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Pistorius Sentenced to Five Years in Prison; CDC Issues New Guidelines for Handling Ebola; Fashion Icon Oscar De La Renta Dies at 82; Jesse Matthew Charged in 2005 Rape Case

Aired October 21, 2014 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news, Oscar Pistorius sentenced for killing his girlfriend, five years in prison. And get this, he may only have to serve 10 months. The question, was this justice?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And breaking overnight, the CDC releasing brand new guidelines for health care workers. Could they have prevented the infections in Dallas? This, as more nurses speak out. What they're saying about their hospital.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Fashion great, Oscar de la Renta, who designed dresses for the world's biggest stars and America's first ladies has died. We look back at the man who redefined the red carpet.

CUOMO: Your NEW DAY starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Kate Bolduan, and Michaela Pereira.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: Good morning to you, welcome to NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, October 21st, 6:00 in the East. I'm Chris Cuomo along with Alisyn Camerota.

CAMEROTA: Great to be with you.

CUOMO Always, always. We begin with breaking news. Oscar Pistorius has lost fans, sponsorships, and now he will lose his freedom, but not for as long as many might think. Less than an hour ago a judge in South Africa sentenced the blade runner to five years for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp in 2013.

CAMEROTA: Last month Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide, dodging a murder rap. All along he maintained his innocence, claiming he shot Reeva after mistaking her for an intruder. So, let's go live to Robyn Curnow in Pretoria with the very latest. How is the response there, Robyn?

ROBYN CURNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I was inside court and had been in court every day for the past few months, and it's been, hasn't it, such a dramatic, convoluted, drawn-out, delayed process. Today when Oscar Pistorius was made to stand up and the judge delivered that judgment, absolutely no emotion, no gasps of relief or shock. No emotion from him. Take a listen, take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE THOKOZILE MASIPA, PRESIDED OVER PISTORIUS CASE: Mr. Pistorius, please rise. The following is what I consider to be a sentence that is fair and just both to society and to the accused. Count one, culpable homicide, the sentence imposed is the maximum imprisonment of five years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CURNOW: OK. So what does all that mean? Well, it meant that very soon after the judge left, moments after she made those comments, Oscar Pistorius was led down the stairs behind the dark stairs that lead to the cells here at the courtroom. He didn't have a long lingering good-bye to his family.

He looked one or two in the eye, and quietly, just disappeared down those stairs. No obvious reaction from Reeva Steenkamp's family. I must say, in fact all of us in court were quite quiet there was a sense of an anti-climax in many ways.

Legally, what does all this mean? We hear from Kelly Phelps, our legal analyst. That he could just serve a sixth of that five-year sentence, which could mean he's out after ten months, but that's very much at the discretion of authorities here.

CUOMO: So Robyn, help us here because this sounds like a fairly light sentence by manslaughter standards in the U.S. What's the perception there?

CURNOW: You know what? The judge was at pains, it was more than an hour-long judgment, and she was absolutely at pains to try to paint a balance between punishment, the need for retribution, the need for the victim's family to feel like they could have closure, but then she said there's also the need for the court to be merciful.

She weighed up all of these options. She said she didn't think he deserved a long jail sentence. But she certainly didn't find that house arrest would be appropriate. This, under manslaughter and culpable homicide here in South Africa, it's not a particularly short sentence. Not a particularly long one, it kind of falls in the middle.

In terms of public opinion, it's always been so divided over this case. But she's certainly not having people take to the streets, as you can see, traffic still piling up. There are few onlookers behind me outside the court, but there hasn't been some sort of physical reaction to this at all.

CUOMO: All right, Robyn Curnow, thank you very much. So there you have it, Oscar Pistorius gets five years, but may only serve ten months.

CAMEROTA: That probably means it was the right sentence from the judge if there was no reaction and if people aren't in the streets and you don't hear an outcry. It probably means that she struck the right balance.

CUOMO: Maybe or there's shock. We'll have to see how it plays out, our appreciation to Robin for that.

So we also hear that there are new Ebola protocols this morning for health care workers, finally, being released by the Centers for Disease Control. The new guidelines call for rigorous training and practice with protective gear that needs to cover workers from head to toe. It seems pretty obvious at this point.

But unfortunately, the guidelines come too late for two Dallas nurses on your screen now infected with the virus. So how are they doing? And is the risk of more cases finally under control?

