Return to Transcripts main page

Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Oregon Shooter's Mom Revelations; Missing El Faro; California's End of Life Bill. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 06, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] CHRISTY O'DONNELL, DIAGNOSED WITH STAGE 4 LUNG CANCER: Vetoed that idea because it would be extremely cruel of me to take her out of her entire support system to do what, put her in a house or an apartment just for her to watch me die day by day. I mean nobody should have to do that.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Christy, thank you for your strength, thanks for your courage and thanks for sharing your story with us.

And thank you all so very much for joining us "AT THIS HOUR."

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: LEGAL VIEW with Ashleigh Banfield starts right now.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, I'm Ashleigh Banfield, and welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

We begin with some astounding new details about the Oregon shooter from the person perhaps closest to him, his own mother. In online postings written several years ago, but just uncovered, Christopher Harper Mercer's mother writes on Yahoo! Answers, a forum there, about how she kept numerous firearms in her home, loaded, and that she was very well versed on the subject, offering safety tips to others. "The New York Times" first discovered Laurel Harper's posts that also reveal information about her son's mental health and how she was trying to help him.

Dan Simon is our correspondent. He's live with me now from Rosenberg, Oregon.

Dan, some of these revelations are just mystifying knowing what we know now. Walk me through what these postings tell us about her, and her son's mental health, and the guns that they chose to share between the two of them.

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ashleigh, let's first take a step back and look at what we know here. We know that the gunman's father told CNN that he had no idea that his son had any guns, let alone more than a dozen of them. Well, it seems to be quite the opposite here with the mother. She seems to be very well aware that her son had a lot of guns, and she seems to be a gun enthusiast herself. At the same time, in these postings, she acknowledges that her son had some form of mental illness in the form of Asperger's Syndrome.

Now, first I want to talk to you about the issue with guns and I want to read to you a quote of what she made online. And she wrote, "I keep two full mags in my Glock case. And the ARs and the AKs all have loaded mags. No one will be dropping by my house uninvited without acknowledgment." Now, what does that tell you? This tells you that this is a woman who clearly had a passion for guns. She liked them and she lived with her son, so he was exposed to them. So ultimately there's going to be a question about what exactly did she know about her son's mental illness, and, as a consequence of that, was she irresponsible by having guns in the home?

Let's talk a little bit about Asperger's. We know that there's no direct link, according to medical experts, between Asperger's and violence. Nonetheless, she wrote this on Yahoo!. "Asperger's Syndrome is an high functioning form of autism. At last check, 10 to 12 in 10,000 will be diagnosed with some form of Autism and I'm very familiar with it. My son has Asperger's. He's no babbling idiot, nor is his life worthless. He's very intelligent and is working on a career in filmmaking. My 18 years' worth of experience with and knowledge about Asperger's Syndrome is paying off." Ashleigh, when you put it all together - all together, once again the question is, what exactly did this mother know about her son's mental illness and was she irresponsible by having guns in the home.

The similarities between this and Newtown shooter Adam Lanza are absolutely striking. In that case you had a young man in a home where the mom had tons of weapons. She fostered his passion and guns. You'll recall that many people, after that case, blamed the mother for what happened. I think it's fair to say that, in this case, in Oregon, some of those same questions are going to be asked.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: And, Dan, Nancy Lanza was dead. She was the first of Adam Lanza's victims. He shot her as she slept in her bed. He shot her point blank in the head, and still she was assailed for her parenting given that she had a son with mental illness and celebrated the guns. And she didn't post anything online about this. She didn't sort of castigate states that had gun safety laws and brag about her son's, you know, knowledge of guns.

I actually want to bring in Dr. Gail Saltz here, who is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and author of "Anatomy of a Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Life." And also joining me, Mary Ellen O'Toole, who's a senior - a former senior FBI profiler and former FBI special agent.

First to you, Dr. Saltz. I was so - I was just so disturbed by this discussion when I saw this. The elephant in the room was that Adam Lanza had autism or had - was on the autism spectrum disorder, Asperger's, and that he and his mother shared this love of guns, often went to the range and shot together. And that was three years ago.

[12:05:09] DR. GAIL SALTZ, PSYCHIATRIST: Right.

BANFIELD: So that this mother - this mother - would have known that this happened, not to suggest there's any link between -

SALTZ: Right.

BANFIELD: The illness -

SALTZ: Right.

BANFIELD: And the violence.

