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At This Hour

Jury Selection in Boston Bomber Case; Weather Hampers AirAsia Search; Tensions Between NYPD, Mayor Worsen

Aired January 05, 2015 - 11:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Jury selection happening @THISHOUR in the trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: That's his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, you see in these pictures.

Over the next few days, 1200 jurors will be questioned. The jury will decide whether Tsarnaev is guilty of the bombing that killed three people and wounded 260 others. If they find him guilty, this same jury will decide whether he will face the death penalty.

Our justice reporter, Evan Perez, is here with us. Deborah Feyerick is outside the courthouse in Boston.

Deb, I believe in your opinion the courtroom. Tell us what went on there this morning.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's interesting. There's so many jurors they're meeting in the jury room. You have 200 people on one side of the glass, had been of the media on the other side, they were looking at us, we were looking at them, then in walks Dzhokhar Tsarnaev flanked by his lawyers. He has sort of this long relaxed gait for lack of a better description. He was wearing tan khakis, a black sweater and his hair and his beard looking very dishevels. At one point the judge made him stand so the jurors, the men and women, potential jurors, could get a look at him. The judge reading out the charges against him, including the deaths of three people at the Boston Marathon and the later shooting of an MIT officer when the brothers allegedly went on their -- on the run trying to get out of Boston once their pictures were released. So rather surreal. It took about 20, 25 minutes. The judge telling the men and women not to talk about this case, that it's unclear whether, in fact, they will be selected but they know anybody on the witness list that could disqualify them. Also, if they're against the death penal they also could be a problem because this is a death penalty case and therefore the jurors who are selected must in their heart be able to find death if that's what they believe the penalty should be -- John and Michaela?

PEREIRA: Deb, thanks for that.

Evan Perez is here with us in studio. I understand there were, though, his camp, his lawyers, defense

attorneys and federal prosecutors had met, there was some sort of discussion about a possible plea deal, those talks failed. Give us an update on what you know.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the plea they were talking about was for Tsarnaev to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence perhaps with a -- with no parole. In tend the federal prosecutors decided they did not want to remove -- take off the table the chance of him getting the death penalty which is what squelched the entire case. Now, this is not -- there's not much doubt as to whether or not the first -- what the first phase of the trial is going to turn out to be. Everyone expects that he will be convicted. Whether or not he gets death is the big question and so now we'll have to see for the second phase of this trial what happens.

BERMAN: Deb, give us a sense of some of the evidence, really. There's a lot of overwhelming evidence from photographic to physical to writing evidence that they have against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. What are they expected to do, the prosecution?

FEYERICK: Well, there is a lot of evidence and it's likely that the prosecution will begin their openings, which is three weeks from now, January 26. It's likely they'll begin by showing the jury images of him, video of him actually putting the backpack on the ground. You have to keep in mind, there were some 12,000 videos ultimately submitted, including from businesses and spectators at the marathon so you have additional video of him and his brother. You've also got a note that was scrawled on the inside of the boat. This is where it could get interesting for the defense. The defense has said, look, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a pawn, he was following his brother, he had no say in the matter. That will be more difficult to prove once they introduce the note he allegedly scrawled on the inside of the boat which basically gave very clear depiction of what he thinks about America and also saying that this was on behalf of all Muslims who were being killed and essentially it was in retaliation for the wars that America was involved in, in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

PEREIRA: Quickly, Evan, I keep thinking about seating a jury. It was such an emotional time for the nation but specifically for Boston. The challenge of seat ago jury of people who can, you know, without prejudice, judge this man for what happened to their city and tore apart the nation.

PEREZ: Right. Especially because the defense has been trying, repeatedly, to move this trial outside of Boston and they got rejected. Now, you know, Massachusetts does not have the death penalty. However, in federal cases, this is a state that has handed down -- juries have handed down the death penalty. So it's not out of the question here.

BERMAN: But there are a lot of people who say a jury in Massachusetts would be less likely to give the death penalty than they would in some places they could move the trial.

PEREZ: That's right. BERMAN: So be careful what you ask for here.

PEREZ: Right. Exactly.

BERMAN: Evan Perez, Deborah Feyerick, thanks so much.

PEREIRA: Ahead @THISHOUR, there are passenger rights but what about pilot rights? Could the pilot of AirAsia flight 8501 refused to have taken off due to weather? Who makes that ultimate call whether or not to fly?

