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Snowden Seeks Temporary Asylum In Russia; Crews Remove Asiana Plane Crash Debris; Two Calls To Abort Asiana Landing; Death Toll Rises In Quebec Train Wreck; Twelve Hurt After Possible Blast In NYC; Paula Deen Changes Legal Teams; Town Sized Landslide Kills 31 In China; Egyptian Protesters Return To Streets; Defense: State Must Prove Ill Will; Zimmerman Defense Closing Arguments

Aired July 12, 2013 - 10:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: We're keeping our eye obviously on the George Zimmerman murder trial. They are in a short break. We'll have full analysis of what we just heard. Stand by, but I quickly want to catch you up on major stories of the day including the NSA leaker, Edward Snowden. He is now asking human rights group to help him get temporary asylum in Russia. Today, he met with several members from these human rights groups.

We're getting our first look at Snowden since he arrived in Moscow. That was back on June 23rd. This photo was just tweeted out by Human Rights Watch, the organization here. There you see him. CNN's Phil Black is joining us on the phone right now from the Moscow Airport. What has happened so far, Phil?

PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): These members of human rights groups here in Russia have met with Snowden, didn't last long, around 20, 30 minutes or so. I spoke to Tanya (inaudible) from Human Rights Watch immediately as she emerged in that meeting. She is the activist who tweeted that photo that you mentioned.

I asked her what Snowden said. She said he wants their help to try to win asylum, at least on a temporary basis here in Russia for a period of time, with the intention of then at some point moving on to Latin America when he is able to do so.

So he's asked these representatives to lobby Russia's President Putin to try to make that a reality, to try and get permission to stay in this country until he is able to somehow work out how he can move on to one of the Latin-American countries who have offered him asylum -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Putin in the past, as you know, said he could only stay in Russia if he doesn't do anything that would undermine what Putin calls the cooperative relationship or the friendly relationship with the United States. In other words, he would have to be silence as far as releasing more sensitive information. Did he suggest he was ready to do that Snowden? BLACK: We don't have the details, but you're absolutely right. President Putin had said that condition previously. He said that in theory he could apply for asylum here and receive it, but only on that condition that he would stop engaging in any sort of work that was designed to harm Russia's friend, the United States. That was the condition that Putin said, presumably now Snowden is prepared to ask Russia for asylum.

Remember at the time when Putin set that condition, Snowden officially withdrew his application for asylum here because he was not prepared to live by that condition set by the president. Now, if, it appears as we suspected, he has little choice, he has no way at the moment logistically traveling to one of these Latin-American countries like Venezuela or Ecuador that have offer him asylum.

No way of getting there without being intercepted, so it appears he has now reversed his previous decision, which was not to seek asylum here. He is now asking Russia's president the permission to stay and you have to think if he's doing that, he is not going to be speaking out on the issues that he has been ever since he fled the United States -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Interesting that he's having this news conference -- or this meeting with these human rights groups at the Moscow Airport right now. All right, we'll stay in close tough with you. Phil Black, reporting from Moscow.

Other news we're following right now, the final pieces of the Asiana Flight 214, they are being removed from the San Francisco runway. Planes could start landing there once again on Sunday. Earlier this morning, shortly after cleanup began on the runway, smoke started coming out of the fuselage of the wreckage site. It was quickly put out. Cleanup resumed a short time later.

We're getting a better picture right now of the final moments before the flight crashed as Asiana pilots made not one, but two calls to abort the landing.

CNN's Miguel Marquez is joining us from the San Francisco Airport right now with more on what we're learning. What else are we learning, Miguel?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Now we do know that there are bringing that fuselage up into pieces right now. There are deep gouges in the runway itself there. So officials are hoping to get that runway open by Sunday, but there's no guarantee at this point because there is a lot of work. That plane also damaged some of the gear around the runway as well, as it came in, all that as we're learning more detail about what happened in that cockpit just seconds before the crash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ (voice-over): This morning new pictures, the remnants of a charred Flight 214 after it slammed into the sea wall, the debris, giant rocks, pieces of the tail section and the landing gear littering the runway. Now we have the fullest picture yet of the flight's final moments.

Around 50 seconds out, the first officer sitting in the jump seat comments about the sink rate. That's the speed alternate which the plane is descending. At about 35 seconds out and 500 feet up, the pilot told investigators he saw a bright light and in response looked at the controls in the cockpit including the speed indicator.

DEBORAH HERSMAN, NTSB CHAIRWOMAN: At about 500 feet, the air speed was approximately 134 knots.

MARQUEZ: The 350-ton plane was already below the 137-knot speed to which the pilot believed he had set the auto throttle and for the first time, we are hearing that at 9 seconds before impact 100-feet above the ground one of the pilots expressed concern about the aircraft's speed.

