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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield
Air Marshal Suicide Numbers Examined; Birmingham, AL, Police Officer Beaten at Traffic Stop; Connecticut Supreme Court Ends Captial Punishment; Death Row Stories Preview; Cuba Embassy Reopens. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired August 14, 2015 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:11] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: And is there any concern on the outside that it could be unrelated, you know, near duels and nafarias evil doers for instance.
You know, we a saw a church shooting that was predominantly, allegedly about racism, just a young man who wanted to kill black people.
Is there any concern that a movie that highlights a lot of the concerned -- that troubled individual had might actually bring out the copycat notion at a theater that airs the movie.
ANDREW SMITH, LAPD COMMANDER: We'll we certainly hope not. And we don't have any information that that kind of thing is going to occur. But we're not in the optimism business as my chief always says.
So we have to be prepared for anything. We have to do everything we can to make sure it safe and to prepare for all of those different contingencies of anything that could possibly happen.
BANFIELD: It's so good to you to join me, thank you Commander Smith. And I hope you have a good weekend and a safe one.
SMITH: Nice and quite.
BANFIELD: Yeah. Coming up next, why are so many U.S. air marshals taking their own life. And why are we only just now hearing about it?
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BANFIELD: A lot of disturbing number to share with you here, involving the men and women with the very top job of keeping you safe in the skies.
[12:35:01] CNN has learned that 10 U.S. air marshals have committed suicide in the years since 9/11. That number is blamed mainly on the stress of the job. But it could be something more. And the caveat department in charge of them may have been hiding this problem for a long time now.
CNN's Drew Griffin went to find out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On July 31st 2013 a federal air marshal step outside this Syracuse New York hotel. Put his service pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.
The suicide committed within hours of the armed air marshal's next scheduled mission, to fly on a commercial U.S. air flight from Syracuse New York to Washington D.C.
Since 2002, CNN has learned 10 federal air marshals have committed suicide. Several more have died in questionable accidents. And some armed federal air marshals sleep deprived and mentally exhausted from rolling flight schedules are breaking down on assignments turning the medications and alcohol.
Would I sitting on a plane want a stress out federal air marshal? Is potentially suicidal air marshal on that plane with me.
SONYA HIGHTOWER, RETIRED FEDERAL AIR MARSHAL: He would not.
GRIFFIN: Sonya Hightower, a recently retired federal air marshal says that the threat of a suicidal air marshal is just the beginning.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sit down.
GRIFFIN: On board an aircraft the armed federal air marshal must respond at a moments notice to any threat.
And right now she say some air marshals are falling apart.
HIGHTOWER: Air marshals are exhausted, they're having memory loss, they're being forgetful, they can't move, they can't respond fast to things.
And the agency was not prepared for someone to document that as well as Harvard did in their study.
GRIFFIN: This is that study it's from 2012. TSA (inaudible) got the results and had it classified as sensitive security information.
CNN obtained a copy of the report and the results are disturbing.
Seventy-five percent of air marshals flying on domestic missions were sleep efficient. On international runs the figure rose to more 84 percent.
And the job were it's critical to be alert and accurate at a moments noticed, the study finds the acute and chronic lack of sleep substantially degrades a federal air marshal's ability to react and think quickly.
And it gets even worse. The study conducted by the Division of Sleep Medicine Brigham and Women's Hospital in Harvard Medical School found half of federal air marshals take some medication or supplement to get to sleep.
Others commented they turn to alcohol. Federal air marshals responded the survey question saying "Most of the sleep patterns I have are broken. This is not healthy. I need to take some sleep aids. Alcohol at drinks mixed with sleeping pills."
One air marshal in response to a question asking if he consumed five or six drinks per week responded saying, "Give us a break Harvard, 8- 12 per night and are overnighter and the same just to sleep at home."
The study says "It is likely a significant proportion of FAMs air marshals suffer from undiagnosed sleep disorders and puts them at increased risk of self injury, higher rates of fatigue related motor vehicle accidents and greater incidence of serious errors."
Do you fear that it will take a catastrophe to get the attention of somebody?
HIGHTOWER: I hope to God we don't have to go through that.
