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Man Jailed in Road Rage Incident; Dick Durbin Finds Democratic Obstacles for Iran Nuclear Deal; Movie Theater Gunman's Journal Reveals Plot; U.S./Turkey Agreement on ISIS Fight, Bashar Assad Stunning Admission. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired July 27, 2015 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Doyle said Gonzalez was trying to run him off the road. Gonzalez followed Doyle home, allegedly to write down Doyle's home address, and that's when Doyle told police he got his gun ready.

(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)

ROBERT DOYLE, ACCUSED SHOOTER: They're following me to my house. I'll be there in 20 seconds and the guns are already out.

911 OPERATOR: Hold on for me.

DOYLE: It's going down right now.

UNIDENTIFIED WIFE OF ROBERT DOYLE: I can't even get the garage open.

DOYLE: You don't need to. Just you take your hand and throw it in park when I'm stopped.

(END AUDIO FEED)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now Doyle says Gonzalez threatened him and so he opened fire. Police say he shot Gonzalez five times as his wife and family watched in horror. Gonzalez did not have a gun.

Listen here to the 911 calls as this was happening.

(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)

CANDLEARIO GONZALEZ, KILLED DURING ROAD RAGE INCIDENT: I've got your number, buddy,

CATHY GONZALEZ, WIFE OF CANDLEARIO GONZALEZ: We're going on home. We're going home. We're going home. Oh, I guess we're not.

(SHOUTING)

CATHY GONZALEZ: The son of a (EXPLETIVE DELETED) has a gun. Get somebody here now.

(SHOUTING)

CATHY GONZALEZ: Don't shoot! 911 OPERATOR: Sir --

CATHY GONZALEZ: I've got 911 on the phone.

(GUNFIRE)

(END AUDIO FEED)

BOLDUAN: It's just horrific. You can hear the five shots right there. Police say Doyle held Gonzalez's family then at gunpoint until police arrived.

A whole lot to get through in this case. Let's talk about it with criminal defense attorney, Page Pate, joining us now.

Page, thank you very much.

It is amazing to hear this entire confrontation play out between these 911 calls. I want to get your take, in general, what you think of this case. One man says it's self-defense. The other man says he was just following him home to get his address. Where do you land on this?

PAGE PATE, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, Kate, I think that's the critical question. What was the reason Mr. Gonzalez followed Mr. Doyle home? Mr. Doyle has an absolute legal right to protect himself and to protect his home with the use of deadly force if he believes, if he reasonably believes that Mr. Gonzalez is coming there to hurt him. Now, we know Mr. Gonzalez has told law enforcement that, no, I just wanted to go by the house. I want to get his address and file a complaint, but we can hear in part of the 911 call the dispatcher clearly telling Mr. Gonzalez, no, no, no, do not follow him home. And I think that's what happened here. We had a typical situation of road rage, tempers were flaring, but at that point, you need to de- escalate, not go chase the guy down to his house and end up in the tragic situation we have.

BERMAN: That explains perhaps why he ended up there and why he ended up dead, but legally speaking, does what happened on the road even matter with what happened at the House? You have a guy on his own property, this Doyle guy, who claims he defended himself on his own property, so is the legal issue really what Gonzalez did the moment he got there?

PATE: That's the critical issue, John, but at that moment, Mr. Doyle is certainly entitled to rely on what he saw before. Did Mr. Doyle see Mr. Gonzalez acting in such a manner that he felt that if this guy follows me home he's going to do something violent? I have a reasonable fear for either myself, my wife, or my home, that this guy, seeing how mad he was on the road earlier, is going to come to my house and hurt me. So the critical question, yes, is what happened at the house, but Mr. Doyle can certainly rely on what happened before to justify his belief.

BOLDUAN: One other thing that happened at the house that I think is just as unsettling is the fact that he held the wife and his family, Gonzales's wife and family, at gunpoint until police arrived. What's the legal fallout from that?

PATE: Kate, I don't see any defense to that whatsoever. He's obviously not in fear from the wife or the daughter doing anything to him. They're apparently in the vehicle when he pulls out the firearm and gets them out of the vehicle to wait for police. That is aggravated assault under Florida law. That's what he's charged with right now for doing that to those folks. It can also be kidnapping if he required them to move from point A to point B. So while he may have a good self-defense argument in relation to the shooting of Mr. Gonzalez, I do not think he has a good defense to the aggravated assault charges.

