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Ferguson Prosecutor Faces Criticism; Immigration Reform in America; Imagine a World

Aired November 26, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: President Obama connects the dots between his immigration reform and the fury over

Ferguson.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Part of what America's about is stitching together folks from different backgrounds and different faiths

and different ethnicities.

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AMANPOUR (voice-over): Tonight, we look at both issues and what it will take to heal this divided nation.

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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Coast to coast, American remain on the streets, blocking bridges and staging sit-ins, voicing their continued frustration over the decision in

Ferguson, Missouri. The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., of course, bears the inscription, "Equal justice under law."

But now many Americans are asking, "Is that true?"

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you think?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That are lives are not equal. Our lives are not worthy, are not even (INAUDIBLE).

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AMANPOUR: Well, Darren Wilson, who was freed from having to have his day of court, freed from the burden of a trial for shooting the unarmed black

teen, Michael Brown, is speaking out for the first time. He tells ABC News that he was simply doing his job.

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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC HOST: Something that you thing that will always haunt you?

DARREN WILSON, MICHAEL BROWN SHOOTER: I don't think it's haunting. It's always going to be something that happened.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You are -- you have a very clean conscience.

WILSON: The reason I have a clean conscience is that I know I did my job right.

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AMANPOUR: Now the statistics, too, are troubling. The FBI says that blacks account for 49 percent of those arrested for murder and non-

negligent manslaughter, while they make up on 13 percent of the population. But they are also given much harsher sentences and, crucially, whites

perceive blacks to be much more criminal than they actually are.

According to one study, whites overestimate the amount of black crime by about 20-30 percent and there are also real questions being asked now about

the conduct of the man who was supposed to do his utmost to see that Officer Darren Wilson was held to account for his actions, and that is the

St. Louis prosecutor.

So let's get some answers with Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Jeffrey Toobin, who's a former

prosecutor himself and now, of course, CNN's senior legal analyst.

Gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for being here. It is really appalling to see what's ripping across this country right now.

Can we get to the very first question and that is all these questions that both of are asking, in fact, as well as people on the street?

What did McCulloch, the prosecutor, do wrong or right -- Jeffrey?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I would draw a distinction between the process and the result. I actually think the result -- no

charges -- is defensible. But I don't think the process he followed was appropriate.

The best thing the criminal justice system can do is treat everyone the same and the process that the prosecutor used, using a grand jury, which is

rarely used in any kind of setting, and throwing all the evidence, rather than a selection of it, before the grand jury almost seemed to dictate the

result, which was an exoneration.

Given the evidence that came out, I think the exoneration may well be justified; but I don't think the process inspires a lot of confidence.

AMANPOUR: So how can you match the two then?

I mean, how can you have your cake and eat it, too?

TOOBIN: Well, because I'm a journalist. I can always do that.

(CROSSTALK)

TOOBIN: Because -- but because imperfect processes can sometimes come out -- can come out with the right result; but I think part of the reason there

is so much dissatisfaction with McCulloch's performance is this distinction between the process and the result.

AMANPOUR: Vince, do you think that the process was OK, that the prosecutor did his utmost?

VINCENT WARREN, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: No. I think the process was terrible and I would agree with Jeffrey, not only is the grand jury

process one that not everybody uses, but I think the way this came out almost like throwing out all of the evidence and then asking -- shifting

the burden from the prosecutor, whose responsibility it is to secure an indictment, to the jury, the grand jury, almost shifting the burden

politically so that he doesn't have to deal with it.

AMANPOUR: So you both think that's got problems. But you heard what Jeffrey said, that the results, the non-indictment, he thinks, is

defensible.

What do you think?

WARREN: I'm not convinced about that. The information is still coming out and we're all reviewing it. What we know is that the prosecutor for us

laid out all of the evidence that he thought was important. He said that some of the testimony was contradictory, which it was.

But I'm not convinced -- and I'm not convinced mostly for the reason that Jeffrey said, which is that we have to have faith that this system is

working for us. And when it is non-transparent, as this grand jury system is, and we have to just go on the say-so of a prosecutor who, by the way,

has three or four family members that are police officers, whose mother, apparently ,was killed by an African American man and who's on the board of

a lot of pro-police organizations, we have to wonder whether the process that he set up with respect to this police officer was actually fair.

