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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Police Shooting Case Examined; Colorado School Sexting Scandal; Texas Judge Shot; Hillary Clinton Files for New Hampshire Primary. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired November 09, 2015 - 12:30   ET

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

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: ... the boy was -- dead end road and why would they use lethal force.

[12:30:05] The boy buckled into the passenger seat of his father's car when police opened fired. He was hit five times in the chest and head.

His father Chris Few was also hit and wounded.

MICHAEL EDMONSON, COL. LOUISIANA STATE POLICE: Jeremy Mardis, 6-years- old, he didn't deserve to die like that. And that's what's unfortunate.

VALENCIA: Days after the shooting the head of Louisiana state police announced two marshals face second degree murder and attempted murder charges.

Thirty-two-year-old Derek Stafford and 23-year-old Norris Greenhouse Jr. taken into custody and placed on administrative leave, the incident was captured on police body cameras.

EDMONSON: I'm not going to talk about it, but I'm going to tell you this, it is the most disturbing thing I've seen. I will leave it at that.

VALENCIA: Two other marshals were also present during the shooting Stafford and Greenhouse so far the only two arrested.

ROXANNE COUVILLION, TEACHER: He had his wings on earth and now he's soaring in heaven.

VALENCIA: Roxanne Couvillion was Jeremy special needs teacher. The child was nonverbal autistic. He was one of her favorite students. She especially in love the way his eyes lid up when he smile.

COUVILLION: He love class and I send all the pictures that we have the family members. And so they have all those moments. So he love the dress up stand that we have for tin play, doing the alphabet puzzles, he was an awesome boy.

VALENCIA: And a nearby convenient store Rudy (ph) and Wally (ph) says he heard gunshots on his way home from work.

He says he knows the officers well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know them because they're like my brothers, two of them.

VALENCIA: Well, tell me -- tell us about it because we don't know anything about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're cool people man, they ain't bad for anything certain. They never did nothing bad.

VALENCIA: In fact neither marshal has been convicted of a crime. But according to local news reports in 2011, Stafford was indicted on two counts of aggravated rape, the case was eventually dismissed.

Adding to this bizarre set of circumstances here is what a source close to the investigation is telling us, according to that source, Norris Greenhouse Jr. one of the officer charged in the murder of 6- year-old Jeremy Mardis actually knew the victims prior to the shooting.

The extent of that relationship and how well he knew the father of this little boy and his girl friend, that's a big focus of the investigation by the Louisiana state police, Ashleigh?

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Nick Valencia reporting for us live. Thank you for that.

And coming up next, Colorado teens gone wild sexting on a scale like we have never seen. Half of the student body is caught up in this scandal, literally hundreds of photos of underaged students in their underwear and much, much worse.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:37:02] BANFIELD: Checking our top stories, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are holding their first meeting since the conclusion of the Iran nuclear deal.

The two leaders held a photo-op. Here it is, in the White House it happened this morning. And if you look real close, real close, you can see no apparent signs of the mutual frustration that we've been seeing in the past.

They say they are trying to stress areas of agreement between the two nations.

The U.S. official tell CNN that it now seems "99.9 percent certain that a bomb brought down Metrojet Flight 9268 in Egypt."

Other officials aren't going quite that far and the lead investigator in Egypt is insisting and "We don't know what happened."

European investigators are covering -- they're saying the very last sound on the cockpit voice recorder is indeed an explosion.

The world anti-doping agency says it has uncovered a deeply-rooted culture of cheating at all levels by Russia. The agency is recommending that Russian track and field athletes be banned from international competitions, possibly including next year's Olympic Games.

And also accuses the governing body of world athletics of inaction at best bribery and cover-ups at worst.

Interpol has now joined the investigation. And check out this incredible video of Meridian, Mississippi a new IHOP restaurant, parking lot really just caving in, over the weekend and swallowing as many as 12 cars and trucks.

That hole is estimated to be about 35 feet wide, 375 feet long and 30 feet deep. Here's the good news, although it's hard to say it when you see it, but there were no reports of injuries. The cause of this is still under investigation. Watch this face.

The picturesque community of Canon City, Colorado, is in an uproar all over pictures. Well over a 100 students at Canon City High School are implicated in a sexting ring, that's already led to suspensions, a forfeited football game, and a felony investigation by the police. Again this is a school.

CNN's Ana Cabrera is there, and I'm also joined by my attorney CNN Legal Analyst and former New York Prosecutor PAUL Callan and HNL Legal Analyst and Defense Attorney Joey Jackson.

So Ana, let me begin with you if I can. Can you just sort of put this all in a nutshell for me, it's hard to say to say the word half of the school is involved in a sexting ring. But it really seems to comes down to the fact that half of the school had dirty pictures.

