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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

North Carolina Shark Attacks Detailed; Angola 3 Defendant's Case Examined; Spokane NAACP Head to Step Down Amid Controversy; Connecticut Gun Control Law Discussed; Latest on New York Escapees Manhunt. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 15, 2015 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:02] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN HOST: Two teenagers each loosing an arm yesterday in attacks that were separated by 90 minutes.

Official say they cannot be sure if the same shark mould both teenagers but they added it does seem likely. This comes after an attack last Thursday at Ocean Isle Beach North Carolina. People at the beach said they saw a shark between 4 and 6 feet swimming in knee deep water, 4 and 6 feet long knee deep water, imagine that site.

That happened right before it hit a 13 year old girl.

I want to bring in George Burgess his the Director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Thank you so much for being with me, you know, whenever you hear these stories, it's always at the beginning of the summer and it seems to just have a huge ripple effect across the nation. Can you put these attacks in perspective?

GEORGE BURGESS, DIR. FLORIDA PROGRAM FOR SHARK RESEARCH: Well of course nobody wants to see an attack anytime.

Last year we had more than 50 of these incidents in the United States alone. So to put in perspective we're not seeing anywhere close to that member this year. But of course you have a serious attack for two like this. And it's going to change the perspective.

So that's said, most attacks are not like these, most of them are quick grabs and let goes. But this was an attack, where two attacks by sharks that were larger and obviously meant business.

BANFIELD: So can I ask you the two attacks in which these teenagers both lost a limb were apparently about 30 miles apart. Is it feasible within that time frame of 90 minute, so that could be the same shark that did both of those attack?

BURGESS: Well I suppose it's possible but not necessarily probable. But the facts of the matter is, is there were something going on in that region in general because remember there was also a bite last -- late last week on a boogie boarder.

So the conditions are good there for the sharks clearly for one reason or another and at this point it's obviously in the best interest that the communities to be very much aware that there's a one or more large shark in the area.

BANFIELD: That's a boogie board right now, we're just looking at on the screen that you were referencing. I just want to ask you about what you just mentioned the conditions and it significant to mention that the Ocean Crest Pier which was where one of these attacks happened, is a popular area for fishing and chumming the water as a normal behavior. And so well that sounds like the, you know, that the likely cause of what would've attract the sharks it's not different than any other time. It's always been a popular fishing destination, they've always been chumming the waters in that area. So how would that all of the sudden attracts this kind of activity?

BURGESS: Well of course we can't lay the blame on that necessarily. But obviously fishing activities and human immerse and activities via swimming or surfing are not really compatible deal.

So any community should try to separate them as much as possible. That's it -- that said, sharks are migratory animals they move great distances and regularly. And, you know, what -- we can't get in inside the head of this shark or these sharks is to what got into them to bite humans.

But the reality is, is that most likely there's some environmental conditions, what's attracting these sharks to that area and whether it's manmade or natural. There's something there that's keeping the sharks around.

So that's in common for us humans to adapt too, simply because when we enter the see it's a wilderness experiences. We're not talking about backyard pool situation. So when we enter the sea we have to accept risk and work around those risks and of course as a wilderness there's going to be larger predators. So whether it's lions or bears or sharks we're going to watch out for them rather than they going to watch out for us.

BANFIELD: Well they have said they're going to try to catch that shark whether is that shark is responsible is still in question.

George Burgess, thank you and you're nodding head, no. I agree how do you catch that shark. Easy in them movie it's not so much...

BURGESS: Yeah, it's simply doesn't happen that way, that shark maybe 80 miles away by now.

BANFIELD: Yeah, I appreciate your insight in this. Thank you so much for weighing in. I also wanted to just alert our viewers in system statistics in case you're wondering just how prevalent our shark attacks. We have the 2014 stat for you. You can see in Florida 28, Hawaii 7, South Carolina 5, North Carolina 4, 4 in California as well, 1 in Texas and 1 Georgia. And that's from George Burgess' Organization.

[12:35:00] So we thank him for his insight and also for his statistics. I also want to bring you something else that's just in to CNN's office. And that is the 911 call that came in as one of these teenagers was being attacked. Let's listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the left is completely missing and also a bite for the left leg, 13 year old (inaudible).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. OK, left arm is completely missing, (inaudible).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Also a bite took a left a leg...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right, the left leg. OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, you're listening all now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: So again that's just information that's brand new into us here at CNN. I can't tell you which of the attacks that pertains too, which the attacks that call pertains too. But there was that additional information that that person who had suffered that bite to the limb that rendered the limb missing also suffered a bite to the leg as well.

So just some new elements that are coming in we'll continue to gather those elements and we'll report them to you as we can make more sense of them. Obviously the strange part of the story is the beach is still open. Bring us a lot more questions.

We'll continue to watch.

Coming up next breaking news out of Washington State where the NAACP leader who was outed as a white woman who had been presenting herself as a black woman. She has just announced that she's stepping down.