And I would also note --

(CROSSTALK)

WARREN: -- last thing I would just note is that when you listen to the evidence as he was laying it out, we heard more about what Michael Brown

did than we did about what Darren Wilson did, which is --

TOOBIN: But on the issue of transparency, what happened in this case, which is very, very unusual, is that all of the evidence that was presented

to the grand jury, which is apparently all of the evidence in the case, has been released to the public.

So we all can make up our minds based on the transcripts whether this decision should have been returned or not. So I think -- and the terms of

transparency, you know, McCulloch did do a good job.

AMANPOUR: All right. Can we get to the heart of the matter and that almost not legal, it's feeling, it's emotion, it's the racial divide. Here

you're being very genteel and black-and-white analyst expert of -- having a civilized discussion.

Around the country, it comes down a lot between racial lines.

Wilson, in his testimony, did speak negatively about Ferguson, about that particular neighborhood. "This is a neighborhood we didn't like," he said.

He has said that he was scared.

Isn't the essence of this that black police officers, black -- white police officers, rather, white people in general in this country are scared when

they see a young or middle-aged black man coming towards them?

WARREN: Oh, absolutely. That is the most important issue that's here; it's the one that people don't like to talk about but people are -- tend to

be very, very hardened in their views one way or the other.

I also think there's another question which is a quasi-legal question, which is, is it possible for people to conceive of a police officer

committing a crime in the course of his duty when it comes to killing a black person? Most people seem to think they can't conceptualize what that

would look like.

TOOBIN: One of the problems I have with cases like this is that we immediately see them as metaphors before the larger state of race relations

and that's -- I think they are of limited use. There is no question that black people in this country feel differently, for good reason, about their

relationships with the police than white people do. But individual cases don't turn on those general feelings. They turn on these very specific

facts.

When you're a kid growing up in this country and you're white, you're always told that the police are your friend, if you're in trouble go find a

police officer.

African Americans have a very different relationship --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: Absolutely.

TOOBIN: -- whether it comes to being stopped and frisked or driving -- or stopped while they're driving. I mean, it is just --

AMANPOUR: African American friends of mine, colleagues of ours, tell their children, their male children, do not walk down the street wearing X

because that will get you into trouble.

WARREN: I do the same thing with my children and my parents did the same thing with me. And the question is why. And this is why it makes sense to

look at this system, at things systematically as opposed to episodically.

The question with respect to Darren Wilson, really -- for the black people in the black community, they're not mad because they're black. They're mad

because of what police departments do to black people. And that's why we have to look at it in a larger context.

AMANPOUR: So obviously the question is, will this really cause a national debate?

Does there need to be one?

And will there be any kind of reform?

And let me give you some of these statistics. Apparently the FBI, in its annual data on justifiable homicide, has said that between 2005-12 there

were 95 cases every year of a white officer killing black people, a black person. In 2010, seven police departments around this country have been

the subject of federal reviews for fatal shootings.

I just said -- and I read the statistic -- that whites overestimate the amount of crimes that blacks commit by about 20-30 percent.

How does one change this?

Is this about teaching police departments how to behave?

Is it about better representation?

Ferguson is 65 percent black and the police are much more majority white.

WARREN: Well, I think the answer lies in -- partially in training and also it relies in how police departments work. So we did this study, large

stop-and-frisk case here in New York, which we set up for constitutional rights just won. But the issue there is how do we shift the police

departments so that they're not looking at occupying black communities, treating the entire community as sort of a haven for criminality but

they're actually going after the people within the community that commit the crime.

And that's part of the important piece and also the reason why people are protesting is because they don't have a voice in how their communities are

policed. That is absolutely essential for us to be able to shift the way that race is perceived and the way that race plays into policing in the

urban areas.

AMANPOUR: And the same question to you, but with the added layer, whatever Michael Brown was doing, whether he was charging Darren Wilson, whether he

was being obstreperous, whether he had stolen the cigarillos, doesn't this boil down to the fact that there could have been an arrest made without 12

bullets being shot and six of them hitting him?

TOOBIN: Well, I'm not sure about that. I mean, I -- that's certainly it - - we -- the world, not to say Michael -- and certainly Michael Brown would all be better off if that had happened. But you know, if you look at

Officer Wilson's testimony, he left the car and rushed. There are other opportunities he could have taken that would not have ended in Michael

Brown's death.