SALTZ: Right.

BANFIELD: No studies show that.

SALTZ: No, no studies show that. If you want to think about links, what we're really talking about is somebody who is socially functioning very poorly, and also has tremendous rigidity, so has trouble making any changes. And the increasingly angry, frustrated and aggressive. And also perseverating on an area of interest, but letting the area of interest be guns is - is, of course, totally dangerous. You also have to know that many people who have a child with - with something on the autism spectrum often on the spectrum themselves, and so their ability to see what is going on, the potential explosiveness may not be as good as somebody who is not.

BANFIELD: Let me ask you this. "The New York Times" interviewed someone named Alex Jefferson, who worked with Mrs. Harper, Ms. Harper, and that personal, Alex Jefferson, said that this mother had said of her son, "my son is a real big problem of mine. He has some psychological problem. Sometimes he takes his medication. Sometimes he doesn't. And that's where the big problem is, when he doesn't take the medication."

SALTZ: Right.

BANFIELD: She also talked about online her son banging his head against the wall.

SALTZ: Right.

BANFIELD: How this has been her lifelong work.

SALTZ: Previous signs of aggression, signs of depression, as in being willing to take your own life and other people's in the process, having great struggle that you deal with by being aggressive and blaming others, in other words, if the mother is trying to tell everybody, you can't behave this way because you're bothering my son, it's your fault, or the kid is saying, you can't - you can't do this, it's all your fault, those are the things that are in the background of people who go on to commit gun violence. They should not have access to guns.

BANFIELD: Mary Ellen O'Toole, there is no law that this mother broke. You can own these guns, you can keep them the way she kept them in the state of Oregon. She did nothing wrong, illegally. She is clear.

Her parents skills, entirely in question today give the fact that I have a monitor behind me with, you know, way too many dead people. People who did not deserve to have this happen. And I just want to know from a law enforcement perspective, are your hands completely tied when it comes to this kind of thing?

MARY ELLEN O'TOOLE, FORMER SR. FBI PROFILER: Well, I would say at this point, yes. However, having said that, when we talk about the warning signs for this behavior, and Dr. Saltz just brought these up, this is a progression to violence. It didn't just happen overnight. And people that are close to these individuals are the ones responsible for seeing those warning signs.

That didn't happen here. And we're not sure why. I'm sure they're going to look at it and get to the bottom of why would someone who has a son who is manifesting these red flags bring that kind of weaponry into the home. It really does not make any sense. And at this point, this is not a zero tolerance, single sanctioned crime. This is a crime that really cries out for people close to the individual to see those warning signs before ever it gets to the shooting.

BANFIELD: And how about an additional warning sign in wall to wall news coverage, Christmas three years ago, where 20 little schoolchildren lost their lives to a young man with a condition exactly like this young man's, whose mother had a condition exactly like this mother who she shared the love of guns with her mentally ill child.

SALTZ: Well, hopefully we're not speaking to people out there right now.

BANFIELD: If you're out there -

SALTZ: If you have a son who is very preoccupied with guns, and who is not managing well, and is in any way aggressive, don't let him have access to guns.

BANFIELD: Or at least go further. Discuss this with the professionals. Do something. Don't just let this be your only outlet of communication.

SALTZ: You know, but in some states professionals are not allowed to ask if you have a gun.

BANFIELD: Oh, I know fully (ph).

SALTZ: And they're not allowed to take it away.

BANFIELD: Gail Saltz, thank you. Mary Ellen O'Toole, thank you.

It is just absolutely confounding how this could have transpired yet again.

Coming up next, scouring the seas for possible survivors and answers in an amazing disappearance of a massive cargo ship almost 1,000 feet long. It's crew still MIA. A CNN crew joining in the search.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:13:57] BANFIELD: The ship is lost, but the Coast Guard is refusing to give up on any of the survivors. Hopefully still survivors. And while the search continues, the NTSB has sent a go-team to Jacksonville, Florida, to investigate the disappearance of the cargo ship that's now becoming famous. It is known as El Faro. A 225 square mile debris field has been discovered, but still no sign of the actual ship itself. It was carrying 33 people on board, 28 of them Americans, five of them Polish. It went missing near the Bahamas last Thursday, just at the same time Hurricane Joaquin was passing overhead. The NTSB said this morning the job ahead will not be easy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BELLA DINH-ZARR, VICE CHAIRMAN, NTSB: This is a huge challenge. That there's a large debris field. So the investigators will be, we hope, you know, finding as much material as possible. But it's a big challenge with there's a - such a large area of water and at such depths. There are a lot of other aspects of the investigation, and marine logs, any data, all of the interviews with people who were involved that will help us determine what exactly happened. And, obviously, we hope for the best and we hope that the ship will be recovered.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:15:22] BANFIELD: CNN's Miguel Marquez is covering the story and is here with me live. And also CNN meteorologist Derek van Dam is in Atlanta, CNN transportation analyst Mary Schiavo is live with us in Charleston.