BERMAN: And that's a whole separate matter here, too, isn't it? Page, if this ever does get to a jury and a jury weighs the situation, will they be forced to decide who was doing worse things on the road in this case of dueling road rage?

PATE: I think so, John. That's not part of the legal definition, you know, who acted violently or aggressively first or what happened down the road before they got to the house, but that's the kind of things that either the prosecutor or the defense lawyer will try to get the jury to think about. Who is really at fault here? Who started this? Who could have backed off and kept this from happening? Those are the issues I think a jury will be asked to address.

BOLDUAN: Real quick, Page, the sheriff is saying that he is -- this is not going to be considered a Stand Your Ground case. As you mentioned, we're talking about Florida law here and there is obviously a recent history when we've been talking about the Stand Your Ground law. Why not Stand Your Ground?

PATE: I think that's to justify the fact they've charged him with second-degree degree murder in this case at this time. I'm certain that Mr. Doyle will try to raise Stand Your Ground as a defense because it's not just a defense to a situation like Mr. Zimmerman had with Trayvon Martin where he's outside of the home. Stand Your Ground certainly applies. In fact, it originally was meant to apply just to when you're at your house. So if someone is coming to your house and you have a reason to fear that that person is either going to harm you or commit some violent act to some other member of your household, you have every right to stand there and use deadly force to prevent an attack.

[11:35:25] Page Pate, thanks so much.

PATE: Thank you.

Coming up for us, selling the Iran nuclear deal. As the White House pushes the agreement in public, behind closed doors, one Senator is working to round up support, but he's already running into obstacles with some Democrats, his own party. He's joining us live.

BERMAN: A mother throws her toddler to safety as an escalator collapses beneath them. We have the terrifying moments ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) Happening now, the fate of the Iran nuclear deal still very much undecided. The stakes are high. And Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, he came out early in support of the agreement, he is now working behind the scenes very diligently to make sure that it moves forward. The number-two Democrat in the Senate, he's meeting with other Democratic lawmakers one by one to try and get them on board.

BERMAN: If 12 Democrats break from the president, ultimately that will be enough to block the deal.

Senator Dick Durbin joins us now from Capitol Hill.

Senator, thanks so much for being with us.

I want to get to the vote count and your expertise in a moment. But first, I want to ask you about former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, his comments about this agreement. He says the president is "marching Israel to the door of the oven." Your reaction?

SEN. DICK DURBIN, (D), ILLINOIS: Obviously, that was a hyperbolic overstatement and totally untrue. Those of us who are aware of the suffering of the Jewish people, what happened in the Holocaust have to take care not to use that analogy in such a casual way. In this circumstance, this president, this administration have done everything in their power to reach an agreement. This president organized an international coalition to put sanctions on Iran to force them to the negotiating table, a coalition which included our usual adversaries, China and Russia, and they came to the table together. The goal is simple, stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. The path to that goal is really two choices, diplomacy or military action and war. I believe we should exhaust the diplomatic side of it before we turn to that awful possibility of military action. I'm sorry that former Governor Huckabee used those terms.

[11:40:52] BOLDUAN: You're also working very hard behind the scenes now to try and urge -- to keep for lack of a better term, to keep Democrats in line, if you will. If you lose more than 12 Democrats, then they could easily block this deal from really moving forward. How confident are you -- and you're very good at this, Senator. How confident are you that you can guarantee you can keep those Democrats from defecting?

DURBIN: I can tell you that we've had a positive response from our caucus. And I have taken an approach that I want to describe to you. You know the other side, the Republican side, so many of them came out and said they were against this agreement, 47 of them sent a letter to the ayatollah in Iran during the negotiations and said stop negotiating with this president, Congress will have the last word. But even when the agreement was reached, within minutes and hours many were announcing they were against it. What I found on the Democratic side is my colleagues want to take the time to read it, which I did, and to sit down and think about it and to talk to the secretary of energy, the secretary of state about some of the details to go through the classified briefings. So we're not pushing them to make an announcement of their position. We want them to take the time and take it seriously. BERMAN: You want them to take it seriously but at the end of the day,

Senator, you may be able to gather enough votes, Senator, to block an override of a presidential veto but there's in way in this chamber of yours it will get a majority of support, is there?