The question, though, is not did he follow the appropriate procedures or the best practices. The question is did he commit a crime? And the grand

jury said no. That's a very low bar. But that's all grand juries are supposed to do --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: Oh, I've just been told time, but I just want to read one thing, which was quite encouraging, a poll graphic contained -- conducted before

the grand jury decision, said should the grand jury charge Officer Wilson? Whites said 49 percent yes; non-whites 78 percent yes.

So yes, it's a difference but a lot of whites thought that perhaps there was a case for that.

WARREN: And that's the issue of the discussion we've had --

AMANPOUR: It's interesting, it really is.

TOOBIN: The country is a lot better off than it was 30 or 20 years ago. I don't know if it's that much better off than it was six months ago.

AMANPOUR: Jeffrey Toobin, Vince, thank you so much indeed for being here, Vince Warren.

"Hands up, don't shoot," was one of the gestures and slogans on the streets when anger first erupted over Michael Brown's shooting. And protesters in

Hong Kong adopted that same slogan during their recent weeks of Occupy Central, where they were calling for real and full democracy.

Demonstrators and police there have clashed again hours after a protest area was cleared and dozens more people were arrested today, including two

of those leaders. Raising your voice can land you in trouble, but it can be a catalyst for change. And when we come back, the moral case for

immigration reform with Bishop Elizondo of Seattle.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Now in the wake of the Ferguson riots, President Obama linked them to his immigration reform pitch, saying the very idea of America is about, quote,

"stitching together people from different backgrounds."

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OBAMA: Part of what makes America this remarkable place is being American doesn't mean you have to look a certain way or have a certain last name or

come from a certain place.

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AMANPOUR: CNN polls show the president's immigration policy is popular though less so his plan to bypass Congress with an executive order. The

poll refers to Obama's policy of halting deportations for the undocumented parents of children who were born here in the United States.

Fifty percent of those asked called it about right; 22 percent says that it doesn't go far enough and 26 percent of Americans asked think that Obama's

plan for immigrants goes too far.

As the auxiliary bishop of Seattle, my next guest, Eusebio Elizondo, saw first-hand what happens to ordinary people who are desperate, who are

caught in the humanitarian nightmare of American's broken immigration system. Families torn apart, parents deported without their children,

husband and wife separated and thousands of deaths in the desert between Mexico and the United States.

I spoke to him moments ago about the moral argument for reforming America's immigration system.

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AMANPOUR: Bishop Elizondo, welcome. Thank you for joining me from Seattle.

I want to ask you first about your own eyewitness experiences. You traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Why did you do that?

What did you see there?

BISHOP EUSEBIO ELIZONDO, ARCHDIOCESE OF SEATTLE: Well, we traveled there because, of course, we wanted to have the experience first-hand of what the

migrants suffer there and endure, trying to reach our country.

And so it was a very powerful experience. I would say that it made me both a better human being, compassionate, and a better pastor, a better shepherd

and as a Christian, as a Catholic myself.

And so looking for better service to all my brothers and sisters who are trying to reach the country and have a better life, that is why we did it.

And we went especially to pray for all those who have died on the attempt of coming to the United States. That is why.

And there have been thousands of people dying on the desert in Arizona and Nogales, where we had that mass, that federation (ph) with a lot of people

in both sides, of course. And it was powerful in every way.

AMANPOUR: Well, and Bishop, I wonder if you thought it was as powerful as what we thought. In other words, Bishop, there have been a lot of people

in the United States who've tried to help.

But there have equally been very, very ugly scenes at the border, with people saying no, no, we don't want these people, people even pushing

children out.

There is a very difficult attitude from people here, is there not, about immigration?

ELIZONDO: Yes, of course. I think it is right now with the executive action from the president, there is a lot of controversy and a lot of

tension, of course, because of his move. But of course for us, first of all, I'm a Catholic, a bishop for the Catholic Church.

And so plus I'm a human being. And so both things lead me and push me, I would say, strongly to do something for my brothers and sisters, who are

just seeking for a better life.

And but I understand that it's a very difficult issue to deal with because of people in the country that apply for -- through the legal process of

coming to this -- to live here, disagree with the people that it's just breaking the law or looking for an easier way to -- or a speedier way or a

-- to come to the country.

But if they are pushed by famine or violence or some other situations in their lives and so they cannot wait for the normal process to apply for

this and then wait there, just dying in famine. And that is why they even risk their lives to do so.

AMANPOUR: Well, President Obama this week has pitched his immigration reform. He was in Chicago and in fact he was heckled. And we're showing

some of that video. He was heckled because some in the audience did not think he went far enough.