BERMAN: Another silent protest that speaks volumes. Police officers in a new show of defiance against New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Coming up, we'll speak with one officer about the ongoing tension between people and the law.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: New setbacks in the search for remains and wreckage from AirAsia flight 8501. Today's operations had to be called off early because of severe storms. Officials say divers who did make it to the bottom of the sea encountered muddy waters, almost zero visibility. Large piece of wreckage initially believed to be part of the missing plane. It turned out to be part of a sunken ship.

PEREIRA: Search teams, however, managed to find three more bodies today, bringing the total number of victims recovered to 37. Each victim is returned to Surabaya, Indonesia, where the doomed flight originated.

BERMAN: The visibility has been so bad over the last 24 hours divers say they can't see right in front of them, once they surface, the waves are just brutal. We saw some of that before.

Chad Myers joins us from the CNN Weather Center in Atlanta. And also joining us, our aviation analyst, Miles O'Brien.

Chad, let me start with you.

Chad, it's very, very difficult there on the bottom of the sea.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It's like trying to drive on the highway in dense fog with your high beams on. You can't see anything. The divers will have bright spotlights, but all of the particle, all that muck, the murk in the water will be reflected back at the diver's face, and so think about trying to go down somewhere where you know there will be danger. You already know if you find fuselage there's going to be the heavy stuff on the bottom, miles of wire dangling through the water itself and some things floating from the top of those wires so you don't even know what you're getting yourself into already and you can't see more than probably a couple feet I know they said zero visibility. But it's probably a couple feet. The waves are mixing up the silt on the bottom of the ocean it wasn't bad until the storm moved over the search area, now it's good again.

So it's good at night and bad during the day, but there's something that's going to help them now, side-scan sonar. We don't care with side-scan sonar whether it's day or night because that system doesn't know whether it's day or night. It's not looking for sunshine. It's not visibly looking for something. It's sending out a signal, the waves are coming down, the wind is coming down, even Sunday wasn't a bad day. All in all it wasn't a bad day compared to what we've been but now I think Tuesday, Wednesday, without that wind cover, without that wind blowing at 30, 40 miles per hour it gets better from here.

PEREIRA: Chad, you still have to have a ship out there to sort of launch the AUV with the side-scan sonar, so I know the bigger the ship the better they are to weather the waves but sit still it's putting the search folks at risk.

MYERS: We showed pictures when I was talking and I wanted to talk about those pictures because we were out there on that ship. CNN crews were out there on that ship and there weren't rollers like you see in the ocean when you're on a cruise ship, this isn't deep water. Those waves were sharp and the front end of that boat banging up against those sharp waves and spray coming over the ship and all that.

Here's how side scan sonar works. It's not really side. It's down but it sees a little to the side because of the try I can't think that will the system is using. A signal, a sound comes off the bottom of the boat or a buoy or something towed behind, doesn't really matter. If it finds something on the sea floor, it will echo that back. Kind of like the way a bat will see things, will see bugs. It's that echo location here. That's the same thing we're seeing here. There's the echo location of the ship and that's what the ship at the surface would look like. Not recognizable as a boat or plane or wing but certainly something not a flat piece of the ocean. That's one good news here. One good thing, we don't have rough terrain at the bottom, it's pretty flat. When we do find the ship it will show up quite rapidly.

BERMAN: Miles, I want to ask you a question about the weather that caught our eyes. There was a report in the "Wall Street Journal" that says AirAsia pilots until this weekend they assessed their own weather situation before takeoff. The pilots made their own call based on whether they would fly. That doesn't happen in the United States with U.S. and European carriers and special dispatchers who make that call. Is that a problem that this was going on?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Let's talk about how it's done in the U.S. and Europe first of all. Any time you push back from a gate, both your captain and a licensed dispatcher have signed off on that flight. And each can veto whether that flight occurs based on weather or any number of issues which might be in play. But certainly weather is the big one and each of them would study the weather, come to their own conclusion as to the best routing, whether it's wise to do the flight in the first place. Whether they have a licensed dispatcher system like that in that part of the world I honestly don't know.

But I do know this. They left two hours early which already that's unusual for what we're used to here in this part of the world. Were they trying to beat some weather? If they were up early before the weather office opened maybe they went and got the weather by other means. What they were talking about is literally a face-to-face briefing with a meteorological officer which we don't do in this country, haven't done for years and years and years, it's all done electronically or maybe on the phone.