More details coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:40: 14] BANFIELD: I want to take you back into this breaking news that we brought you earlier this hour, in the case of the white woman who for years has portrayed herself as a black woman Rachel Dolezal President of the Spokane Washington NAACP Chapter has now announced that she is officially stepping down.

This after her parents outed her race and after her adopted brother went public. In a letter to the local NAACP chapter Ms. Dolezal said attention to her personal identity was diverging attention away from the groups causes and the groups mission.

So that is the breaking news in that perplexing case. And then we also want to take you back to the search for those two escaped murderers from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Upstate New York.

Law enforcement officials have searched 8,300 acres, that's 13 square miles and here is what they have to show for it, really not much of anything. Since last week there has been really almost no trace so to speak of Richard Matt and David Sweat short of some candy wrappers and some depressed graph.

Person we have seen plenty of those is this woman Joyce Mitchell with her brand new attorney by her side she appeared in court yet again this morning. These are brand new pictures of her appearance today. The prison Tailor accused of helping her killer buddies break free and had she not come down with a case of cold feet, she may have been with them right now in their escape.

Clinton County District Attorney says that she was planning to drive with them seven hours under the cover of darkness to a predetermined location. She's not give up that location though she says she didn't know it. At least that's what the D.A. is telling us.

I want to bring in Matthew Fogg who is a Retired Chief Deputy U.S. Marshals and Former Member of the U.S. Marshal Special Operations Group. And a lot of work in tracking people who go missing on purpose and shouldn't be so.

Matthew Fogg, thank you so much for being with me today.

I just want to ask you about these new developments that we got today regarding the fact that they may -- these prisoners may in fact have found some power tools along the way which may have assisted them in getting out of the prison. Does that change the metric at all in terms of where we find ourselves now? Two guys on the loose and we're going in the week two.

MATTHEW FOGG, CHIEF DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL (RET.): Well, I mean the first thing if that they found some tools along the way it helped them to get out, but the bottom line is they're out now.

So, when you're talking about these guys telling this particular female what they were going to do. I think there was a plan all along that tell her one thing and to do something else. I mean that would be the most smartest thing specially when you're talking about two guys, one guy has escaped out of prison, he's the savvy person, he knows what he's doing.

I think they have some help on the outside. I believe is two things, they either hooker down in a particular location where they got food and water, they know they can't move for at least a month or either they are just out of the area.

And they told her one thing so that they knew that the authorities will be talking to her.

BANFIELD: So interestingly not the authorities also told CNN in particular the D.A. that if Ms. Mitchell was that manipulatable that others may have been too. So do you think they maybe getting help currently or that they were only getting that help to break out?

FOGG: I think they were getting help to break out. I think they took time, I think they had some people on the outside, I think they knew exactly what they're going to do. And I know they know that this was a one in lifetime shot. If they have to do this thing and obviously they were able to plan this thing will, because they were in honest section, they cut this holes out, they were able to go back and forth and work on their plan. I mean this is an elaborate escape that really when you're talking about being able to get out of your cell, go look at the spot and make sure everything is in place, that's why they left this sticky (ph) because there were so breech and confident that this thing is going to work.

We got her thinking, I want to tell the authorities one thing, we know we're going in another direction as far as the candy wrappers and the press grass.

I mean the bottom line is that could've been any number of people. And they might put the dogs might picked up a scent. But I believe there's two things, I like I said, they got to either be somewhere where they've had time for have disposition, this location dug in, they well bedded, they got food and water or they have gone to Canada and/or either Mexico.

But they're definitely out of the area.

BANFIELD: It's fascinating, I think these -- and the reporting over the weekend suggesting those candy wrappers may have been in fact traced back to the prison commissary which would make perfect sense if they had plan to be on the run for a while. But we'll continue to update.

Chief Deputy thanks so much for time. I'm sure appreciate your insight.

FOGG: Appreciate it.

BANFIELD: Has a Connecticut gun control law actually done what it was designed to do. We've got some eye opening numbers and some crime stats that you need to hear.

[12:45:08] Coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: It's been a hit of debate for decades to gun control laws actually reduce gun violence. Brand new study could be shedding some light on this issue, research comes from John Hopkins University that says Connecticut's 1995 law that regulates handgun purchases may just be linked to a dramatic reduction in the states firearm homicide rate.

The study found that the law may have helped reduce firearm homicide by as much as 40 percent too. A law requires a background check an 8 hour gun safety class and an also raise the minimum purchasing age from 18 to 21.

In the mean time another study from the group of researchers shows that Missouri is 2007 repeal of its permitting requirement may have actually increase the states firearm homicide rate by as much as 25 percent. Joining me now is one of the lead researchers on these studies the Director of the John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research Daniel Webster in Washington.

Daniel, thank you so much for being with me. And I know you among everybody else who looks at statistics the numbers know that demographics and population and the national gun homicide rate, all of those things can actually skew numbers. How can you be so sure that they the numbers you have out of Connecticut show what you say they show.