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And apparently, it's been going on for quite sometime, Ashleigh, we're learning. It all began with the tip from a student early last week. Then there was another tip an anonymous tip that came in that suggested that this sexting situation was much more wide spread than just an isolated incident.

[12:40:06] And now we have a police investigation underway. We understand there at least three phones that have been turned over to school authorities that reportedly depict hundreds of images of hundreds of students that are either partially nude or in the undergarments that were sent among each other.

Students as young as eighth graders all the way up through the 12th grade. And they were using these apps we've learned some like Snapchat, one is called photo vault where it's disguised on the cellphone's home screen as a calculator or a media player app. But once you enter a password, you have access to the hidden picture. And that's where students were reportedly passing around these pictures, and then saving them on their phones.

Now, we have spoken with a student who says that she was solicited as long as two years ago for some of these nude photos.

The principal here at the school says this has come as a huge shock, and he had no idea that these apps even existed. Listen.

BRET MEULI, PRINCIPAL CANON CITY H.S.: If I have no knowledge until this past week that there were cellphone app that's out there that would mask a photo vault.

I now know, do I know everything? Absolutely not. I need to learn more, you know, it's a peer pressure something more than we evaluated here locally, yeah, I'm starting to believe so.

CABRERA: Now, the students here say this has been a learning experience to say the very least. They have made mistakes, they hope that it does not come to define their school or their community. And this is an opportunity for parents and school administrators to educate, to have a greater awareness about what's happening not only here, in Canon City but all around the country, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Well, educating the kids can take on a lot of different tactics to show, I think depending on the state you're in. And I want to bring in the lawyers for that, Ana if I can for a minute.

Joey and Paul, first of all, I can't imagine them rounding up a few hundred kids from the same school and then not go to every other school in that same community and then everybody across the country doing the same thing, because it's not just this school where this is happening.

But the states all have different rules and regulations when it comes to how illegal that behavior is.

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: They do. And what ends up happening is if you look at this globally from around the country, there are of course in our 50 states, various states do what they do. They're sovereign and they're allowed to enact their own laws.

So you have 17 states that have actually identified and decided to address this issue of teen sexting, and then doing so have specific laws that deal with it.

And in those state, what you find is that those states realize and recognize in general, I'll talk about the few that don't, but they recognize their children do, what children do.

And so they have to deal with the policy question of what do we do in terms of criminalizing something for children that is perfectly legal if adults do it. And what they generally have said in the 17 states, is that by and large, we're going to allow this to be a juvenile matter, we're going to defer it from criminal court.

BANFIELD: In 17 states only.

JACKSON: 17 states and they don't allow to deal with that way. Three of those states however which would includes Florida, Nevada and Utah, what they say, is they say "You know what, we're dealing with it a bit differently." And it couldn't be prosecuted as a felony, et cetera.

So there's a minority of states that in fact take it very seriously. But others where they do have specific statute say, kids do what kids do, we're going to resolve it in that way, and we're going to allow the juvenile courts to deal with it. BANFIELD: So Paul, as I am watching this program, and right now, and I'm absolutely terrified about what my kids in middle school or high school are doing right now.

Depending on the state, I mean my child inadvertently could be a sex offender, and could end up registered as a sex offender for life, if he or she has shared a naked picture with a boyfriend or girlfriend?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Absolutely. And, you know, it's an example of how the law hasn't really kept up with the technology.

And the reason I say that is the principal when he was just being interviewed was talking about how shocked he was at what was going on and he just learned about this app vault that enable the kids to have this on the phone without knowing.

I went back and I look at some statistics that were gathered by a group called the national campaign to reduce teen pregnancy. Those statistics showed that 39 perfect of kids in school engage in active sexting activities, and that's exchanging pictures like this.

And 51 percent of girls said they were under pressure from boys to send these pictures. Guess when that study was done in 2008 seven years ago. So you can imagine that it's probably up about 80...

JACKSON: ... percent.

CALLAN: So it's a huge problem across the nation, and we've to get laws to adjust to the reality.

BANFIELD: You know, let's hope this is a story, sadly for these kids, is the a wake up call for the parents and the educators across the country, that you've come out to know what's on your kinds phone.

[12:39:59] I've been prying if you think it might be, you could be saving their lives.

JACKSON: But to send them all to jail now and banish them, and to treat them as felon. The prosecutor needs to use discretion and how to deal with this.

BANFIELD: Yeah.

JACKSON: Because, you know, these kids...

BANFIELD: And the legislators need to get what the program and let those legislators.

JACKSON: The law has to keep up with technology without question.

BANFIELD: Joey, Paul, thank you both.