DURBIN: Well, of course, we're in a situation with a Republican majority, and I don't know, I haven't counted on their side how many have taken a public position, but all that have taken a position are against it. So they have a starting position of a majority. However, the law requires 60 votes, 60 votes in order to stop it on the first round. And so we're looking at this very carefully. We have 46 Democrats, and we understand that there will have to be 60 voting with the Republicans for them to prevail against the agreement.

BOLDUAN: Senator, really quickly, we want to get your take -- it's a very different topic but equally as important, to ask you about, Sandra Bland. You attended her funeral. She died in Texas but she is one of our constituents from Illinois. You were there at that funeral. You have been calling for the Justice Department to step in to investigate what happened to her, the circumstances surrounding her death. What are your outstanding questions right now, Senator?

DURBIN: Well, there are several, at least two aspects that are so serious and important. I attended that funeral, I met the family. You can understand heart broken to lose this 28-year-old young woman under these circumstances. When you look at the video, what do you see? You see her being pulled over for what is a questionable traffic violation, changing lanes without a signal. As I drove out to the funeral, I saw plenty of people changing lanes without a signal. She was called over for that and then it escalated way beyond where it should have gone. To remove her from the car because she wouldn't put out her cigarette, for goodness sakes, and then to put cuffs behind her back, to restrain her, it really escalated way beyond where it should have with the traffic stop.

The second question is the treatment of Sandra when it came to the actual incarceration. She had warned those who incarcerated her that she had a history of some instability, and yet, they didn't take the ordinary, normal precautions of watching her and caring for her as she should have. To think she was sitting in a jail cell for three days for being pulled over for changing lanes without a signal, it really raises questions and a separate investigation I think is warranted.

BERMAN: Senator Dick Durbin, from Illinois, thank you so much for being with us. We are waiting to hear if there will be a federal investigation. Thank you, sir.

DURBIN: Thank you.

BERMAN: New surveillance video capturing the final hours before the gunman opened fire inside a crowded movie theater. Investigators look through a secret journal from the shooter. What clues will that reveal?

[11:44:59] BOLDUAN: Bobbi Kristina Brown's life comes to a tragic end months after she is found unresponsive in her bathtub. What happens now with the criminal investigation? Details on that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: In just a few minutes, the funerals will begin for the two young women killed in Lafayette, Louisiana. 21-year-old Mayci Breaux and 33-year-old Jillian Johnson lost their lives when a gunman opened fire inside a crowed movie theater.

BOLDUAN: Disturbing new details at the same time are coming to light as investigators comb through the gunman's belongs, John Houser's belongings. They say he wrote about his deadly plan in a journal. He planned to escape using disguises and also changing the license plate on his car. And that's just the beginning of it.

Ryan Nobles is joining us from outside the theater where investigators are revisiting the crime scene.

Ryan, first off, let's focus on the important part, what you can tell us about the funerals of these women today. Let's focus on them.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, hey, Kate and John. The funerals will take place in a few minutes. The first one for Mayci Breaux will happen in nearby Franklin. And then later this afternoon Jillian Johnson will be laid to rest. That will happen here in Lafayette. A big crowd is expected for Mayci Breaux's funeral, that is open to the public, but the Johnson family has chose to make her funeral a little bit more private.

But getting back to the investigation into John Houser, and the evidence seems to make it clear this was a mentally planned attack here on the Grand Theater on Thursday night. And police have actually discovered a journal that Houser used and wrote in at the motel that he was staying at not far from here. And CBS obtained surveillance video of him leaving that hotel in the moments before he came here to the Grand Theater. And inside that journal he talks about coming here at 7:15 on Thursday night. So they say it's clear he was of sound mind when he was writing in the journal.

They've been looking into his past. He obviously had a long mental health history and run-ins with his family. At one point his wife and daughter had filed a protective order against him. And his family now saying they were concerned about his potential for violence but they never thought he would attack a place like a movie theater, instead maybe targeting a government building.

We talked about the funerals. There were nine other victims wounded in this tragedy. Six have been released from the hospital. Three are still recovering, but, Kate and John, they are all improving.

[11:50:59] BOLDUAN: That's at least some good news in the face of the horrific tragedy in these funerals.

Ryan, thank you.

Ahead for us, a dramatic new turn in the fight against ISIS. What the United States is now doing that involves a safe zone. Plus, a stunning admission from Syria's Bashar al Assad, saying that he's given up defending parts of his country.