[12:50:04] DANIEL WEBSTER, DIRECTOR JOHNS HOPKINS CENTER ON GUN POLICY: Yes, without a doubt, it's a clearly a challenging task to try to estimate what effective public policy is on something like a homicide rate. We don't have a luxury of doing experiment in laboratories to define answer to that.

What we have to do is gather the best available data and in essence of forecasting, test statistical models to determine which models best predict how homicides change over time in place.

In the case of this Connecticut study, we use a methodology that identified the states that had homicide trends that most closely tracked what was going on in Connecticut during the 11 years prior to their passage of this handgun purchaser licensing law.

And we are able to have a really close prediction of their trends prior to the law. We didn't forecast out with these other states that has such similar homicide trends to forecast what the impact of the law was.

BANFIELD: So I'm just looking at another state, Massachusetts, which passed a gun law more recently in 1998, and it seems that that the homicide -- the gun related homicides actually increased, so that was sort of flying the faith of what happened in neighboring Connecticut.

WEBSTER: Well, that is a very different law. It actually had nothing to do with background check requirements or handgun purchaser permitting, so that's a very different law.

What we found in our research is policies that extend background checks for handgun purchases particularly when they do it through a permitting process that involves applications to apply directly from local law enforcement seem to be quite effective in the deterring diversions of guns to criminals.

BANFIELD: Daniel Webster, its fascinating reading. Thanks so much for being with us today.

WEBSTER: Thank you.

BANFIELD: Much appreciated. His murder conviction was thrown out, not once, but twice. A federal court orders him to freed from prison and never retried. So, why is this man still not only in prison but in solitary confinement. I wish I'd say in appellate court made that order. So the ordeal of Albert Woodfox when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:56:33] BANFIELD: ... take effect basically to have that order to affect over the state objections but it did not. So, the last of the so-called Angola 3 is going to remain behind bars, again, in solitary, with no valid convictions against him.

Carine Williams is one of Woodfox's lawyers and she joins me live now.

So, let me get to straight, this is a man who has been tried twice and indicted three times, most of the witnesses in the original case are dead. There's been a lot of criticism about the evidence in the original case against him, and yet, the state seems held bent on going forward with trial number three. Am I correct?

CARINE WILLIAMS, ATTORNEY FOR ALBERT WOODFOX: Right. That's right. That appears to be the case of the stage and it, you know, we don't have any legit valid explanation for that. It seems not to be the most efficient use of Louisiana's sources at this stage where Mr. Woodfox has served over 40 years, under the harshest conditions possible.

BANFIELD: Why by the way he's been in solitary for so much of his incarceration?

WILLIAMS: He was at the outset. He and the Angola 3 when the murder happened were immediately wrongly targeted in the absence of any evidence for -- as corporates of that murder and they were all immediately put in solitary confinement.

Mr. King was never convicted of that crime because he actually was not in the prison at the time the crime happened. But that did not stop Louisiana from incarceration him in solitary for 27 years before was released.

Mr. Wallace's conviction was overturned finally in 2013 but he passed three days after what happened.

BANFIELD: And -- just so everyone is clear, there was a prison guard who was viciously stabbed and murdered...

WILLIAMS: OK.

BANFIELD: ... at the time that your client, Mr. Woodfox, with incarceration for armed robbery, am I correct?

WILLIAMS: That's correct

BANFIELD: About serving long sentence ultimately serve about -- was to serve about 20 years of that sentence?

WILLIAMS: That's correct.

BANFIELD: And the Angola 3, was the three inmates who are accused Mr. Woodfox being one of them, the only one still left in prison for this, but the widow of Brent Miller who is that guard actually is in support of Mr. Woodfox being release. And can I just read if I can something that she has said, "I think it is time the state stop acting like there is any evidence that Albert Woodfox killed Brent. I hope the Appeals Court cares about the evidence and cares about justice."

So, the Appeals Court had said, We will leave him in solitary until the state decides that this action want to go through with trial number three, do we know that the state really is going to -- I mean, they're very, very strident in their language. They think he's a cold blooded murder and they don't want him out. But yet, there's so few things they can bring against him in the actual case as many years later.

WILLIAMS: That's true. I mean the case against Mr. Woodfox was always weak. Today, 40 years after the underlying crime happened, all of the state key witnesses have deceased. All of Mr. Woodfox's alibi witnesses are deceased.

BANFIELD: Do you think he's going to get out because of that?

WILLIAMS: We certainly expect that he will prevail as the state moves forward to trial. But what is now the issue is whether or not they should be allowed to retry him. I mean how can you have a trial that meets the standards of an American trial...

BANFIELD: You have to...

WILLIAMS: Under our justice system is no witnesses were alive.

BANFIELD: Keep us updated. I mean there's two things here, he either is not retried and let go or he is retried with a very weak case and we'll see what the outcome is, will you come back and tell?

WILLIAMS: We will.

[13:00:01] BANFIELD: Carine, thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thank you.

BANFIED: Nice to meet you and thanks for coming in.

And thank you for everyone as well. Brianna Keilar is going to take it from here. She's stepping in for Wolf. See you again tomorrow.