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OBAMA: Don't just --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Justice for --

OBAMA: -- don't just start yelling, young ladies.

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ELIZONDO: I am very welcoming the -- his move, his action, of course, because I will benefit at least by a million people to really legalize

their statuses here and especially for all those adults who have already children, U.S. citizens born here. And so it will be great for them to

have a legal status and work here normally. And for them it's a real relief.

And of course also because he announced that he will expand the -- or extend the permit that he already offer before to the DREAMers, those young

people who are -- were brought here by their parents and then grew up here and now they are in college or in universities and they are a beautiful

asset for the nation. And it is -- so for them, it's a win-win.

AMANPOUR: Bishop, a lot of people in this country feel the same way as you do. There are certainly many, many businesses; let's just take Silicon

Valley, for instance, which say they need these immigrants for all these incredibly high-tech jobs.

And let me just read you a statistic from a CNN poll, which shows that 75 percent of Americans right now say they feel sympathetic towards those

immigrants and their families and that is up from 67 percent in 2011 and 52 percent back in 2010.

Now do you think those figures will convince Congress, who are now incredibly angry with the president and basically some are saying, well,

whatever he does by executive order, we may not even fund what his decision calls for.

ELIZONDO: Yes. I don't know that -- those figures and this -- those statistics will convince them. But certainly I think it was a very

courageous move from the president and, of course, I am pretty much convinced that his party will support him.

And so to keep on working with the rest of the Congress to craft a real reform with the immigration laws so that that will benefit the country

itself, because it's a -- it's an incredible asset that we have on all the immigrants in the country.

And so I think that it should be very beneficial for everyone, for the whole country, for everyone, for both parties and, of course, for the

future of the nation to have all these immigrants legalized and, of course, to live in peace.

Some in a way, as you are saying, it was not far enough; many might think that way. But of course, the rest is up to the Congress, to keep on

working together in both parties.

AMANPOUR: It's obviously really, really trapped in the political system here. But, Bishop, you must be looking around the world and seeing the

very same situation unfold, from Europe to Australia, where this whole fear of immigrants and the reluctance to let them in is really taking hold right

now.

I understand you were inspired by Pope Francis, who himself went to Lampedusa, where there have been so many deaths of poor people coming from

Africa, just trying to look for a better life.

ELIZONDO: Oh, absolutely. Definitely he's a wonderful model and a role model for all of us, especially us as bishops, Christian, Catholics. And

of course it's an invitation for everyone to open up our hearts and our possibilities to welcome someone else.

AMANPOUR: Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, making the moral case for immigration reform, thank you so much for joining me from Seattle.

ELIZONDO: Thank you very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And this contentious issue of immigration is rising from Europe to Asia, as we said; the fear of immigrants and populace politics have led

to a rise in Far Right parties, especially in the U.K. and France, while in Australia the government is releasing a poster which leaves little to

the imagination.

"No Way," it says, over this image of an unforgiving sea, an image that would surely scare off asylum seekers coming by boat. And to make sure

that it does, it's available in 16 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese.

Now after a break, perhaps you can better understand the so-called Ferguson effect through a long-lost journey for freedom that has only just reached

its destination and its reward 50 years later -- that's next.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where joining the fight for equality can be a death sentence but where death can be the beginning of an

immortal quest for justice. It was the case for Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, the black and white civil rights activists who

were murdered in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964.

Earlier this week, they all received the highest civilian honor in the land, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and they were remembered for facing

hate with bravery and hope.

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OBAMA: While they're often remembered for how they did, we honor them today for how they lived, with the idealism and the courage of youth.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Never forgotten, their deaths were immortalized in the Oscar-winning film, "Mississippi Burning," which followed the story of

the FBI agents hunting for the truth.

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AMANPOUR: In reality, they found the murdered activists after 44 days. But it took 41 years for justice to catch up with Ku Klux Klan boss Edgar

Ray Killen, who orchestrated the killings.

And on Monday, half a century later, the descendants, siblings and spouses of those freedom fighters accompanied posthumous medals on behalf of their

loved ones. And as whites and blacks come together to protest the fate of Michael Brown in the present, it can't help but remind us of the horrors of

the past, the heroism that overcame it and the hope that this moment really can create a meaningful national debate on the legacy and vestiges of

racism.

And that's it for our program tonight. Remember you can always see our show at amanpour.com, and follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Thank you for

watching and goodbye from New York.

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