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Murder Trial of Aaron Hernandez Update; Dramatic Video of TransAsia Plane Crashing into River Released; King of Jordan Calls ISIS' Bluff; Bobbi Kristina Brown Still in Coma

Aired February 04, 2015 - 15:30   ET

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

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: We are just half bottom of the hour. You are watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me.

You know, was a bit of a harsh and awkward moment today in the trial of former NFL star Aaron Hernandez. The victim's mother, the victim being Odon Lloyd, the mother took a stand, a highly anticipated witness and as she did so, the judge said this.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You are going to be recalled in a moment or two. It's very, very important to understand that this is very emotional for you. But it's very important that you manage during this time you are testifying to retain control of your emotions and not to cry while you're looking at any photo that may be shown to you. Do you understand that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes ma'am.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney, Danny Cevallos joins me now. And listen. You are the attorney, not me. But when I hear this judge saying to this grieving mother, who has already left the courtroom multiple times weeping, you are thinking at first, that's kind of harsh for this judge to say to the mother. What's the real deal?

DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It sounds very cold at first blush. But remember, the judge has a tremendous responsibility to keep control of the courtroom. And this issue, believe it or not, has come up many times in both state and federal courts. And because judges have so much discretion in this area, you see decision on both sides.

Some courts say look, it is not really our business to tell a witness to cry or not to cry. IF they do, they do. But if they are testifying about an important matter, that emotion goes to their credibility and the court will allow it. But at the same time, this court is empowered. It can choose to limit the witness's testimony, which may suggest that the judge has been watching her cry in the courtroom and maybe the judge has formed an opinion that it's a little bit too much at this point. That's just my conjecture based on the fact she's already left the courtroom a couple times during testimony.

And you can see, maybe not in this instance but there are circumstances where a witness with an interest in the outcome can turn on the water works and possibly affect a jury. Not just being on the witness stand but getting up and walking out of the courtroom and making it clear to the jury that, hey, I'm the mom and I'm upset. There's someone who lost their life. That doesn't mean emotions aren't genuine, it just courts in the past have had to grapple with what degree they'll allow emotional display in the courtroom.

BALDWIN: OK. All right. So keep emotions in check. What about this potential field trip this Friday? After the court was adjourned today, the judge announced a field trip, that would be the jury and a camera going to the home of Aaron Hernandez and his fiance. Why? What would they be doing?

CEVALLOS: I just did a piece on this for the web site. I'm fascinated by the issue of field trips in courtrooms. Again, courts have substantial discretion to deny or granted a request for a field trip but the reality is in, and only in really high profile cases do you see everyone filing on to the big yellow school bus and look at stuff.

BALDWIN: Did you ever see this?

CEVALLOS: Right. In the run-of-the-mill cases, motion denied because it's expensive and the court is not in the business of field trips. So, in my personal opinion, my personal observation, I feel that most these field trips are reserved for high profile cases because even in murder cases that their day-to-day murder cases, you don't see a lot of field trips.

BALDWIN: Let me get to see this right after it happens, any of the pictures?

CEVALLOS: Well, I don't know what they are going -- I mean, again, the court can limit or allow all kinds of things, pictures, no pictures, video, whatever the jury, whatever the court deems appropriate for that particular case.

BALDWIN: And you wrote a piece on dot-com, CNN.com. Danny Cevallos, we will be looking for it. Thank you very much.

More now on the dramatic and telling video of that plane crashing into a river. This is, see it hear. You hear the screams, obviously, this is a plane. This is a TransAsia airplane flipping a bridge as it crashed and this is just after takeoff, at least 31 people were killed, 58 people in total were on board. CNN affiliate TVBS Taiwan broadcast this picture captured by the dash cam. I just have seen this so many times today, but I'm still speechless over this. We rarely get to see pictures like this of a plane crashing.

Black boxes have been recovered. Local media reporting and appears the pilot was trying to control the plane as it crashed into this river below. David Soucie is with me. He is the author of Malaysia air flight 370. HE is also a CNN safety analyst and a former FAA safety inspector.

And David Soucie, I mean, I know, listen, sadly planes crashed. It just not often that the public actually see this kind of crystal clear view. I mean, when you watch this, especially when we've seen the picture in slow-mo, what do you see?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: First to point out the public has talked a lot about whether a pilot could communicate or not during an accident. This shows just how quickly things can change and become deadly in that airplane. So that's the first thing to look at.

The second thing is that the reason that it is gone to the left as quickly as it is is from one or two things, either the engine quit on that left-hand side and the propellers stayed in the non-feathered position. A feathered position means that there is no wind or drag on the propeller. If they don't go into the feathered position, it pulls the aircraft to the left as if there's a big piece of wood sticking out of the side of the left wing. That's the one possibility.