So I think we might be putting too much credence into that. It absolutely would boggle my mind if they took off without checking the weather at all. There are any number of ways to get weather information these days as we all well know and let's not forget that, you know, when you check the weather at your point of origin what happens 40 minutes late into your flight when you're talking about dynamic thunderstorms can be a very different picture, indeed. So I think when you look in the grand context here of how this airline does business, it's one little thing to think about. I don't think it's going to be a major contributing factor.

BERMAN: All right, Miles O'Brien, Chad Myers, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

Ahead for us @THISHOUR, CNN inside the search zone for AirAsia flight 8501. Our crew on a ship for a firsthand look at the challenges at sea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: It's been a turbulent morning on Wall Street. This just in, the Dow down more than 220 points right now. You can see it there. That's 1.29 percent, that's a lot. That's a big drop. The question, why? Well, it has to do with oil prices dropping below $50 a barrel for at least a time today. That's the lowest price in nearly five years. A lot of energy companies in the Dow, people have a lot of energy companies in their 401Ks also, so while it's good at the pump, not necessarily for your portfolios.

PEREIRA: Christine Romans tells us that all the time. We'll watch that @THISHOUR here on CNN.

OK, so we have been talking about how the weather in the Java Sea has made finding AirAsia flight 8501 not just daunting, also dangerous.

BERMAN: The wind, the waves, conspiring against search crews.

Our Paula Hancocks had a firsthand look of the kinds of conditions they are facing. She's one of the few reporters who boarded a search vessel and travelled into the search zone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Michaela and John, we have had heard plenty about these summer monsoons, these adverse weather conditions in Indonesia and on Sunday I had the chance to travel with one of the search-and-rescue teams to see exactly how this weather is affecting their operations.

(voice-over): The deserted beaches of West Borneo, Indonesia, belie the horror at sea. More than 100 nautical miles to the search zone, calm waters and sunshine soon disappear.

(on camera): We've been on the sea now for about four hours. We have another three or four hours to go and as you can see, the weather has started to close in the closer we get to this crash location. But we're being told that even though these waves are fairly high and you can see it's a lot choppier than it was, that this is still considered fairly good weather, that this is better than it has been for some days.

(voice-over): The crew looks for debris and bodies. One of them spots something. He's unsure what, exactly.

UNIDENTIFIED CAPTAIN: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

HANCOCKS: The captain calls it in, a larger ship in the area will investigate.

This search-and-rescue boat has a specific mission -- to deliver a pinger locator to help with the vital search for the so-called black boxes. But the captain is nervous about the weather.

"I feel a heavy moral burden," he says. "I have a responsibility to keep those on board safe, but it's so important to help find bodies and debris. "Larger ships can cope with this," he says, but this is not a large ship."

Sector four of the search zone, the contact boat is in sight. Time to hand over the equipment. Easier said than done.

(on camera): One of the men who's in charge of that equipment was going to jump across but, quite frankly, he doesn't want to now. He's said it's simply too dangerous.

(voice-over): Next job, transferring the boat from which to operate the equipment, a task the crew struggles with until dark. They have to admit defeat, at least for today. An exhausted crew returns to land with only half the mission accomplished.

(on camera): Now it has become a very international affair, this search operation. We know the U.S. Has two ships on site. Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, to name a few. But the weather means there's only a limit to what they can do -- Michaela and John?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: Paula Hancocks with a tremendous report. We appreciate you getting on the water with the search crews.

Ahead of this hour, a hero's funeral is supposed to be about grieving not airing grievances, that was the message from the NYPD commissioner to officers, but some defied his request. Did they cross the line?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ROY RICHTER, PRESIDENT, NYPD CAPTAINS ENDOWMENT ASSOCIATION: I think there as an anti-police environment to the entire nation right now and that our two assassinated brothers are -- it's a clear example of that anti-police environment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Things are pretty tense between city hall and New York Police Department. In some cases, it seems to be getting worse, not better. Once again police officers turned their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio during a funeral for one of their own. This happened yesterday as police said farewell to Officer Wenjian Liu.

PEREIRA: He and his partner, Officer Rafael Ramos, were gunned down as they sat in their police cruiser. Some officers turned their backs to the mayor at Ramos's funeral as well.