We have the ability to fix this agency. We have the ability to change these things, we can and we can do it pretty fast. But nobody is listening.
GRIFFIN: In April of last year, a federal air marshal sitting at his desk in this field office in New Jersey shot himself in the leg.
JOHN CASARETTI, PRESIDENT AIR MARSHAL ASSOCIATION: I can tell you that that was a cry for help.
GRIFFIN: John Casaretti, is a senior federal air marshal and national president of the Air Marshal Association.
CASARETTI: We don't know how many suicides there have been here. We don't know how many have been covered up. We don't know how many attempted suicides we had.
GRIFFIN: We wanted to speak to the federal air marshal service about the suicides but our interview request was turned down. Instead the TSA issued this statement. Saying "It is committed to providing air marshals with the resources and support they need to carry out their mission and any loss of life is unacceptable."
The statement goes on to say that "The air marshal service maintains a robust system about medical including mandatory physicals and psychological assistance programs which are readily available to the workforce and their families."
CNN has learned of only incident during an actual flight. Sources say an air marshal had to be restrained by other members of a security team during a flight from Africa, where an intoxicated air marshal got into an altercation with the flight crew.
[12:40:01] Casaretti says it is the grueling and in his opinion pointless schedules of the federal air marshals that are leading to mental exhaustion.
Are these suicides the result of that?
CASARETTI: I believe so, yeah I'm sure of it, that I have no doubts, I have no doubts.
GRIFFIN: A TSA official insists air marshal schedules ensure appropriate rest periods. As for the study that shows an overwhelming number of sleep deprived air marshals. An official told CNN recommendations were adapted including quote "The creation of an educational training DVD."
Not enough say air marshals who say they are wasting their lives and some even taking them, carrying out a pointless mission.
Drew Griffin, CNN, Orlando.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BANFIELD: Coming up next. Another state bans the death penalty saying that it violates the constitution. That means a list of rapist and murderers sentenced to death in Connecticut will instead get some pretty good news, if you call spending the rest of your natural life in prison. Good news, of the details next.
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BANFIELD: A man in Alabama now faces attempted murder charges for beating a police detective unconscious using the officer's own gun.
Janard Cunningham is being held without bond in Birmingham.
[12:45:03] Police say Cunningham attacked the detective during a traffic stop, grabbed his service weapon and then beat him with it before fleeing that scene and to make things worst several witnesses took pictures of the injured police officer instead of trying to help him. Many of those pictures popped up on social media sites.
A Birmingham police lieutenant said his department is happy that their detective is now out of the hospital.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LT.SCOTT THURMOND, BIRMINGHAM ALABAMA POLICE DEPT.: Officers want to make sure that they got home safely each and everyday. In order to do that there's a lot of things that we have to do to maintain our safety and safety for the other people in the public.
So a lot of time that I think the publishers doesn't understand the things that we were picking at them, but that's not that case, we're just trying to maintain our safety. They need to understand that we have a job to do.
Now they want to stop and consider what it would be like if they didn't have law enforcement officers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BANFIELD: A police union spokesman said the detective who was beaten chose not to shoot at Janard Cunningham because he said he didn't want to be the next cop accused of killing an unarmed man. In another story the death penalty in Connecticut has been outlawed. The state Supreme Court declared that unconstitutional. And now 11 convicts who were on death row in that state are no longer have been spared.
The governor abolished capital punishment in 2012. But inmates who are already on death row when that law passed were not spared they were considered exemptions and could still be in line for execution. And among them two now infamous names Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky.
They both entered the home of Dr. Petit and his family in Connecticut. Beat them and tied them all up, tied Dr. Petit up and then forced his wife Jennifer to go a bank and take out $15,000. They brought her home then and raped her and strangled her, killed her, spending the last of the couple's 11-year-old daughter Michaela before tying her and her 17-year-old sister Hayley to their bed and setting the house on fire so that they would be burned alive.
Jennifer and those girls died in that fire and before hand while their father barely managed to escape beaten with an inch of his life and imprisoned in the basement.