CNN's complete coverage of the Ebola situation begins in Dallas that's where we find Nick Valencia. Nick, good morning.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris. CDC Director Tom Frieden says that it will provide increased margin of safety. These new guidelines were based on a consensus of health care workers, who have already treated Ebola patients and they come down to three new recommendations.

The first is repeatedly training workers in the donning and doffing of personal protective equipment. Second, making sure that no skin is exposed during that process and third using the buddy system and making sure that trained monitors are on hand during the removal of PPEs.

Director Frieden said that the old guidelines simply were not enough for Texas Presbyterian. As you know, two nurses contracted the virus while treating Thomas Eric Duncan.

Meanwhile yesterday we saw nurses, dozens of them, stand front and center and defend the hospital. Today is also a big day for five additional patients who were being monitored for Ebola-like symptoms. Yesterday Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins that news about their condition will be announced later today at 10:00 a.m. Eastern -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Nick, thank you very much. Alisyn, over to you.

CAMEROTA: All right, Chris, let's talk more about this. Joining us now is Christy Feig, she is the director of communications for the World Health Organization, that's the U.N. public health agency that is tasked with battling Ebola, and Dr. Amesh Adalja, a representative for the Infectious Disease Society of America.

Thanks to both of you for joining us this morning to help go through these new guidelines. Dr. Adalja, let me start with you and let me put up on our screen for our viewers at home, what the new personal protective equipment includes.

Now as of today, doctors and nurses must wear double gloves, mid-calf boot covers, water proof or leg covers, fluid-resistant gown or cover all without hood. They must have respirators. They must have disposable full-face shield, surgical hoods covering their head and neck. Waterproof apron that covers their torso to mid-calf. Dr. Adalja, what has changed here?

DR. AMESH ADALJA, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SOCIETY OF AMERICA: What's really changed is now we're recognizing that what was going on at Texas Presbyterian wasn't enough. And there's no room for inconsistency with this unforgiving virus because were getting infected when they shouldn't have.

There was probably a gross underestimation of what Ebola would do in the modern intensive care unit, with all that blood and body fluid exposure. Now you're seeing everything getting into line with what "Doctors Without Borders" do, what Nebraska and Emory do. Sort of standardizing it so there really is no margin of error with this important personal protective equipment.

CAMEROTA: A couple of things jump out at me, that now your neck has to be covered. That wasn't happening at the Dallas hospital. We don't know if that's how the nurses got exposed. Why didn't they do this sooner?

ADALJA: I really think it's because people didn't understand what would happen in the modern intensive care unit. They were extrapolating how we were treated Ebola in resource-poor settings and also what's happened with the patients that were treated in a normal hospital setting.

Mr. Duncan received mechanical ventilation, was put on a dialysis machine, these are two technologies that Ebola has never seen and we know in our ICUs bacteria and other viruses can run rampant and cause a lot of hospital-acquired infections between patients and health care workers and vice versa, and that's exactly what happened here.

I think that's why you're seeing this big push to actually standardize and go to the full extent until we actually figure out what -- we still don't even know what happened in Texas. I think it's still important to get to the root cause of how those two workers got exposed.

CAMEROTA: So true, Christie, I want to go to you. These new guidelines come as a result of the CDC receiving a lot of heat because of how poorly people believed they handled the Ebola cases here in the United States.

And your organization, the World Health Organization, has also come under criticism for basically ignoring the writing on the wall and having what happened in West Africa already spike to more than 8,000 cases before people are able to get their arms around it. What's your response to the criticism of WHO?

CHRISTY FEIG, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS, WHO: There's a lot of reasons why it took everyone three months to figure out that this was actually Ebola, primarily because this part of the world had never seen Ebola before. They have cholera. They have malaria as one of their top killers. They have dengue. They have yellow fever. All of those diseases have the exact same symptoms in the early days as we've seen with Ebola and so when seven of the nine cases came back positive for cholera, the doctors there stopped looking for Ebola. So it took a while before the news spread out far enough that people could say that we've seen Ebola before, perhaps just perhaps this could be Ebola.

When you're working with a place that has not seen it before, it's never the first thing that you go to, you tend to go with what you see on a regular basis.

CAMEROTA: We know that your organization strives to maintain very high standards and is doing some soul-searching now. What do you think could have been done differently in the early days of this outbreak in West Africa?

FEIG: In the early days, as soon as we were notified of it in late March, we immediately launched a team of some of our best experts to go to the affected country. At that point, it was Guinea. Within days we had three and a half tons of protective gear in the air.

By April, we were calling for foreign medical teams to come help and foreign medical team is something that we use in a lot of emergencies. We thought this is what we're going to need here. Because this health system is so shattered from years of conflict, we're going to need some surge.