HERSMAN: And almost immediately after that is the first comment regarding speed since we started sharing information on starting at 500 feet.

MARQUEZ: And we are now learning there were two call-outs for a go around seconds before this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My God, it's an accident!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're filming it, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My God!

MARQUEZ: A plane crash so significant NTSB now says it will put everything it can into finding out what caused this crash.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: Now when NTSB came to San Francisco initially to investigate this, they said it may take as long as 18 months to get this investigation done. Now they're saying they want to get it done in as little as 12 months and reserve the right to make recommendations if they find that there was something wrong mechanically with the plane or some other procedure they need to put into effect to avoid similar crashes to this -- Wolf.

BLITZER: What an amazing story that is as well, Miguel. Thank you.

Other stories we are watching here in the CNN NEWSROOM this morning. The death toll in the train cash in a small Quebec town has now risen to 24, but about 30 more people are missing. They are presumed dead, possibly vaporized in the explosion. The train carrying crude oil rolled down the hill, derailed, exploded Saturday, destroying much of the town. The engineer in charge of setting brakes on the train has been suspended and faces a criminal investigation.

Twelve people are hurt when a fire started in a beauty store in New York City's Chinatown. Part of the ceiling also collapsed. The fire department says there's evidence of an explosion, but it's not clear what caused the fire. Three people suffered serious burns. We'll get back to the closing arguments in the Zimmerman murder trial in just a moment. Let's check a couple other quick stores making headlines right now.

Paula Deen is changing legal teams. The "Wall Street Journal" says Deen has hired a new group of attorneys to defend her in a harassment lawsuit. The change comes after a month of very bad press following her admission of using a racial slur.

To Southwest China right now, where the search is on for more than 100 missing people after severe flooding triggered a landslide the size of a small town. Rescue workers have pulled at least 31 bodies from the rubble. The floods have affected 1.5 million people and wrecked property worth more than $40 million, 5,100 homes are destroyed, and another 90,000 are damaged.

Let's go to Egypt right now where supporters of the deposed President Mohamed Morsy are taking to the streets once again. Today, the Muslim Brotherhood plans to march on the presidential palace and also the headquarters of the Republican Guard where Morsy is believed to be held. Fifty one people died in clashes on Monday at the Headquarters building. Meantime, Egypt's interim prime minister, Hazem El-Beblawi is working to complete his cabinet.

Our Reza Sayah is in Cairo watching the latest developments on this Friday. What's going on, Reza?

REZA SAYAH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a big day for the supporters of the ousted President Mohamed Norsy, and moving forward, Wolf, every day is going to be critical for them. Of course, their critics see them as cornered isolated, and that's the case, they'll have to put forth a show the strength and solidarity. That's what they're doing today with more demonstrations in several parts of Cairo.

They're coming out in big numbers, but nowhere near the numbers we saw in campaigns that ousted him a couple weeks ago. The meantime, the big question, where is Mohamed Morsy? No one has heard from him every since he was ousted. We briefly got to sit down with his son yesterday. He was very defiant. He continues to insist they plan to keep on fighting. He continues to insist that the legitimate leader of Egypt is Mohamed Morsy himself -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Reza Sayah in Cairo, thanks very much.

Let's go back to the courtroom, Sanford, Florida, the judge is there, you see George Zimmerman. They're getting ready to resume Mark O'Mara's final arguments. He already did part one of his final arguments, the first half about an hour and 20 minutes or so. The Defense Attorney Mark O'Mara making the case on behalf of his client, there you see him, George Zimmerman.

Now part 2, we'll see what he has in store then. That will then be followed by the prosecutors, who will have a chance for a final rebuttal. That will last for about an hour or so. The judge will then read the instructions to the jury, the jury instructions and then the deliberations will begin.

Let's continue our analysis as we await the resumption. Jeffrey Toobin is still with us. Page Pate is with us, the criminal defense attorney, Philip Snider, the former prosecutor. George Howell, our correspondent has been covering the story for us.

All right, Page, let me get your analysis on what we heard from Mark O'Mara during the first hour and 20 minutes or so of his presentation.

PAGE PATE, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, I think I mentioned yesterday it was important for the defense to step in today, take the emotion out of it, back up, talk about the law, talk about the facts and most important about the state's burden. I think Mr. O'Mara is doing exactly that. He is reminding these jurors if you still have questions about what happened that night, if you don't know exactly what went on, then the state has not done their job and they have not proven him guilty beyond the reasonable doubt.

BLITZER: He said, Mark O'Mara, I'm going to anger a lot of my fellow defense attorneys by doing this, and he said, I'm going to try to prove his innocence even though he doesn't necessarily have to do that. What do you think about the strategy?