BERMAN: A mother throws her toddler to safety as an escalator collapses beneath them. This is just awful to see. We have the terrifying moments ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:55:12] BOLDUAN: There's word this morning of a mother's heroism and a tragic death in China and it's tough to watch.

BERMAN: A 30-year-old mother holding her son riding a department store escalator. At the top, the floor suddenly gives out. You can see it there, she instinctively pubes her son to safety but falls to her death. Officials say that maintenance had been done on the escalator and workers just forgot to secure the access cover in place.

BOLDUAN: Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Also, we're watching a dramatic turn in the fight against ISIS. The U.S. and Turkey have come to an agreement to create a safe zone along the Turkey/Syria border, and at Turkey's request, NATO will be holding an extraordinary meeting tomorrow over the crisis in Syria.

BERMAN: I want to talk about this development. Joining us is military analyst and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona.

Colonel, thanks so much for being with us.

They're calling it a safe zone. Military officials want to make sure it's not called a no-fly zone. I'm not sure the distinction is that important because a safe zone, in and of itself, with Turkey helping to police this, and presumably U.S. air power as well, this is a significant development.

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It is, John. If you look at the area they're talking about, it's the one area on the Turkish border that's still controlled by ISIS. So it's an attempt to move ISIS away from the Turkish borders so it will create the barrier for the Turks that they want. It will allow them get Syrian refugees back in there. The problem is, this is an area that's being bombed almost daily by the Syrian air force. So what happens when we set up a safe zone there and the Syrians want to conduct operations against people that we're supporting? Are we going to go head to head with the Syrian air force? So this is setting up a real dangerous situation.

BOLDUAN: And also you're getting it to right there, Colonel. It seems to be laying to bare the complexities of the fight against ISIS in this region. The United States here obviously wants to take on is. But Turkey, they want to take on ISIS, they want to take on Assad, Turkey wants to take on the Kurds, which the United States has largely said has been some of the driving force in successfully taking on ISIS in Iraq. That just shows how complex this really is.

FRANCONA: Kate, we've had this conversation before. We talked about the situation in Iraq compared to this is so crystal clear. You have the bad guys and good guys. In Syria, you have a complex mix of alliances that change almost daily and the situation on the ground is even more complicated because you've got despaired groups fighting each other one day, allied with tactical alliances the next day, and now you'll insert the Turks into this. The Turks have ulterior motives here. They want to overthrow the Assad regime but they want to make sure they tamp down any nationalism on the part of the Kurds. And the Kurds, as we see them, are the only effective fighters on the ground. So very, very complex situation.

BERMAN: And the safe zone sets up a state inside a state inside Syria if it goes as planned. It's the orange area inside Syria across the Turkish border. Who will police the borders there? The Turks are talking about sending in millions of refugees. Some of these Syrian refugees fleeing the war zones may move into that region. But the Turks won't patrol the borders with their own troops. The U.S. won't put troops on the ground to keep them safe

FRANCONA: No, and that's the question. Who's going to protect the safe zone? Is it going to be the rebels we have trained? That won't work because, as far as I can tell, there's only 60 that have been trained and we're training more. That won't take that area. And that area is in ISIS hands right now. They're not going to leave because we've declared a safe zone. Someone will have to push them out. And the only people capable of doing that are the Kurds that the Turks don't want to see doing that or the Turkish army, and they said they won't do it. So this remains to be seen.

BOLDUAN: Real quick, Colonel, you also now have Syrian President Bashar al Assad over the weekend admitting, in his views, that his army is facing a manpower shortage and they're essentially going to be giving up some places in the country to insurgent control, as you would say. What does that mean? It seems a significant admission coming from him.

FRANCONA: It's a significant admission but he's admitting reality. This has been going on for months now. He's already ceded a lot of territory to the rebels because he'll defend the areas that he thinks are important. And that's the exact terms he used, the important areas, like Damascus and the Alawite homeland where his family is from on the coast. So he's pulled back a lot. He'll defend the major cities, if he can, but Damascus, of course, is the key.

BERMAN: Colonel Rick Francona, great to have you with us. Thank you so much.

FRANCONA: Nice being with you guys.

BOLDUAN: Thanks, Colonel.

And thank you for joining us AT THIS HOUR.

"LEGAL VIEW" starts right now.