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New Day

The Search for MH370; A-Rod Letter to Fans: "I'm Sorry"; Anti- Semitism in the City of Love; Defense Begins in Chris Kyle Murder Trial

Aired February 18, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: President Obama says the law and history is on his side, despite of a federal judge's decision blocking his orders on immigration. The president is trying to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from being deported. The judge says the president's actions violated procedural rules. Despite the setback, the president says he will ultimately prevail in the courts and the Justice Department is, in fact, appealing.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The measles outbreak getting worse. The Centers for Disease Control confirms 141 cases in 17 states.

CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta joins us in our next hour to discuss what's next.

CUOMO: It has been nearly a year since Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 vanished and search vessels are still scouring the southern Indian Ocean. However, not a single piece of wreckage has been found.

We have CNN's Anna Coren just out of one of those recovery ships live in Perth, Australia.

Any news?

ANNA COREN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Chris, still no clue, no debris, nothing, as to what happened to MH370. There are two vessels here at port in Perth, that have come in to get new crew, supplies and fix equipment before heading back out. In total, four ships are scouring this area. The initial search area was half the size of the United States. It's been narrowed down to some 60,000 square kilometers, still an enormous area, but they are literally scouring every single inch of the ocean floor.

Now, the challenges they are facing below the surface, it is this horrendous conditions really. The topography, you've got underwater mountains, volcanoes, cliffs and troughs. That's causing huge problems for the sonar equipment.

And then above the surface, you have the weather. The crews have encountered three cyclones on this last trip, as well as waves of up to 16 meters. So, it really is difficult and yet the search continues.

Now, the real concern is a third of it has been looked at. This priority area has been covered. They're hoping to cover the entire area by May, but the fear of the families is that once this is completed, that Malaysian Airlines will wrap this up and that the search will no longer continue and they will never find out what happened to MH370 -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Just such a mystery.

Anna Coren, thanks so much for that update.

Well, we're getting a first look of this surveillance video that captured the moment when a gunman opened fire on a Kansas City bus in December, injuring a 15-year-old girl. Investigators believe the girl's boyfriend, who was seated next to her, was the shooter's target. That gunman is still at large.

CUOMO: Yes, what a world, what a world.

All right. So, a little sports news for you -- Alex Rodriguez, do we know who he is?

CAMEROTA: I do, A-Rod.

CUOMO: The big Yankee guy, the PED guy. He says he's apologizing, that means he is sorry.

CAMEROTA: OK.

CUOMO: He will not do it again.

CAMEROTA: OK.

CUOMO: And he wrote it out in a letter to the fans, handwritten.

CAMEROTA: Sounds good enough for me.

CUOMO: Cover the post, Andy Scholes with this morning's "Bleacher Report."

I think it said, no, thank you, not accepted, signed Yankees fans. You know, just one editorial reply there.

But what do you think is going to happen here?

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Chris, one thing A-Rod did not do in the handwritten letter is admit to using performance- enhancing drugs while he was with the Yankees. But he did apologize for pretty much everything else he did over the last two years.

A-Rod in the letter says, "I take full responsibility for the mistakes that led to my suspension for the 2014 season. I regret that my actions made the situation worse than it needed to be. I accept the fact that many of you will not believe my apology or anything I can say at this point. I understand why and that's on me." A-Rod went on to say, "I'm ready to put this chapter behind me and play some ball."

Now, A-Rod will have to face the media when the Yankees' position players report to Tampa for spring training next week. That will definitely be interesting.

All right. More troubling reports surfacing surrounding football and the New England Patriots, according to ESPN "Outside the Lines", a locker room attendant for the Patriots tried to introduce an unapproved special teams football during the infamous deflate-gate game.

Now, in the report, it says an alternate official became suspicious when 48-year-old Jim McNally, who is a locker room attendant handed him a ball that had not been marked for the kicking game. The official said he found it odd that a locker room attendant was on the field during the game. NFL special investigator Ted wells has reportedly interviewed McNally.

And this report, guys, it doesn't look good for the Patriots, because there's no explaining this away with weather conditions and the balls getting deflated because of the atmosphere. This looks like if this report is true, it could be a blatant attempt at cheating. So, it will be interesting to see what comes of this.

CAMEROTA: I'm shocked, shocked, Andy Scholes. Did you say cheating?

SCHOLES: I did. We'll have to see. I mean --

CUOMO: Coming off the A-Rod story, it's like, you know?

