling in to various news outlet showing dead birds, dead wildlife and -- you know, wildlife that's flying off covered in black, pelicans covered in black. So that's clearly not the issue.

Talk to me about the company and what it saying about its role in this, its environmental violations in the past, and exactly where they stand.

ELAM: Right. Well, they have had violations in the past. The EPA has said that they are -- in early 2000 era they had citations at least three times in four different states for violations and they were paid fines to go ahead and get their pipelines reenforced. Of course, they're saying that they're sorry that this happened and the investigation continues into this.

The thing to keep in mind is that this is not the first time that there is been an issue in Santa Barbara County like this. They have seen it before.

[12:35:01] And that's why there have been such regulations so much move to make this offshore drilling location safer as far as bringing oil in that. We saw throughout the whole country over the last few decades.

Now, one thing I can say to you too, though, Ashleigh, just to put into perspective, the spill just about 100,000 gallons. Think about the Gulf of Mexico that was about 210 million gallons.

BANFIELD: Yes.

ELAM: So just gives you a bit of an idea there.

BANFIELD: And perspective is important unless it's your backyard and it's your beach. I mean watching some of those people who just came out in their flip flops scoop up oil because they just hated what they were seeing. It's amazing.

Stephanie, thank you. Keep us posted throughout the day on how that effort goes.

Our Stephanie Elam doing the job live. It's not a fun job either because it's stinks when you were covering an oil spill in many senses of that expression.

Coming up next, I'm not wasting any more time in Baltimore.

Less than five weeks after Freddie Gray died, all six police officers have now been officially indicted by a grand jury, but there are some discrepancies between what they were charged with and what they were indicted for, does that speak to anything of significance of where this case is going? We'll talk about that next.

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BANFIELD: Breaking news, this just in to CNN. We have just heard from the State Department that today is a very important day for reading because they're going to release some e-mails from Hillary Clinton's e-mail account from the time that she was secretary of state.

We're being told that exactly 296 of those e-mails are going to be released and we were told about 12:30 Eastern Time which is right about now.

These are the e-mails that were reviewed by the Select Committee on Benghazi early this year and now they will be available to you, to me, to everybody else in the general public to peruse at will.

Mrs. Clinton had said that want those e-mails made public. Her critics have accused her of being less than transparent about what she shared and sent during the investigation of the Benghazi terrorist attacks.

[12:40:08] I want to bring in CNN's Chris Frates who's live in Washington D.C.

Chris I just feel I like reported last week that the state department put out this deadline saying we're going to have this all ready for you, January 2016 and then shazam a federal judge rules and then changes that up.

CHRIS FRATES, CNN INVESTIGATION CORRESPONDENT: Well that's right and there's just kind of two issues here Ashleigh. The one issue is, there's 30,000 e-mails in total that Clinton has turned over to the State Department.

And there is a discussion about when those need to be produced. But the State Department has always said that they would produce sooner rather than later these -- the subset of 300 e-mails.

And these 300 e-mails have to do with the Benghazi attack in Libya. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi was attacked. And these e- mails all have to do with Libya policy. These were easier to isolate because they've already been turned over to the congress who is investigating these attack.

And that kind of brings us to where we are. These e-mails were released just a few minutes ago about 300 of these e-mails. And already we have democrats and republicans trying to frame the debate about what these e-mails say.

And the important thing to note here is there's no bombshell revelation Ashleigh, there's nothing that is a huge flag inside of these e-mails. And democrats are pointing to that, they're saying that there's no evidence that Secretary Clinton ever issued a stand down order. There's no evidence that there was never elicit weapons program that the secretary was running out of Benghazi. And so democrats are saying all of these conspiracy theories that republicans have been floating. There's no evidence in these e-mails to suggest that was true.

Now, however republicans turn around...

BANFIELD: Yeah, I think, the big you got to say that there's a big however because a lot of these, I think the highest classifications of these messages are called sensitive but unclassified.

But when you're a secretary of state, you'll have a boatload of classified material. They going to be able to release all that.

FRATES: Well we -- what they're releasing is what they can release, is these 300 e-mails. And these are all we're going to get to look at. And even in these 300 e-mails Ashleigh.

The republicans are pointing to the idea that there were security concerns and issues. They highlight about eight of these e-mails where they think that Clinton was talking about security on the ground in Libya.

BANFIELD: OK.

FRATES: It's important to point out that about half of those e-mails are from 2011. So that's about a year before the attack happened.

BANFIELD: OK.

FRATES: And then there are some around 2012 as well.

BANFIELD: And again it's only 296 of what you just reported 30,000 total, so a lots more ahead in the story.

Chris, thank you. Will you continue to prose those e-mails and join Wolf in the next hour, I know he wants too, a lot more on this, in his program.