The other is that the engine quit but the pilot made a controlled and decision to divert the airplane so that it wouldn't land in the apartment buildings but rather decreased the fatalities by landing in the river and I think that's the most likely scenario right now.

BALDWIN: OK. What about this? Does your seat matter, David, depending where you're sitting on the plane, your chances of survival here?

SOUCIE: Well, it can. I mean, it's really so random as to how the aircraft impacts the ground. But it is a matter of physics. It is the fact that the inertia from the airplane moving forward has to be absorbed. And if the point of which it's absorbed, then the damage stops. So logically, then if the aircraft goes in from the front, most of that damage is absorbed by the aircraft from the front to the back so you're more survivable in the back.

However, as we saw in the most recent AirAsia accident, 8501, the aircraft kind of came in at a flat like this. So at that point, no seat is safe in that scenario. Sometimes they come in on the tail like the air France accident in which the back of the aircraft was crushed and that absorbed most of the impact.

So there is really no way to say categorically it's safer to be in the front or back of the aircraft. However, just thinking about it depending how the aircraft goes, it's a matter of how the energy is absorbed and what point all the energy has been absorbed to stop making damage.

BALDWIN: And probably a little luck as well. We know, again, they have this flight data recorders, a lot of these guessing will be answered in what the boxes hold.

David Soucie, thank you. SOUCIE: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Ahead, as the daughter of Whitney Houston, Bobbi Kristina Brown remains on life-support and new questions today being raised about the man she called her husband and why her father is denying their marriage. Sunny Hostin joins me with inside information.

Plus, did the king of Jordan call ISIS' bluff by publicly negotiating for this fighter pilot who ended up being burned alive? That pilot may have been dead long before he offered his bargaining chip. We'll take a closer look at his timeline next.

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BALDWIN: You now know about this gruesome video released from ISIS of this caged young Jordanian fighter pilot set on fire and burned alive. It turns out he may have been held for release for more than a month. But the timeline is a little tricky here as far as when he was actually murdered.

ISIS captured the Jordanian military pilot on December 24th after his f-16 crashed in Syria. Authorities in Jordan now say they believe he was killed as early as January 3rd. That was weeks before ISIS and Jordan both seemed to publicly mull a popular prison swap. At least that's what Jordan was hoping. They wanted the proof of life and never got it. Now, we know now why. And just yesterday, the gruesome video of this killing became public.

Let me bring in counterterrorism expert, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross.

Great to have you on. Let me begin with, you know, as much as you can share, you did have an Intel conversation last night with the source talking about, you know, when Mouath al-Kasaesbeh would have been murdered and no one still definitively knows, correct?

DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS, COUNTERTERRORISM EXPERT: Right. And the thing that really caught my attention was there was a series of tweets that came out in early January by someone in Raqqa who had heard ISIS guys talking how Kasaesbeh was killed. And there were rumors at the time that he was burned alive which seems to be definitive proof that he had actually been killed long before.

But the timeline isn't exactly that clear. Those tweets, which have gotten attention including on CNN are reliable. But that could have been a trial balloon, for example. They could have had wrong information that was design to kind of psi ops campaign against Jordan. We don't know the answers yet, I don't think.

BALDWIN: What about this notion that King Abdullah of Jordan, incredibly intelligent man, must have known at some point as Jordan tried to negotiate with ISIS and saying, all right, we will give you back this Iraqi failed suicide bomber if you give us our Jordanian pilot, would have known all along, you know, at that point that the pilot was dead instead, you know, making it public, his willingness to do this swap, how do you think the king is playing this and how that might help persuade people they really need to take the fight to ISIS? GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Well, I think calling their bluff is giving a

little bit too much credit to the king, given there was never actually an agreement in terms, right?

BALDWIN: True.

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: ISIS has said two things. They'd said that they were release Kenji Goto, who was the Japanese hostage and they also said that they would kill Kaseasbeh if al-Rishawi, Sajida al-Rishawi, wasn't released. But there was never an agreement in terms because Jordan said that they would release Sajida al-Rishawi only if Kaseasbeh, the pilot, would be released.

So they were talking passed to each other. That being said, you know if indeed Kasaesbeh was killed, the Jordanians who was killed far advance, that the Jordanians definitely would have had a line in on that. But again, I'd caution that right now the time frame isn't exactly clear. I think we'll know more at some point in the not too distant future.

BALDWIN: And you know, I was talking to Ali Soufan on this show last hour, wrote an incredible book, you know, knows very much about Al- Qaeda, written about it, former FBI agent and he was saying to me this burning alive of this young man is clearly ISIS showing the consequence of what happens in an air strike by burning those below and then, you know, they threw ruble on this man in the cage, just -- your read on that assessment?