There is another inmate too, Eduardo Santiago. He murdered a man in exchange for a broken snow mobile and his credit card debt being paid off.
The Supreme Court decision stems from his appeal. His lawyers argued that executions carried out after the 2012 law would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
And that may just be the last word on the death penalty at least in that state. But the death penalty is still being used in many parts of America. Lethal injections are meant to be a humane way to end a person's life according to law. But what happens when things don't go quite according to plan, things get botched.
The season finale of Deathrow Stories takes a look at those so called botched executions.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Clayton Lockett execution was my fourth execution to witness. That was scheduled for 6 P.M. Eventually they were at shaved as 6:20. And Lockett was asked if he had a last statement and he said "No."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At 6:23 P.M. Lockett was injected with midazolam to render him unconscious.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At 6:30 when the doctor checks consciousness and the warden announced that the inmate was still conscious.
A few minutes later the doctor checked consciousness again and said the inmate is unconscious.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A second drug was injected intended to paralyze Lockett.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At 6:33 I notice the reaction, there was that kicking of his leg, cutting knock at the end to strain against the restraints, his body began to kind of buck. He was struggling and riving. He looked like he was trying to get (inaudible) to me.
It was really very shocking. It was clear to me that Clayton Lockett was still conscious. It is clear to me that he was in pain.
I heard him say "Ma'am," you know, like he was shocked at whatever it was that he was feeling. And he was lifting his head up and shoulders clear off the grain (ph), mumbling that something is wrong.
And then the warden said ladies and gentlemen we need to temporarily close the blinds and they close the blind and shut off the mike.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:49:38] BANFIELD: Make sure you catch Deathrow stories it airs this Sunday at 10 P.M. Eastern.
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BANFIELD: For the first time in 54 years, the American flag is flying outside a full pledge U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba.
That shot of grey hair you thought the base of the flagpole was indeed. Secretary of State John Kerry, he was presiding over those ceremonies that mirrored the Cuban flag raising last month in Washington D.C.
Secretary Kerry says that Cuba still deserve a genuine democracy. But the ending decades of diplomatic and commercial isolation is a start.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: Reopening of our embassy is important on two levels, people to people, and government to government.
First, we believe it's helpful for the people of our nations to learn more about each other, to meet each other.
That is why we are encouraged to travel from the United States to Cuba has already increased by 35 percent since January. And it's continuing to go up.
We are encouraged that more and more U.S. companies are exploring commercial ventures here that would create opportunities for Cuba's own rising number of entrepreneurs.
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BANFIELD: Secretary Kerry in his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Eduardo Rodriguez are due to face reporters anytime now for live news conference that we're going to deep right into just as soon as they get underway. But the stage is set. The podium is ready to go presumably some translators too. And I had my own translators is to exactly what was going on there.
[12:55:04] It's Jake Tapper who's live in Havana.
Jake, this is sort of like history in the remaking. I want you to sort of transport me there for a moment.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR, THE LEAD: Well it's interesting. The changes that are coming to Cuba because of this move by Obama administration so far appear mostly symbolic.
It is moving to see the stars and stripes finally up on that flagpole behind me.
But what will this mean ultimately for the Cuban people? I think that is the sense of what's going on right now.
People here are wondering what will it mean. It's very difficult to get internet for example on this island. Obviously, there's not a lot of free exchange of ideas.
But in the last few weeks, there have been some wifi hotspots put out there by the government. It's too expensive for most Cubans but the are able to go to these parks at night about three dozen of them and three doesn't parks, wifi hotspot and then go on to the internet
So, that's one small measure of what's going on.
But by the same token, there is a lot of questions about what comes next some decedents were arrested about 90 to 100 of them just on Sunday.
I talked to a decedent last night who said, things are actually getting worst because the international communities is recognizing the human government. So they fell more embolden.
So, there are a lot of symbolism and we'll see what it means later on.
BANFIELD: I want to let you go early only because we're seeing some movement in the room.
CNN is going to continue the live coverage. Jake, I want to let you get ready so that you can wire up and listen in live as well.
And I'm going to turn this over to the next program as well. Dana Bash is going to sit in for Wolf.
We're live after this quick break.
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