But people aren't used to dealing with Ebola and people were not as ready to come in to help fight Ebola as they are, say, with the Philippines, when a typhoon comes through. That's much more of a comfort zone for them, so it takes a while to convince people to come in and help.

CAMEROTA: So basically you do agree that you missed some critical opportunities at the beginning?

FEIG: I think everybody that looks back in hindsight says we could have done more sooner. We mounted a larger-scale response mid-summer when the cases really started looking different from normal outbreak. You have to remember that we dealt with about 15 Ebola outbreaks in the past decade so we have a lot of experience with Ebola.

And on the front end of this, we thought, this is very unusual. You have communities that aren't used to dealing with this. We didn't recognize straightaway that this was going to be such an anomaly of an outbreak.

I think if we would go back now, we would look to see what were the signs earlier on that this would be such a deviation from the norm, it was early summer when our experts started to see the first signs that the epi-curve would just take off.

CAMEROTA: Understood. Dr. Adalja, that these new CDC guidelines are in place, do you think that had they been in place a month ago, would that have prevented the two nurses at Texas Presbyterian, Amber Vinson and Nina Pham, from becoming infected? ADALJA: It's really hard to say because like I said earlier, we don't actually know how they got exposed. We have to figure out how that happened because that's really the key to this whole ripple effect that we are seeing from Mr. Duncan.

With these new guidelines, it's very clear that you're going to get much less exposure to blood and body fluids. It probably could have prevented their infection, based on what we're hearing already.

The important thing, it's not just the guidelines, hospitals have to train, they have to continually train and make sure that people can do this. This is a lot more complex than the earlier guidelines, although there's more protection, there has to be more care with putting this equipment on and off.

And making sure that everybody can do it appropriately with the buddy system, all of that have to be implemented. It's not just having the guidelines. It's actually making it work.

CAMEROTA: Yes, yes, and they are talking about this more rigorous and repeated trainings is one of the new guidelines. Dr. Adalja, Christy Feig, thanks so much for all the information and for your candor this morning. Great to talk to you. Chris, what's coming up?

CUOMO: All right, Alisyn, overnight, we learned legendary fashion designer, Oscar de la Renta has died. The 82-year-old was best known for dressing some of the most prominent people around the globe. De La Renta was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. He did appear frail in recent appearances.

Jason Carroll is here with a look back at the life of a man recognized as a trail blazer in the fashion world, in a world where so many pretend, this is an authentically good man.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He was the real deal. Those who were close to him, close to the designer knew for quite some time that he was gravely ill. But news of his death still came as a shock. Oscar de la Renta was born in the Dominican Republic. But he will always be remembered as one of America's best designers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL (voice-over): Dressing women from the red carpet to the White House for nearly 50 years. Legendary fashion designer Oscar de la Renta has died. Cause currently unclear.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You are stunning in your Oscar de la Renta dress.

CARROLL: De la Renta's style spanning generations. Hollywood's elite from Taylor Swift to Oprah Winfrey, draping themselves in his haute couture. HBO's hit series, "Sex and The City" even centered an entire episode around one of his stunning creations.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oscar de la Renta, sleeveless silk velvet.

CARROLL: The fashion icon's final master piece, Amal Clooney's gown for what was dubbed the celebrity wedding of the year.

ERIC WILSON, FASHION NEWS DIRECTOR, "INSTYLE" MAGAZINE: Oscar de la Renta was the ultimate diplomat for American fashion. He was among the generation of designers in post-war America, who really came out from the back rooms and put their own names on the label.

CARROLL: Originally from the Dominican Republic, De la Renta moved to New York in 1965 launching his own label and stitching his way into America's history forever.

OSCAR DE LA RENTA, FASHION DESIGNER: I am unbelievable lucky man. I live in the best country that a human being can live.

CARROLL: He had a reputation of dressing New York socialites. De la Renta also dressed every first lady since Jacqueline Kennedy. Hillary Clinton wore one of his gowns to Bill Clinton's second inauguration as did Laura Bush for George W. in 2005. Even the current first lady, Michelle Obama, could not escape the sultan of suave, donning her first de la Renta just this month.

DE LA RENTA: It's a compliment to women, in the United States we want to be proud of our first lady, how she looks.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL: Again, Oscar de la Renta was 82 years old. He leaves behind a wife, a son and three step-children. We were talking about Oscar just before the show started. I actually interviewed him a few years ago. One of the things I remember about him is I said, Oscar, how much are one of these dresses going to cost?