PAGE: It's rhetorical. He clearly doesn't have to do that. I don't he intends to do that. He's suggesting to the jury that his case is so strong, even if he had the burden, he would win. What he needs to do, though, in the second half, go back to the purpose of closing arguments. You have to give your jurors, your supporters, good arguments to use in the jury room. So he has to address the suggestion of racial profiling.

BLITZER: Philip Snider, you are a former prosecutor, how is he doing?

PHILIP SNYDER, FORMER PROSECUTOR: I think he's doing a good job, when you look at post the altercation, post altercation, Mark O'Mara substantially crashing the state's case. What the state needs to do is go back to the beginning, what happened prior to the altercation, what was the profiling, what was the pursuing, make it a more emotional based jury and then you may be able to get to a manslaughter conviction.

BLITZER: Because, Jeffrey Toobin, that was one of the most effective parts of the prosecutor's closing argument yesterday, that this profiling of the a young 17-year-old kid, he's walking back from a convenience store, yes, he's wearing a hoodie, but why did -- why did George Zimmerman even begin this process, if you will, of following him?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, that's obviously a huge question in this case. One of the things I thought -- it was so interesting about this closing argument, he took the exact same evidence as the prosecutor did about George Zimmerman's background and put it in what he thought was a sympathetic light.

The idea of the prosecutor kept calling him a wannabe cop, and O'Mara said that's a good thing to wannabe, it's actually an honorable profession. He is trying to be in and there's nothing wrong with that. He's working in his neighborhood to try to make the neighborhood safe.

He talked about how this neighborhood had had a lot of crime problems. The jury heard from a woman who went through a terrifying experience where she was assaulted in her home and Zimmerman had helped out. So he's trying to present Zimmerman much more of a Good Samaritan rather than a vigilante, using basically the same evidence as the prosecutor.

Again, I don't know how the jury is going to respond to that, but it is a classic example of two good lawyers using the same evidence to point in precisely the opposite directions.

BLITZER: Page, what was the point, Page, what was he trying to do when, you know, it was a dramatic moment. He says I'm going to put on these sun glasses. He took out a big ring, put it on his pinky. He was trying to get the jurors to think of impressions, if you will. What was he trying to achieve by that moment?

PATE: You know, Mr. O'Mara has not had a very dramatic closing argument as far as words and passion, but I think the silence was very effective. You get jurors thinking about exactly how long things take, when they're sitting there watching a clock or watching Mr. O'Mara and figuring out if they were in Mr. Zimmerman's position, how things would feel, or is it reasonable to then believe the state's arguments about what Trayvon Martin did or did not do. Silence can be very effective in closing arguments, and I think it was here.

BLITZER: He was trying to do that. That notion, Philip Snyder, of the animation, the re-creation, you want to demonstrate to the jurors what happened. He seemed to have some major technical problems in the beginning, getting the animation to work, it seemed like it was taking it forever to get it going eventually it started working. Was that an effective moment for the defense in making a case to these jurors?

SNYDER: Unfortunately for the state, I think it's going to be a very powerful moment. What the state didn't do is they kind of waffled to the exact methodology to how this incident occurred. What the defense is doing very emphatically is saying this is the way it occurred. If you close your eyes, it's actually Mark O'Mara is doing what a prosecutor normally does and Bernie De La Rionda is doing what a defense attorney normally does. So I find that the animation saying a definitive way on how this occurred is unfortunately for the state going to be a very powerful tool for the jury.

BLITZER: That's the animation right there. It can't be used as formal evidence, if you will, but it can demonstrate in this closing argument for Mark O'Mara what he says happened, the re-creation of this scene. All right, everyone stand by. They're getting ready to resume part 2 of Mark O'Mara's closing argument. They're still in recess. We'll take a quick break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Mark O'Mara has just resumed part two of his closing argument. MARK O'MARA, ZIMMERMAN'S DEFENSE LAWYER: -- he's running. So 7:15:43, when Rachel Jeantel tells you the phone call ended because of a thump. Four minutes to do what, to walk home, to run home? Four- minute mile was broken when I was like 12. By somebody and I think he was in his teens. I don't know if he played football, but I do know you can run a mile in about 4 minutes if you're in decent shape.

So we know with the opportunity to go home, that he did not. We know that because it was a football throw away. So let's talk about factual innocence of my client, and I'll finally leave this behind. When you talk about factual innocence, somebody decided that they were angry. Somebody decided they were ticked off.

Maybe somebody decided they had ill will, spite or hatred, for whatever reason, somebody did decide it wasn't over with the running because it wasn't after all. It had only just begun, right? Isn't that really what happened here? It wasn't some cop wannabe. It wasn't some "I've had learned about how to talk about self defense and my God, stand your ground on Hannity" let's convict him.

He didn't Hannity I've heard about stand your ground. The person who decided this was going to continue, that it was going to be a violent event was the guy that didn't go home when he had a chance to. It was the guy who decided to lie in wait, I guess plan his move. It seems decide what he was going to do and when the state told you that he had no decisions. They dared to tell you that Trayvon Martin had no decisions, that my client planned this, really?