Miguel, first to you, the news, CNN had two of our reporters actually on board a search and rescue flight. So walk me through what they saw and how difficult this is proving to be.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they didn't see anything other than ocean on that particular flight, although they have - the Coast Guard has found other materials out there. They found a debris field on Saturday. So far they've recovered five life preservers, a personal flotation device, one of the lifeboats that was on that ship, damaged, and one of - and they found two of the survival suits. In one of them there was a deceased individual. They've also found one uninflated life raft, which indicates that they clearly knew what was coming, but that, you know, not everybody was able to get into those suits.

BANFIELD: Indicating they knew what was coming. That's a whole other question I'm going to ask the other guest just in terms of why on earth would a ship be going out into what was a tropical storm and headed towards a Cat 4 hurricane, potentially Cat 5. That, next.

First, the possibility of survivors. You said a survival suits. There was one for every person on board. But a survival suit in a hurricane, do they have a shot at surviving in those?

MARQUEZ: Sure. I mean if you get into a - a life raft, if you're able to stay afloat, if you're able to stay somewhat dry and above those enormous waves, then, yes, and the Coast Guard is certainly hoping against hope that possibly they could survive. So it is possible. Is it likely? Probably not, sadly. BANFIELD: Just distressing to hear that.

Derek van Dam, you were actually out flying with a hurricane hunters' team directly into the eye of this storm.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes.

BANFIELD: So give me the size, scope, waves, everything that Miguel was just referring to, and the possibility that somebody could survive out there wearing one of these survival suits.

VAN DAM: Ashleigh, it was incredible how quickly our mission changed once we got that phone call from the U.S. Coast Guard. We went from data recovery for a hurricane to search and rescue for a missing cargo ship. This is, in fact, our exact path. We took off from Biloxi, Mississippi, early Friday morning, entered the middle of Joaquin, a Category 4 at that particular time.

I've zoomed into the eyewall of the storm just to give you an idea of what the pilots had to deal with. We originally were flying at roughly 10,000 feet. We dropped to 600 feet to get a clearer view of the ocean below us. This is the area where we would have what was the - typically the calmest part of a storm. But if that's a plane, or the plane that I was on was to exit the eyewall, that's when we reached the strongest winds of a hurricane, typically 150 miles per hour in this particular instance. So we had to navigate this particular region just so we could get the best perspective and the safest perspective of what was below.

Unfortunately, we did not see the missing cargo ship. I took a picture with my phone. There's the eyewall. There's the ocean below us. And the waves were certainly turbulent. Think of it like a bathtub, for instance, even though the winds are calm, we still have a lot of perdebations (ph) in the tops of the ocean. So we had wave peaks over 35 feet, easily in excess of that. And I clearly witnessed that on this particular plane. And you can see with one of these photos just how choppy the oceans were.

BANFIELD: Wow.

VAN DAM: Very difficult for any of these people to, well, have to contend with this kind of situation.

BANFIELD: Wow, those are white caps from the - from the plane's window. That's amazing.

VAN DAM: Easily (ph).

BANFIELD: Derek, hold on for a second.

Mary Schiavo, what about that? What about planning and charting a course where an actual tropical storm is headed that could be, you know, increasing to a Category 4. If Mary Schiavo is with us, I want you to answer that because with, you know, your transportation background, I can't understand how that ship actually set sail. MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, and particularly for this kind of ship. Obviously going into these terrible conditions could be - could be disastrous for any ship, particularly where they lose the engine, because when you maneuver in this, you have to head into the wave and literally cruise up or power up towards the crest of the wave.

But this ship was something called a rocon (ph). People keep referring to it as a container ship, but it was actually built in 1975 as a roll-on/roll-off ship for vehicles. And all you have to do is keep in mind a ferryboat with wide, flat decks, and that water on those decks is very destabilizing. It's something called the three-surface effect. So the ports to get vehicles on and off the ship, also combined with the wide, flat decks, made this ship very vulnerable in water and hurricane conditions. The NTSB will zero in on that.