We want to bring in two guests. We have Dennis Shireff, a 30-year-old police detective, currently on the force in Berkeley, Missouri, not far from Ferguson. Also with us is New York City council member, Jumaane Williams.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for both of you to be here, a conversation about this.

DENNIS SHIREFF, BERKELEY POLICE OFFICER: Thank you.

PEREIRA: Officer Shireff, as a man who wears the blue uniform, you've been in the service some 30 years, you are also obviously African- American, I'm curious what your reaction is, sir, to seeing your fellow officers turning their back to the mayor of the city.

SHIREFF: I think the top lines of CNN should be that the officers that have lost their lives for their communities, the dedication that they gave for their communities, I think that should be the front page of newspapers and CNN rather than to see all of the talk of what the officers have done. That's taking away from the lives and dedication that the officers have given to their police department.

BERMAN: Then, are you saying that the funeral is not the right place to protest, Officer? Are you saying that these officers have a legitimate grievance against the mayor apart from the funeral itself?

SHIREFF: Well, I'm not a part of that, but what I -- a part of New York City Police Department so it's hard for me to speak on it. But what I'm saying is that you lost two officers who dedicated their lives to their community and I'm quite sure they gave their lives doing what they were supposed to do and the headlines are reading the police officers are turning their backs on the mayor at the funeral.

PEREIRA: Councilman, you're a council member in the beautiful city of New York. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this. I see that you have a pin that says justice for Eric Garner. Where does your heart lie? Where do you see this situation?

JUMAANE WILLIAMS, COUNCIL MEMBER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL: I have a button that says, "Reduce gun violence." Those are two things I am passionate about. One thing it does, it does take away from the supreme sacrifice that Officer Liu made and Officer Ramos made. I think that's what we should be dedicating our time to. I would also say although there were some officers, not all officers that did turn their back on the mayor, I know for a fact that the mayor nor the city council has turned their backs on the police and we won't because we represent all of New York City, including those who turned their backs. We won't turn our back from them.

PEREIRA: How do we get this to stop happening and how do we find common ground? Because it seems as though there are two sides. Not all police officers in New York City, but how do we get the two sides to come to the table and let's put these hard feelings aside, we're all working for the same common good, are we not?

WILLIAMS: What are the legitimate grievances and what are being mixed up in rhetoric? I'm not a police officer, I don't understand what they're going through, but I can understand at this time if two of your brethren were ambushed in a vehicle, that might be a scary time for you. That's a legitimate thing to be discussed. Many of the other rhetorical things that I heard are based in something that's real. When we discuss public safety reform, which is not just a police issue, it's many other agencies we have to bring into discussion, when we have those discussions people tend to view it as an anti-police reform and that's not something we're discussing. So we have to bifurcate what is legitimate grievances so we can deal with it and what is hyperbolic rhetoric that's not adding to the discussion. Until we can do that honestly, it is difficult to move forward.

BERMAN: Officer Shireff, I wonder if you can help us understand what the issues are. Do police around the country, whether it be in Berkeley, Missouri, where you are and if you've talked to other people. Do they feel like there is an anti-cop sentiment right now that is bubbling up around the country? Because I have heard that complaint.

SHIREFF: Well, I don't think it's mainly an anti-cop sentiment, I think people of color want justice and what they're seeing now is they're not feeling as though justice is being served in the communities. I think that when we look at it from an African-American perspective, we see black officers standing in the middle of the road. The community expects for us to stand up for them, and yet, the police department is looking for us to stand up for them, and yet, we have problems right within the police department with discrimination and other issues. I have yet to hear from the Guardian's Association in New York, which was a member of the National Black Police Association when I was president of it.

And I think blacks -- black officers play a major role in our communities because we're out there on the front line, and yet, we're having discussion but you're not talking to black officers who are the rank-and-file officers, who deal with the impoverished communities and the black and Latino communities. We're out there daily and we know the problems because we hear them. And I teach in the schools and things like that, but yet our voice is not heard. And we can help resolve this issue if only we sit at the table.

Now, the president and the mayor, the governor from St. Louis have put together a council and yet they just put one black officer --

(AUDIO PROBLEM)

PEREIRA: Unfortunately, we lost our satellite signal.

Our thanks to Officer Dennis Shireff and Councilman Jumaane Williams for a great conversation here @THISHOUR.

That's it for us. I'm Michaela Pereira.

BERMAN: I'm John Berman. "LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield starts now.