FRATES: We're going to keep looking Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: OK Chris Frates live for us thank you for that again. Wolf Blitzer is going to do a fantastic job on this -- its right up his ally. Because we will help as we like to say.

Wolf coming up about 18 minutes from now. We'll we right back after this.

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[12:46;34] BANFIELD: The grand jury is handed down indictments against all six of those Baltimore police officers in the death of Freddie Gray. But here's what's weird, it's not exactly the same as the charges. The indictments are a little bit different that you heard earlier this month. This could indicate a shift in the thinking, could indicate something else too that maybe the grand jury wasn't so kin on what there was been.

Prosecutors presented evidence over two weeks to that grand jury and in the end that jury drops the false imprison charges for three of the offices and added reckless endangerment for the whole a lot of them.

Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby explained the changes yesterday afternoon have a look.

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MARILYN MOSBY, BALTIMORE STATE'S ATTORNEY: Additional information has been discovered, and as is often the case during an ongoing investigation, charges can and should be revised based upon the evidence.

These past two weeks, my team has been presenting evidence to a grand jury that just today returned indictments against all six officers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: So the officers are going to be arraigned on July the 2nd mark it on your calendar, this will be a big news event when that happens.

Andrew Alperstein is a Defense Attorney in Baltimore and he joins me now live on the program. And HLN Legal Analyst Joey Jackson is back with me as well.

Joey I'm going to turn to you first, just to ask you, what, is that odd to see indictments that are different from the charges?

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: No, not necessarily but I think this is certainly a big move towards the prosecution and here's why, with the false imprisonment charge, it becomes about the knife because if the knife was legal then the police say "I didn't falsely imprison anyone." I had a right on the Illinois versus Wardlow, United States Supreme Court case in 2000.

And it say, if somebody is an a high crime area and they flee because it's a suggestive of guilt not indicative of guilt but because it's suggestive of guilt you can go and chase the (inaudible) and freeze them. But in order to arrest them they have to have done something of a criminal variety.

In the event of the knife is legal what do they do is a crime. But this takes out that whole equation Ashleigh because now from the prosecution's theory in perspective it is not about the knife, it is about the conduct as to Freddie Gray, how did he end up dead and that what these charges are all about and that was the prosecution is going to be seeking to prove.

BANFIELD: So let me you make perfect senses, you always do Professor Jackson.

JACKSON: From time to time.

BANFIELD: Every single day but I am pretty confounded by the nation, Andrew jump in on this, the notion that you can remove charges like false imprisonment. But keep charges of illegal arrest because I thought the false imprisonment meant because he wasn't arrested illegally, therefore he was imprisoned, you know, illegally.

So I'm not sure it just seem inconsistent to me where am I wrong?

ANDREW ALPERSTEIN, BALTIMORE DEFENSE ATTORNEY: So that -- there's not a crime called false arrest. What Marilyn Mosby said yesterday was misconduct in office which is a general doing something you're not suppose to do, or not doing something you are suppose to do obligation on the police.

She said that the basis of that was a false arrest. It's a distinction but it's probably distinction without a big difference. You know, look the false imprisonment charge dumbfounded everybody for the exact reasons that Joey was talking about.

I mean the police when they falsely arrest somebody typically what would happen if it's a violation of a constitutional right. The evidence is suppressed in a case, you can't use it, the police that's the consequence not that the police get arrested.

[12:50:02] And the police have all been talking about that here. I've talked to dozens of police officers. And everybody is a guess that that was originally a charge.

So I'm not shocked to see that go away. As far as whether the state asked for it or the grand jury did it, the grand jury almost always does what the state's attorney asks. And this is a hearing without a judge, without defendant or defense attorney, it's not public.

So what happens is the state's attorney revised those charges. And she says as much, Ashleigh. When she said, you know, we've been reviewing the charges for two weeks and we've made changes, I mean that's what went on.

BANFIELD: They do that, they do. They get more evidence. They find alterations to the evidence. They get a lot of -- real quickly...

JACKSON: Yup.

BANFIELD: ... the reckless engagement. You do this like in 10 second.

JACKSON: Absolutely.

BANFIELD: Every single one of them now facing reckless endangerment, is this kitchen sink approach?

JACKSON: Well, not so much. Is this an approach that speaks to what was the specific conduct of the officers? Did your conduct endanger the party who was ultimately killed, and that's Freddie Gray? And so, it's going to all be about how he died. Were you acting negligently? Were you acting recklessly? And what specifically did you do that led to his death? That's going to be the equation, not the knife. It's a big change here.

BANFIELD: I have a statement here from Gene Ryan, who is the President of the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of the Police.