[12:20:05] BANFIELD: Just quickly, Mary, as well, if you could tell me, the Coast Guard was saying on "NEW DAY" this morning that because that propulsion was gone, for whatever reason, mechanical or whatever, that ship was literally broadside to those 50-foot waves. Could it even withstand one of them?

SCHIAVO: Well, what would happen if it was broadsided, a wave big enough would literally just - just roll it. And that might explain why there wasn't time to get on those flotation suits. When I'd go out with the Coast Guard and work on the Coast Guard ships, you'd have to get those things on. And it takes some time to get them in. And if you were being rolled by a wave, you wouldn't have had time.

BANFIELD: All right, Mary Schiavo for us live. Thank you for that.

Miguel Marquez and Derek van Dam, thank you as well.

I want to get us to some breaking news I'm just getting in and I'm going to show you a monitor, a picture. All I can tell you about this live shot that is literally coming into us as we speak is that it is in Columbia, South Carolina, and clearly there is a breach that is causing some severe flooding in that particular spot. This as the death toll has now risen to 14. The breaking news, the death toll, we have added one more death in South Carolina. And I can add to that two more deaths in North Carolina.

Before we saw this picture, there were at least nine different dams that had breached or failed. I don't know that this is a dam. It looks like a roadway. It looks like a river bank that may have breached, and it clearly looks like that road has been taken out. And without a wider picture, I can't tell you what is downstream of that flooding. But there are so many communities that are on alert right now for evacuation because there are a number of other bridges and dams - oh, look at that, wow, right as we're speaking, you know, a collapsing river bank.

But there are so many people who are in peril of dams breaching. Waters have been known to rise several feet within minutes, and thus emergency and rescue crews are on standby and certain communities are on standby for the very quick and emergency evacuation. I'm going to keep an eye on that picture for you and when we get more information, I'll bring that to you as well.

Meantime, coming up next in California, it's joining a handful of states where it is legal to end your own life. We're going to talk with a man whose late wife, whom you probably remember, helped to make that law a reality.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:26:36] BANFIELD: The governor of California, Jerry Brown, has signed a bill that truly is a matter of life and death. Technically it's called ABX-215. Less technically, it's called The End of Life Option Act and it allows doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to mentally competent adults who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness and have only six months or less to live. But there are some clear cut requirements. Patients must be physically capable of taking the drugs themselves. Two doctors have to approve this. And patients must submit several written requests themselves, signed by two witnesses, one of whom is not a family member.

It is clear that Governor Brown did not take this decision lightly, nor make it so. Here's a good portion of the letter that he wrote to the California State Assembly. And I'll quote the governor. "I have carefully read the thoughtfully opposition materials presented by a number of doctors, religious leaders and those who champion disability rights. I have considered the theological and religious perspectives that any deliberate shortening of one's life is sinful. I have also read the letters of those who support the bill, including heartfelt pleas from Brittany Maynard's family and Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu. In addition, I have discussed this matter with a catholic bishop, two of my own doctors, and former classmates and friends who take very contradictory and nuanced positions. In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death. I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolong and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn't deny that right to others."

You heard the name Brittany Maynard in that letter, and that's because it was Brittany who brought the issue to national consciousness. She learned on New Year's Day, 2014, that she had brain cancer. A few months later, she decided to move from California to Oregon so she could legally take medication to end her own life. And on her website, she spoke of how it made her feel just to have the option.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRITTANY MAYNARD: I can't even tell you the amount of relief that it provides me to know that I don't have to die the way that it's been described to me that my brain tumor would take me on its own.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Last November, Brittany took medication to end her own life. She leaves behind her husband, Dan Diaz, one of her biggest supporters, and he is kind enough to join me now from Portland, Oregon.

Dan, thank you so much for being with me today. I can't help but think that this is somehow bittersweet for you seeing this legislation signed in the state you left.

[12:29:51] DAN DIAZ, BRITTANY MAYNARD'S WIDOWER: Yes, I feel a great sense of gratitude for the governor and those last two sentences of the letter that you read about not knowing what the decision he might make, but recognizing that it would provide a huge amount of comfort to a person like Brittany Maynard and not wanting to stand in the way of that. Very grateful.

BANFIELD: And, Dan