JACKSON: Thank you Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: So distressing. Coming up next, a Texas judge gunned down in front of her own home, and so far, nobody knows why this happened. We don't even know the details of the shooter. It happened in the dark. And we are still in the dark. The details are next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:50:08] BANFIELD: The manhunt continues today for the person who shot Travis County, Texas Judge Julie Kocurek outside of her home on Friday night. Currently she has been stabilized with extremely serious injuries, but there are more questions than answers right now about what happened.

Ed Lavandera is keeping a close eye on the investigation. Ed?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ashleigh, investigators in Austin, Texas, are trying to figure out just who was behind the attack of judge Julie Kocurek. Kocurek was shot at Friday night and she pulling into drive way of her home, in upscale neighborhood just west of downtown Austin, it was 10:00 at night, and many people there in Austin seem to believe that said she was targeted because of her job.

Authorities say that it's possible that she might have been in a random attack, so the question is, was she at the wrong place at the wrong time? Or as many people believe, she has been targeted because of her job? She has served as a judge for quite a bit time there in Travis County and before that served as prosecutor, so the list of potential people she might have rob the wrong way or angered over her career is extensive, an investigators obviously taking a much deeper look into those cases seen if there's anybody there that pops up with some kind of motive to carry out an attack like this. So that is one of the central parts of this investigation as it moves forward.

As for Kocurek, she has spent the weekend in the hospital here in Austin. We are told she expected to make a full recovery. Early on she was initially reported as being in critical condition. But we're not told she is in stable condition, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: All right, Ed thank you for that and certainly wouldn't be the first time that that has happened in Texas. Both prosecutors and judges will continue to watch that story and bring update as they're available.

Right now I want to take you live Concord, New Hampshire. We're looking at the live camera shot of Secretary Hillary Clinton who is in town and either is about to or has just filed her paperwork for her candidacy in that state. We are told that the secretary is going to head next door, and possibly take some questions from reporters. I'm not exactly sure what she's looking at right there, but she's surrounded by a phalanx of not only officials in that area but also reporters.

So while they take in the surroundings in Concord, we're going to take a quick break and hopefully get some Q&A live on the other side.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [12:56:47] BANFIELD: Live pictures in Concord, New Hampshire, the First Lady, the former First Lady, the former Secretary of State asked about the influences of those positions if you want to run for president.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Their stories touched me so much, and what I want to do as president to help them to deal with the issues they face. I just said hello to a woman that I first met in a town hall in Dover, and maybe some of you were there when she -- I called on her, I didn't know her, and she said that she had basically come over because she is taking care of a husband with Alzheimer's and a mother with Alzheimer's, and is there anything we can do to help.

And she's supporting me, and I was thrilled to see her, because, you know, it is that kind of interaction which is to me makes this real, and gives me the both the extraordinary responsibility and opportunity to try to run a campaign and then to be a president who's going to deal with not just the big problems that are in the headlines, but the ones that keep families up at night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Secretary Clinton, in South Carolina forum, Martin O'Malley said that he was opposed to a military draft for (inaudible). Bernie Sanders said that he supports letting all 18-year- olds to vote soon at they turn 18 register, what do you think about those ideas?

CLINTON: Well, actually I proposed the 18-year-old registration in a speech I gave a number of months ago in Texas Southern universities. So I'm hundred percent for it and I want to make sure it happens. I think every 18-year-old should be registered to vote when that young man or woman turn 18, unless they opt out and I would hope that very few of them would opt out

And I think it's important that we continue to have the all volunteer military. You know, there are certainly differences among the three of us on the Democratic side, but our differences pale in comparison to what we find in the Republican side. And that's why you'll hear me talking a lot more about the stake in this election given where the Republican stand on the economy and education, health care, and the basic fundamental rights that people have.

I don't want us to see the progress that we've made after President Obama inherited the worst financial crisis since the great depression from his Republican predecessor to be ripped away, so I'm going to talk about what the real, what the real, stakes are.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As leader in the Democratic Party, are you going to use some of your leverage to convince some Democrats not to vote for the Trans-Pacific trade agreement?

CLINTON: No, I'm going to state my position which I have.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And then after the lobby one more or the other.

CLINTON: No, and I think that's appropriate for the congressional leadership and member of congress and the administration to battle that out. They want to know what I think, I'm more than happy to tell them, I've come out against it because I don't think if we'll meet the test I've set which is to create more good paying jobs and race incomes from Americans and further our national security and it's particularly challenging when you have lost jobs as I believe we have the currency manipulation, and that is not embedded in the agreement, it's aside agreement, it's not enforceable, and of course when the Republicans stand in the way of helping our people be as come competitive as possible in globally

So, I'd pretty clearly on the record and people can know what I think. And if they're interest in talking to me, I obviously would do that.

[13:00:02] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But did you hope to be the next president of the United States. Wouldn't you want to try to influence some votes in the -- specially in the Senate so that you would have played set for yourself when you become president?

CLINTON: We had one president at the time. And that's the president I support very strongly.