CAMEROTA: Right.

CUOMO: Yes, here we have this like whole scandal about performance- enhancing drugs. This guy is coming back, he's going to play. We know he's going to play. And you have the football thing.

Where is it on your cheatometer, by the way? Where is it?

SCHOLES: Which one? This news report or A-Rod?

CUOMO: Where on the cheatometer in terms of how big a deal this is? The A-Rod one would be a bang -- where is it on?

SCHOLES: This one, the deflate-gate would be a bigger deal to me than the one football for the kicking game. But it's all about the principles and making it an honest game as opposed to --

CUOMO: Let's start with getting all the criminals off the playing field and those who abuse children and wives, and then we'll worry about the footballs, you know?

CAMEROTA: There's a lot of work to do.

All right. Andy Scholes, thanks so much for that.

SCHOLES: All right. Have a good one. CAMEROTA: All right. You won't believe what happens when this Jewish man walks around the streets of Paris. He joins us next to talk about this walk that has gone viral.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: What would happen if a Jewish man try I had to walk around a Muslim neighborhood in Paris? Well, one reporter attempted it. His experiment has gotten three million views online.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

CAMEROTA: In light of this video, and the Paris terror attacks, what is the level of anti-Semitism in the city of love?

Let's bring in that journalist, Zvika Klein. He joins us this morning from Jerusalem.

Good morning, Zvika.

ZVIKA KLEIN, RECORDED ANTI-SEMITISM ON HIDDEN CAMERA: Good morning. How are you?

CAMEROTA: I'm well. You put on a yarmulke and you decided for the next 10 hours to walk around Paris even into some predominantly Muslim neighborhoods, you had a hidden camera following you. Why do you want to do this experiment?

KLEIN: So, I'm a journalist in Israel for NRG news site and the "Makor Rishon" daily newspaper and I decided to -- I cover Jewish world for many years. And I speak to Jews daily all around the world, specifically in Europe. I've been to the shooting in Toulouse in 2012 --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

KLEIN: -- and to other terrorist attacks. And I kind of wanted it to see what's really going on. I wanted to not only base our coverage on what we see online, what we hear from people, but to see what an average Jew goes through in a day in Paris.

CAMEROTA: It makes perfect sense. So, you didn't want to just go by online gossip. You wanted to experience it. So, what was your experience? What happened during those 10 hours?

KLEIN: Right. So, I mean, there was certain criticism about the fact that we only put in a minute and a half. But we weren't going to put in ten hours.

Definitely, certain neighbors were decent. I got heads turned around, people pointed at me and stuff like that I think that's something that maybe like a pretty woman goes through every day, something that I never felt. But you know, that's I think that's, you know, decent, it's not something which is terrible.

But the more we went to certain neighborhoods with a larger Muslim population, the attitude towards me changed. People spit at me a few times. People cursed me. Spoke in a very not nice language.

CAMEROTA: When you say not nice language, what were some of the things that were said to you?

KLEIN: Speaking about sexual relations and in certain ways, calling me a Jew. Yelling out, you know, Jew or what are you doing here? Referring to me as a dog.

These are things that I don't usually get when I walk on the streets of Jerusalem or on the streets of New York wearing my kippah. I wear kippah daily. I'm an orthodox Jews.

It was also scary, because four Jews were killed just a little bit more than a month ago in a kosher supermarket in Paris, not in a difficult neighborhood. So, this is something I felt like a walking target some of the times.

CAMEROTA: At one point, you encountered a young Muslim boy. What did you hear him say?

KLEIN: Uh-huh. I don't know specifically what you are talking about.

CAMEROTA: You over I believe --

KLEIN: Oh, with his mother. Yes, yes, exactly.

So, a Muslim boy walks by me, with his mother. And then afterwards I was told -- I had security guard, you know, around me and he came up to me after and said this kid told his mother, what is this guy doing here? They're going to kill him.

This is a neighborhood that Jews maybe used to live in actually, but you know, but don't live there any more because of the violence they have received. You know from different immigrants from other countries that moved there. This is a neighborhood that Jew was not walk in today wearing -- displaying themselves as Jews.

CAMEROTA: I mean, that raises the larger issue of, as you know, there's so much controversy about no go zones and whether they exist in Paris.

KLEIN: Right.

CAMEROTA: Now that you've had this experience, do you believe that there is some neighborhoods where non-Muslims cannot go?