Four minutes. Four minutes of planning and they want you to ignore it. I guess because if you don't ignore that factual and undeniable innocence because with those 4 minutes now let's use your common sense. Now let's decide what probably happened that night because we know the result. Now let's try to figure out the why.

George Zimmerman was probably heading back to his car, maybe, maybe, not proven, but maybe. Trayvon martin, 4 minutes, doing something and we don't know. We really don't. You know, he's on the phone. We know he is talking. We know what Rachel Jeantel said he was saying about whatever he called him. I don't care that he called them some stupid name. He's 17-year-old.

Kids talk stupidly if they want. I'm OK with that. I'm OK with Rachel Jeantel being 16 or 18, whatever, who cares. She didn't want to be involved in this case, but the reality of what happened is very straightforward, and it proves absolute innocence in 4 minutes, Trayvon Martin did something that led to his confronting George Zimmerman.

That I would suggest not because George Zimmerman said it. Throw out everything that George Zimmerman said. Just forget it for a minute. It didn't exist. He did what I probably would have told him to do if he called me on the 26th that night. Shut up and don't say a word to law enforcement, I'll see you there in half an hour.

I would have thrown on a pair of jeans, said good-bye to my wife and ran out the door to see a potential client. And said, no, no, no, you are not talking to law enforcement particularly looking like you look and particularly not talk about how you look and not having just shot somebody, so hush up, and now tell me.

So let's make believe that happened. Let's just take all of his self- serving cop wannabe created statements and throw them out. What do we have? You've seen the picture a lot, what we do have when Mike Wagner went to her, can you pick out the guy, the potential shooter? She said no, go get me a picture. I'll look at the picture, but somebody who shot somebody?

I don't want to say I know who that is. So we have this interestingly, and thankfully we have this -- we have the cleaned up photo, the one that doesn't show the significant injury. I don't know who put the nose back in shape. I don't know how it happened, but I do know it did look like that right afterwards. So if Mr. Zimmerman just created all his statements and we throw them out, we start with this because this is undeniable.

This is significant injury and then we have the back of his head and, you know all about that already. And what else do we have? We have 40 seconds of screaming. When I first got this case, I thought it was going to come and go in 20 minutes, because when I found out there was a 911 call with somebody screaming on it, it was game over.

Figure out who it is, and we're done, because the alternatives are it's Trayvon Martin screaming and my guy is some horrible extended torturing then eventual murderer for 45 seconds, something, if it was Trayvon Martin, something strange was happening for it to be him, some bizarre 45-second event where he would scream for help, yet still be able to batter George Zimmerman, but I guess they'll tell you the theory in the final closing.

And if we could get a comparison, then it's done. Unfortunately, it couldn't be done, so now we don't know. Now, as was suggested, now you do get to decide, I guess, or not. You just simply get to decide that you can't decide and then who gets the benefit of that? Mr. Zimmerman. So let's not forget about that standard as we wandering down that make-believe path of factual innocence.

And then what else do we have, we have his initial immediate statement to Mr. Manalo and the way he looked. If he was beat up, he just looked strange and then of course, as Mr. De La Rionda said, just tell them I killed the guy. That's not what he said at all. I think what he said, and use your own memories, was that when Mr. Manalo took the phone because he had to drop it.

Tim Smith was doing what he does as a trained law enforcement officer and said hand out on top of your head behind your back, where's the gun, drops the phone, Manalo gets it and says words to the effect your husband has been involved in a shooting. What's the response from George Zimmerman? Shot somebody.

I guess what he should have said, what he was thinking, what he wasn't thinking through, whatever he was going through, whatever the injuries were, as Manalo said he just looked like he was out of breath. He should have said that may sound insensitive a year and a half from now. I should have said that I had to shoot somebody -- I don't know, he told his wife he wasn't the one shot.

Unusual, inappropriate, somebody calls up and says, honey, I was just involved in a car accident. What's your first response? Are you OK? You don't even say, is the other person OK? It's just not natural. Are you OK? Do you ever say -- is the car OK? No. You deal with what you know. Don't tell them you're involved in a shooting. I shot somebody. So we have that evidence. We have Smith who says right away he told him he was screaming for help twice.

We go forward we have medical personnel. Going, screaming for help is fine. Here they want you to say this mastermind criminal, this guilty beyond a reasonable doubt second-degree murderer knew at that precise moment that he darn well better say that he was the one screaming. Because after all, if he had killed the guy who was screaming in the state's theory, right?

The real problem with that theory, unless the mastermind knew, when Singleton mentioned in the interview that Trayvon Martin had passed? George was affected. I guess it could be part of the mastermind --