I'm going to read it for you, "All citizens are innocent until proven guilty, including these six officers. Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge Number 3 is asking for the community support for the thousands of men and women of the Baltimore Police Department, who protect and serve our neighborhoods everyday. Together, we can move our city forward."

Certainly, not speaking to any of the specifics, but speaking to the mood of that community, where you are Andrew.

Thank you so much for being with us. It's so nice to see you Andrew Alperstein and Joey Jackson as always.

JACKSON: Thank you, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Have a great Memorial Day weekend both of you, and thank you.

Coming up next, the T.V. Reality shocker, and, you know, that's not hyperbole in this case. The eldest child of those "19 kids and Counting" show is now responding to child molestation allegations involving family members, and the apology is nothing short of stunning.

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[12:55:49] BANFIELD: Aaron Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to witness intimidation, for allegedly shooting his right hand man, Alexander Bradley. And that person, by the way, was shot in the face back in 2013. But we couldn't help notice something during his appearance, something different about him this time. It is a tattoo on his neck. Zoom in. And you got it folks, it says lifetime.

We're guessing he's not referring to the T.V. network Lifetime. I don't know if they get it in the prison where his hanging. He's been sentenced to life, a life time in prison for the murder of Odin Lloyd.

And it's not over yet either, because there's a trial date that could be set in a couple of weeks for another round of killings, and that's the 2012 double murder case and he is facing that down, as well.

It's hard to defend when you do that kind of thing. Maybe he just doesn't care. That was quick, too.

A shocking revelation has come from the famous reality family "The Duggars." Josh Duggar is resigning from his division of the Family Research Counsel, after reports surface alleging that he had molested young girls more than a decade ago. Duggar is the eldest of the children on the TLC Show 19 Kids and Counting. He is also a big supporter of the GOP. And he likes to take photos of himself on the stamp with big GOP Party Leaders. He is apologizing in a Facebook post saying, "As a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret."

Joining me now is CNN's Legal Analyst Danny Cevallos.

OK. So, the details are remarkable. Cnn.com has this incredible write-up. We're not just talking people he didn't know, we're talking members of his own family and maybe some other young person. These are all teenagers. And there is this suggestion that before it came to light, before the police, his parents knew about this and had taken their own action to try to extricate him from the family.

I think my question, Danny, is why no charges if there's a full admission of all of this and the police report back in 06, why no charges?

DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, first, let's start with the child, right, the child defendant. In many states, not all, and this can be changed by statute in your individual state, the general rule is a juvenile court loses jurisdiction at some predetermine age, let's just say, it's 18. So after the age of 18, adults, as a general rule, cannot be prosecuted for crimes they committed while juvenile crimes that would have been within the exclusive jurisdiction of juvenile court.

So the lesson to be learned is if you can avoid detection for your crime until after your 18th birthday or whenever you become an adult in your state, then you may be immune for -- from prosecution...

BANFIELD: Yeah.

CEVALLOS: ...for what you did as a juvenile.

Now, when it comes to parents...

BANFIELD: Now, there's the big issue

CEVALLOS: ... that's a different issue. Right, absolutely. Parents can conceal this.

BANFIELD: There were so many children in that house and they're living -- I mean, look, they made no secret about it. They all shared bedrooms. They were -- I think, at one point long ago in the series, they had three bedroom house and two bathrooms with 19 kids.

CEVALLOS: It would not be difficult for a prosecutor to make out a charge against a parent who willfully conceals the criminal activity of their juvenile and fails to get them help for whatever their sexual -- they may have some sort of mental illness or something...

BANFIELD: Now, they...

CEVALLOS: ...that leads them to that problem. BANFIELD: What you just said, fails to get them help. They said one thing, and actually did another, they said that they had thought help for him in some kind of counseling. But in fact, Michelle Duggar, the mother, I think, revealed later that they just sent him to be with the friends.

So there's -- I mean what was it in their minds that is helping, "I'm not criminal?"

CEVALLOS: Well, it becomes down to what was -- it raises the question, what is the adequacy? What is an adequate form of reporting, or getting the child help, because that is a very wide spectrum?

And many parents, as we know, parents have many different ways of parenting. However, there is only one way to prosecute in that jurisdiction. And that prosecutor may have a different view. And if there is any still statute of limitation issues, they may look into that but it, absolutely, is a case by case analysis.

BANFIELD: It's amazing that the statements that have come out saying, you know, I did it and I'm sorry, you know, what. I'm not saying exactly what I did but I made some mistakes. It's a remarkable story, anyway.

[13:00:01] Danny, thank you, happy Memorial Day. Have a good weekend.

CEVALLOS: Happy Memorial Day to you.

BANFIELD: Thank you all as well. It's been nice to have you with me.

Dana Bash is sitting in for Wolf, and she starts right now.