KLEIN: I thought that I believed that until I went to visit there, I realized that it's not that there are no go zones in Paris. There are no Jew zones. I think that -- my photographer, who is Jewish, but didn't display himself as a Jew, walked in front of me with a backpack on his back, with a camera, hidden camera. Nobody told any -- no one told him anything you know. You know, I was the problematic person. He could have just been average French guy.

So, I think at the end of the day, you know it's really no Jew zones. And also, you know, areas where security is afraid to go and get near because it's just too dangerous.

CAMEROTA: Zvika Klein, the video is fascinating to watch and terribly disturbing on so many levels -- thanks for sharing your experience.

KLEIN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Give us your take on this. You can tweet us @newday. You can go to Facebook.com/NewDay. You can find me @alisyncamerota on Twitter. We'd love to hear your reaction to this story.

Let's go over to Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Alisyn. We had a big moment in the "American Sniper" murder trial. Jurors got to hear the killer in his own words. You'll get to hear what he had to say about his own sanity just moments after being arrested.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Welcome back to NEW DAY.

Today, a new challenge for the defense in the trial of the man who killed "American Sniper" Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield. The defense team is at the center stage now. The prosecution has rested. But there were big elements we want to get through.

So, we have our experts to help us do that. We have Joey Jackson, HLN legal analyst with us and criminal defense attorney. And Mr. Paul Callan, CNN legal analyst, senior partner at Callan Legal, a former NYC homicide prosecutor, as well as criminal defense attorney.

All right. Big moment, fellows, this is Eddie Ray Routh. He's in the back of a squad car, he's talking about his presence of mind. The jury got to see this obviously compelling for the jury to see the defendant in his own words in the elements, so close to the scene of the crime.

What do you think it did for the prosecution, Mr. Callan?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's always a mixed bag in this case, because it's an insanity case. And you listen to him, half the time you think -- he's mentally ill. He's crazy. The rest of the time you say, you know something, he understands the difference between right and wrong. Prosecutors are going to say even in that rambling discourse, he indicates he knows the difference between right and wrong and that's all they have to prove.

CUOMO: You see indication that this could be used by prosecutors to show plan or?

CALLAN: Absolutely.

CUOMO: Some type of manipulation? How so?

CALLAN: Plan, scheme, manipulation, all of it in the rambling, he talks about how he planned to you know, his escape and the killing and there are lots of details that are going to focus on to say he's a planner, he's a schemer, he knows right and wrong.

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: It shows one thing, Chris, from a defense perspective, and that is the grip of psychosis. Remember how the defense is plotting their case, they're talking about a person who is delusional, who is paranoid, who certainly has no knowledge or concept of anything.

And so, I think when you have ramblings like this, which are uneven, which are irrational, which are not lucid. Which are not clear, it plays into the whole issue of where am I, what am I doing, and is it the apocalypse.

CUOMO: And Joey Jackson doesn't care, anyway, because he says, Paul Callan, the trial is over, because of the suggest -- well, you tell us, Joey. This is over. They asked for a mistrial. You said they should have gotten it.

JACKSON: Chris, I think it's a significant moment when you are prosecuting a case you have your theory, you have your plan. And if the prosecution's argument is, it was the drugs that made him do it and we all know that voluntary intoxication, voluntarily consuming any type of drug, is not a defense in that it affects your state of mind. When you're a prosecutor and you introduce evidence before that jury, two vials in this case suggesting that he, that is Routh did meth, that's inexcusable, particularly, Chris, when we come to find that the vials were not his.

How could at this stage of the game, when you have prepared your case, to bring it before that jury, how could you make such a misrepresentation? It's inexcusable, the defense asked for a mistrial. They weren't granted it, they were given a curative instruction. But I certainly think it's ground for mistrial and it certainly be grounds for an appeal.

CALLAN: Supreme Court of the United States said we give people a fair trial, not a perfect trial. This was a mistake, obviously. But --

CUOMO: You're a crack head? You're a meth head, that's fair?

CALLAN: Well, listen, everybody knows and as a matter of fact, it's been the defense contention that he has drug problems. They haven't denied it at all. They're saying that's part of his PTSD. The prosecutor, of course, has said that's no defense under Texas law. That he's a drug user.

So, there's nothing here that has been inserted into the case that wasn't in the case before. So, I say, they're going to get a curative instruction and on appeal an appellate court is going to look at the record and say, you know, something, it didn't move the needle significantly. No reversal.