And he said, well you know, Jason, if you have to ask -- I mean, he had this great sense of humor. You know, but he was always, always a classic.

CAMEROTA: He was dressing people up to George Clooney's bride a couple of weeks ago.

CARROLL: He was a workaholic. I mean, Chris, you knew this, man. He was a workaholic, always wanting to be in there, always wanting to work, always influencing those, the younger people who he was trying to bring up, the younger designers. He's really going to be greatly missed.

PEREIRA: What's remarkable too is that staying true to his brand, but completely relevant. He worked very hard to always know who he was, but always still there and part of the culture, you know, it's an amazing feat to be able to do that.

CARROLL: And a loyal following to the end. The ladies who lunch, the Fifth Avenue socialites loved him until the very end.

CUOMO: Because he became the stamp of you are now legit. If you're wearing Oscar de la Renta, it's not about your money. It's about your position, you matter. Even the first lady who tries to be very accessible in terms of what she's wearing so it's not just about the price tag. At some point, you got to wear Oscar because it shows that you're actually at the top of your game. He's going to be very missed.

CAMEROTA: I want to wear Oscar.

CARROLL: You still can.

CUOMO: I'm surprised that they haven't sent you a lot of stuff, you're a perfect example of who he wanted to dress.

CARROLL: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much, Jason.

CARROLL: Really a special man.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much.

PEREIRA: Let's take a look at some of your headlines right now at 15 minutes past the hour.

Turkey says it will allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters to use its territory to cross into Syria and help defend Kobani against ISIS: The Turkish government had previously refused to let fighters or weapons across the border. In the meantime, ISIS militants launched 15 nearly simultaneous attacks on Kurdish forces in northern Iraq. ISIS control now more than a dozen cities in Iraq, despite relentless U.S.-led airstrikes.

We are learning chilling new details about the convicted sex offender suspected of killing at least seven women in Indiana. Police are now saying 43-year-old Darren Vann may be a serial killer whose crimes span 20 years. And that more victims could surface. They say Vann admitted to killing a 19-year-old woman this month, then led them to the bodies of six other women, all in abandoned houses in Gary, Indiana.

After two previous tries, representatives of Hong Kong's government are finally meeting because of pro democracy leaders. The students want to have direct input on the candidates. However, Hong Kong's chief executive says their demands are impossible, going so far as to say that caving might give the city's poor and working class a dominant political voice.

Got to show this -- the president involved in a touchy situation in Chicago. He was voting in the state's midterm elections. He comes across a guy who gives him a run for his money. The commander-in- chief kind of plays along, I want to you take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE: Mr. President, don't touch my girlfriend now.

VOTER: Did you say that?

OBAMA: You know, I really wasn't planning on it. (LAUGHTER)

VOTER: I'm sorry, please excuse him.

OBAMA: Now, there's an example of a brother just embarrassing you for no reason.

VOTER: Just embarrassing.

OBAMA: Just for no reason whatsoever.

VOTER: I know he was going to say something smart, but I didn't know.

OBAMA: Now, you'll be going back home and talking to your friends about, I cannot believe -- what's his name?

VOTER: Mike.

OBAMA: I can't believe Mike. He is such a fool.

VOTER: He really is.

OBAMA: I was just mortified.

(LAUGHTER)

MIKE: But she's having a conversation with the president.

OBAMA: But fortunately, the president was nice about it.

VOTER: I'm freaking out right now.

OBAMA: So, it was all right.

You're going to kiss me, give him something to talk about. Now, he's really jealous.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: So, the president got the last laugh, not only hugging the girl, but also planning to kiss her.

What's interesting is apparently Mike, the man you don't really see him, he sort of said it was kind of weird and tense and they didn't expect this to happen. So, he wanted to say something funny to cut the tension and the president ran with it.

CAMEROTA: He really did. That was the whole shtick that they had there. Sort of --

CUOMO: Don't touch my girlfriend? I don't know that that's the first thing to come to mind as a funny thing to say to the president.

(CROSSTALK) CAMEROTA: That's great. Wow.

All right. Coming up, the suspect in the disappearance of University of Virginia student is now linked to three crimes against young men. Could Jesse Matthew be involved in even more unsolved crimes?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Some new information for you there. New charges against Jesse Matthew. The man in custody for the disappearance of University of Virginia student Hannah Graham.