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: I mean, I think part of it also, is the air campaign has been extraordinarily effective against ISIS, much more so than often we realize, because of the amount of attrition, including on their logistics. And in part, I think they were taking out their frustration with the air campaign on Kaseasbeh. He was extraordinarily poorly treated, even for an ISIS prisoner. They had really inflicted a lot of damage on him long before they so brutally burned him alive.

BALDWIN: Do you think they are showing other hostages the video of what they did to him?

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: I think that's likely. ISIS likes to inflict maximum humiliation on their captives. I mean, that's what they're about. I mean, they really are an organization that is devoted to terrorizing. Their videos of beheadings, now this video, are meant to show people who in other situations were successful, were powerful, being humiliated, being, maximum damage being inflicted upon them, then being slaughtered in the worst ways possible.

So I imagine that as a tool of making them psychologically be beat down and see all the very disgusting things ISIS can do to them. I think the odds are very high that they are showing this to other captives.

BALDWIN: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, thank you.

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Thank you. BALDWIN: Next, police say Whitney Houston's daughter was found in the

bathtub by someone she called her husband. But now her father, Bobby Brown, is saying no, they were never married. Details on that and her condition next.

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BALDWIN: We still don't know exactly how Whitney Houston's daughter, Bobbi Kristina, ended up unconscious and face down inside her bathtub. But CNN has learned that the 21-year-old has been moved to another Atlanta hospital and is still in this medically induced coma. Her family, including her father singer Bobby Brown, are at her side.

There is also this from the R&B singer. He says his daughter is not, I repeat, not married. Through his lawyer he released this statement. Let me read it for you. Quote, "to correct earlier reports, Bobbi Kristina is not and has never been married to Nick Gordon. We continue to request privacy in this matter."

Let's go to CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin who has sources very, very close to the situation. So let me just begin, Sunny, with what you know that's new today. You know a lot.

SUNNY HOSTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. I mean, Bobby Brown certainly has been at his daughter's side. He continues to be with her at the Atlanta hospital. What I have also learned is that the family is constantly saying and consistently saying, Brooke, that Nick Gordon and Bobbi Kristina were never married.

Accordingly, in the hospital, Bobby Brown is the one that is in charge. He is the one that is making decisions about Bobbi Kristina. And that makes sense from a legal point of view, because we know that her mother, Whitney Houston, is no longer with us. And if she is not married to Nick Gordon, then Bobby Brown would be the person that would be making those decisions for her.

BALDWIN: And what about these reports of, you know, Nick Gordon trying to come back into the hospital and the family or Bobby Brown specifically keeping him out? Is that true?

HOSTIN: My understanding, Brooke, is that Bobby Brown does have a problem with Nick Gordon. He is not interested in Nick Gordon seeing Bobbi Kristina at the hospital. And he is certainly -- has been involved in trying to prevent that.

BALDWIN: Can you just explain to viewers who aren't as familiar with this family, Nick Gordon -- I mean, this is someone who really had been brought up almost like a brother, right, to Bobbi Kristina, who had been taken in in this family for years and years. How did this relationship between the two of them evolve and why -- who was under the impression that they were married?

HOSTIN: Well, you know, Bobbi Kristina and Nick Gordon certainly were almost raised together as brother and sister in the home with Whitney Houston. Whitney Houston did sort of take Nick Gordon into the home as a sort of pseudo-adopted son. The family, however, was never supportive of any sort of romantic

relationship between Nick Gordon and Bobbi Kristina. After Whitney Houston's death, Bobbi Kristina and Nick Gordon did begin a romantic relationship. The family has been very upset about that relationship and just in January, Bobbi Kristina sent out a picture on social media of wedding rings and said, you know, we are married or I'm paraphrasing but happily married at last.

My contact, though, tells me that that was a picture sent. But certainly, it is not true that they are not legally married. And again, the family has not been supportive of this relationship. They do not believe that Nick Gordon is a good influence on Bobbi Kristina. They see him as sort of a hanger-on is the word I have been told. And Bobby Brown especially is not supportive of any relationship and not supportive of having Nick Gordon at the hospital with her.

BALDWIN: OK. Just final question, 30 seconds. We mentioned she's now been moved to this other Atlanta hospital. How is she doing? Is she responding to any sort of stimulus? What are you hearing from your source?

HOSTIN: Well, since she has been moved to this hospital from the hospital, the North Fulton hospital, I haven't gotten any information about how she is doing. Now, she had been stable enough to be moved to another hospital in Atlanta, but since she has arrived at the new hospital, Brook, the family has remained silent about her condition.

BALDWIN: OK. Sunny Hostin, thank you so much for reaching out and getting what news you can from your source close to this family. We appreciate it very much. Sunny Hostin in Atlanta today.

And I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with he here in the last two hours in New York.

We will send it to Washington. My colleague Jake Tapper, "the LEAD" starts right now.