JACKSON: Quickly, Chris, I know we have to move on, but the issue is this is a distinction between being a drug user and abuser and a recreational user of marijuana. It's clear he uses marijuana. He used it with his mom, he used with his uncle, potentially his girlfriend. But -- CALLAN: And alcohol.

JACKSON: And alcohol, but to suggest --

CUOMO: But that is not meth.

JACKSON: That's not meth.

CUOMO: All right.

So, the prosecution finishes its case, the question is one, Paul Callan, why so quick? And how do you think that plays to their advantage here?

CALLAN: This is the typical Texas rocket docket. They're looking for a streamlined case to go in. They want to show quickly -- I mean, they have an overwhelming case obviously, he's the murder.

They also show why he did it. They put motive, it's a strange motive. He was angry because they weren't talking to him. It demonstrates that he knows the difference between right and wrong.

What they're doing is they're setting up now, if the defense tries to put in a compelling insanity defense, the prosecutor will come back and fill in the hole. So, I think it made sense for them to move fast to make their case.

CUOMO: Now, remember, all of you at home as these two gentlemen have taught me -- the defense has no burden to put on any case, it doesn't have to the state has to make the case against you as the defendant. You don't have to prove your own innocence.

However, if you want to argue an affirmative defense, which they want to do with insanity, then you have to do it. The defense is doing exactly that, it's case in chief begins with the mom.

Joey, why the mom? Are you trying to get my heartstrings going?

JACKSON: Absolute -- well, a couple of things, Chris, not only the heartstrings and emotions, more than that. And, of course, the issue, you mentioned, Chris mentioned an affirmative defense. That is in this state, state of Texas, if you want to show insanity, you have to show by a preponderance of the evidence, is it more likely than not, the defense has the burden of showing he's insane.

Now, you put the mom on, what does she say, Chris? She talks about a person, how he grew up, but how he changed, how he served in Iraq. When he started carrying bodies during the humanitarian mission in Haiti, it changed him in a substantive way.

We learned about 2011, he learned about the fact that he goes voluntarily to a hospital for psychiatric treatment. We then learned that he is civilly committed against his will a year later. We also learn about his -- you know, schizophrenia, the type of mental state that he had. His emotions, his mindset and I think this goes a long way of establishing beyond reasonable -- you know, not beyond a reasonable doubt, but by a preponderance of the evidence, he is insane.

CUOMO: Quick take.

CALLAN: It was a good day for the defense. The mother was very compelling for him. But we always have to come back to the concept that legal insanity is not the same as regular insanity. It's a rare form that less than 1 percent of criminal defendants are able to prove in court and I think in the end, prosecutors still has the strong case that he understands the difference between right and wrong.

JACKSON: Just for clarification, Paul and I have discussed this before. Insanity defense is used in 1 percent of the cases, it's effective 25 percent of the time. So, one in four defendants actually prevail in the use --

CALLAN: Meaning .25 percent of the time it's successful overall. That's a minimal success rate.

JACKSON: It is.

CALLAN: Even Joey Jackson would be embarrassed with that kind of success rate.

JACKSON: Not if it was against you.

CUOMO: This is the only case we're going to worry about in terms of whether it comes or not, because a lot of unique factors in it. We're not going to give a winner today because the defense is just starting its case and we want to see what happens here first.

But we will give this word of caution that we've given all along. PTS, it's great to have it out in the open for people to be talking about post-traumatic stress. However, the idea that it makes you violent. If the defense argues you that, that could be a tricky thing for them, because it's going to cut both ways with the clinical community.

Thank you very much, Joey Jackson and Paul Callan.

CALLAN: Thank you.

JACKSON: Thank you, Chris.

CUOMO: We're going to have much more on Chris Kyle's life and the legal fight to seek justice. Please watch this tonight, see it right there, it's called "Blockbuster: The Story of American Sniper". And it is tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN.

This is a big story. There are many for you this morning, so let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A large-scale offensive by is militants.

CUOMO: Kurdish forces repel the new wave of attacks. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not going to win this war unless we identify

the enemy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was more of a gang member than he was a violent extremist.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He did this because of an enormous anger towards the Danish society and the feeling of being an outsider.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Suspicious activity on the part of Hernandez.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Inside the vehicle, it appeared that he took his phone and took it apart.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You didn't see him smashing his phone, did you?

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to NEW DAY.