Now, Matthew has been charged with the 2005 attempted murder, abduction and rape of a 26-year-old woman. That case has a DNA link to the disappearance of another college student who's name is Morgan Harrington.

Now, officials say forensic evidence connects Matthew to Harrington's case, but no charges yet for him in that matter.

So, let's bring in Mel Robbins, CNN local commentator and legal analyst, Lawrence Kobilinsky, who's a forensic scientist.

Very useful to have both of you here.

Let's talk about what we have and don't have here yet.

Mel, I'll start with you, the case of the woman who survived, thank God, the victim of the rape and assault, attempted murder there. How did they get do that point? What must they have learned from the woman about that? Where does that make the situation lie for you?

MEL ROBBINS, CNN COMMENTATOR AND LEGAL ANALYST: Hey, good morning, Chris. Good morning, Larry.

This is a terrific development. And the reason why it's terrific is we now have case, Chris, with a victim who is alive, who the police have spoken to and who is willing to testify. So what you're going to see is they're going to bring charges in Fairfax County. And they absolutely with DNA evidence and a victim, will be able to convict him. That way, he will be a convicted rapist and a convicted guy with an attempted murder charge when they bring him on charges against Harrington and Hannah Graham, Chris.

CUOMO: What did she have to tell them, Mel, that gets them to an attempted murder charge and not just rape?

ROBBINS: Well, perhaps that he threatened her, that he said he was going to kill her, perhaps the way in which he was physically assaulting her. I don't want to get too graphic because it's 6:00 in the morning.

CUOMO: Right, right.

ROBBINS: But, you know, it's only a two-page complaint, Chris, and police are being very tight on the details here. But he might have had some kind of weapon, not a gun, but some sort of instrument with him, reading between the lines here. So we're going to find out more in the days to come.

CUOMO: And, Larry, look, rape is bad enough. It's about a bad a crime as we have. But I'm trying to figure out how they're going to make this man a killer because of these two open cases.

Now, you have Morgan Harrington, they say there's a DNA link -- help us understand it -- a DNA link from the woman who survived that situation and her case. What does that mean?

LAWRENCE KOBILINSKY, FORENSIC SCIENTIST: Well, you know, because we have a national database, we can link up different cases through DNA. So, if there's semen, for example, or there's hair, you can type those things and establish a linkage, we really don't know what the forensic linkage is.

CUOMO: But if they do have a forensic link of DNA, then why haven't they charged? What more do you think they need?

KOBILINSKY: Well, I think they have plenty of time. There's no rush to charge with a murder case, they want to get their case together. And I think we will see indictments for the other, the other crimes.

CUOMO: Mel, quick word, why do you wait in a situation like this? What's the risk for authorities if they go too quickly?

ROBBINS: Well, one reason why you wait, Chris, is leverage. What you want out of a case like this is you want information. Everybody watching at home knows there's more bodies out there somewhere. I mean you don't just do this once or twice or three times. This guy is likely been on a string.

And so, what they probably want is they want the leverage now that cases are mounting. That somebody's going to testify and they're going to hold the death penalty over this guy's head to try to get information, Chris.

CUOMO: That leads us to Hannah Graham. They found remains, 30-plus days, right?

KOBILINSKY: Thirty-five days.

CUOMO: You tell us, what do you think about the remains in terms of how they were found and whether that's suggestive that this could be Hannah Graham, given the time period, and how challenging it will be to make an identification.

KOBINLINSKY: Sure, I was not surprised that after 35 days, they would find skeletonization of this victim. I think the anthropologists would look at this at the skeletal remains and determine the gender, the approximate age of the victim, the height.

There's a lot that can be determined. But then come the pathologists trying to do an autopsy and DNA analysis establishes firmly that it is Hannah Graham. CUOMO: It gets tricky with DNA, that's why it's so important for them

to find clothing.

KOBILINSKY: If in fact semen is present, if it's on clothing they should be able to type it. If semen were in a body cavity. It would have completely degenerated. But on clothing, it would remain intact.

CUOMO: And also important to note. That Matthew lives four miles from where those remains were found. About five miles from where Morgan Harrington's body was discovered. It's not dispositive of anything, it's not positive proof of anything. But it is highly suggestive to authorities.

Mel Robbins, thank you very much for the perspective this morning.

Lawrence Kobilinsky, always a pleasure to have you on.

KOBILINSKY: Thank you.

CUOMO: Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: All right, Chris.

Big topic today: Monica Lewinsky. She is breaking her silence and speaking out about falling in love with President Clinton and the public humiliation that followed. Her new mission in life, ahead.

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