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Five Ex-Memphis Officers Charged In Death Of Tyre Nichols; Soon: Biden Speaks To Push His Economic Agenda. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired January 26, 2023 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

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VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Victor Blackwell. Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM.

Five former officers have been charged in the death of Tyre Nichols. The 29-year-old was killed more than two weeks ago after an encounter with Memphis police. Now, court records show the ex-officers had been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, and kidnapping. They were fired less than a week ago after an internal investigation.

Now a source says in the next hour, the district attorney for Memphis will announce the criminal charges. And now a warning, the image you're about to see is disturbing. This is how Nichols looked after his encounter with the police. They pulled Nichols over, they say on suspicions of reckless driving earlier this month. Now, the Nichols family saw the video of the incident and they described the beating of their son as savage.

CNN's Don Lemon is in Memphis. He's leading our coverage there. Don, what are your sources telling you about the release of that video?

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Well, they're telling us that is going to be tomorrow. That is a plan as of now, Victor, that they will release it sometime tomorrow. They're so coordinated -- coordinating, still meeting, and so that is the plan for now unless it changes. They believe that video will be released sometime tomorrow.

To give you an indication of just how bad they think the officers' actions were on this video, the police chief has been speaking out releasing a statement earlier this morning about what she thought about what the officers did and also releasing a statement moments ago. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CERELYN DAVIS, CHIEF, MEMPHIS POLICE: This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual. This incident was heinous, reckless, and inhumane. And in the vein of transparency, when the video is released in the coming days, you will see this for yourselves.

E LEMON: So, in the coming days, she said you will see it for yourself. Now, here's the -- this is what I want everyone to know. There is no indication here, no indications that there will be violence. What they're trying to do is tamp down the violence. They know what's on the video, and it's obvious according to the police chief and others that it is bad. It's not good.

So, what they're trying to do is get people used to the idea that what they're going to see may be very disturbing, and therefore to try to quell any violence that is a possibility here. But so far, they don't believe that is going to happen. They're just trying to bring the temperature down.

Two people who I believe can agree with that, they've been reporting since the very beginning and that is our Shimon Prokupecz and our Sara Sidner, both had been here reporting. Good afternoon to both of you. Since we last spoke this morning on "CNN THIS MORNING," there have been several developments, major developments here, as far as the investigation getting word on the charges of the officers and what's going to be said at that press conference coming up.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME & JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. So, certainly, the charge is extremely significant here. You are seeing now all five officers charged with murder, kidnapping, assault, and there's an acting in concert counsel, they're all acting together. Those are the allegations, according to the records.

The murder charge very significant, obviously. But seeing that kidnapping charge, there's obviously allegations there that the DA is going to claim that they forced, you know, this victim into this location didn't let him leave, they didn't let him free himself. And so that is very significant.

Of course, the murder charges are what everyone is going to be thinking about because it's so significant to see five officers in such a case charged with murder. And based on everything we know about this video from the police chief, the sound you just played, and from what the family wanted, it seems that this is what obviously authorities thought was appropriate in this case and bringing these charges second.

LEMON: Yes. Second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct, and one charge of official oppression, that's according to the Shelby County criminal courts. That is some very serious stuff. And you think about, Sara, the announcing of these charges before the official -- well, not the announcing of it just that it's a -- it is in the criminal records, right? To think about that, the degree of these charges before we even see the video, the community is just here. I mean, outrage already.

SARA SIDNER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It tells you how bad the video is. When you look at the charges, I know Shimon has been covering you know, police across the country, I have covered you know, social justice protests across the country for years, you have covered it, I've never seen kidnapping -- LEMON: From Ferguson and beyond. Yes.

PROKUPECZ: Yes.

LEMON: Right.

SIDNER: When a police officer is in the job doing his job, that kidnapping would be a charge that they would see.

[14:05:03]

So, whatever is shown on this video that we will all at some point see, it tells you how disgusting frankly, and how brutal this was at the hands of people who are professionals or supposed to be, and who are supposed to protect and serve, which is why you're hearing from the family. They have been very careful. They have said what they had to say one time. But what they said was like no one should ever have to see this happen to their child who has been described as kind of a quirky guy that lived life on his own terms.

He was working at FedEx. He would go to -- we learned that he would go home and have a meal cooked by his mother on a regular basis when he would take his break. So, this is somebody who was sort of trying to live his life. And to hear this happening after a supposed reckless driving incident, which is what the officers initially said is the reason for pulling him over, this -- they are not the judge, they are not the jury, and they are certainly not the executioner.

And so, now you are seeing what and how serious the district attorney and the police are taking this -- the police leadership are taking this. But the community hears this. And they know that the mother had said we want nothing less than murder one, which is premeditated murder.

LEMON: Right.

SIDNER: Second-degree murder is very, very serious. It is the knowing killing of a person, so you know what you did, but you didn't premeditate. That's basically the difference that can carry 15 to 60 years. And so, these are not small charges in any way, shape or form. They are significant, as you reported.

But the community -- this video, that -- for this community and communities across the country, this is going to be hard to take and hard to keep emotions down but so far, it's been very peaceful.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: But, Shimon, let me just -- I just --

PROKUPECZ: Yes.

SIDNER: Been very peaceful.

LEMON: I think this is important because we were talking about the video, but also you have reporting on the audio, which I want you to get. So, you have sound that I wanted you to see here.

PROKUPECZ: Well, you know certainly, there is -- you mean the radio transmission?

LEMON: The radio transmission.

PROKUPECZ: So, we have not been able to really piece together what happened here and police have not really told us -- given us a detailed account of how things unfold here. But we've been able to pull some audio from a website with has -- that has the police radio transmissions. And I believe we have that, so I think we're going to air that.

But what it basically shows is the encounter of the officers chasing him down. At one point they lose him and then find them again. And then there is another encounter, and we hear the dispatcher says he's fighting. So, just some context, we don't have the full context of this but it gives you a glimpse into what happened that day. Take a listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got one male, black, running.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Set up a perimeter.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) car pulled over (INAUDIBLE) we have one running on foot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Run that -- run that tag and see what's the address.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) show me (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's fighting at this time.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: So, this old -- you know, we don't know how long everything took place. There's this initial stop, and then there was a chase, and then they lose him, and then they find him again at another location. And how many times they encounter him and where exactly all this happened is still very unclear. But the family has certainly said that they have raised the issue with how they treated him when they first stopped him, that there wasn't a de-escalation, that they escalated the situation.

And think about -- you know, Sara, you talk about his mother and the home, this happens 80 yards or so from his home. And that is also certainly something that is very significant for authorities when they were thinking about this. And you talk about the community and law enforcement all around the country is sort of on edge. It's because I think in many ways, they fear what they know has happened previously in these kinds of situations, like a George Floyd.

They have not had an opportunity, I think -- you know, in George Floyd, they didn't have the opportunity to prepare the community for what they were seeing. That was a completely different video. That was a bystander that took a video. This is something that has been in the control in the hands of authorities, something we don't normally experience or see them prepare people for what they're about to see. I think that has been a very interesting part of this.

LEMON: What comes also of the different -- I -- you know I saw you reporting and I agree with you, there hasn't been as much transparency as there could be in this situation.

PROKUPECZ: No, I don't think so.

LEMON: But it is a different level of coordination of warning the public about what they're going to see. And also think about it in this case, what is different is that the police chief fired the officers immediately.

PROKUPECZ: And -- I mean, yes.

LEMON: You no longer have officers that are in a job and now you have officers that are facing charges and will face the consequences, whatever they are. Thank you, Sara. Thank you very much, Shimon. I appreciate that.

[14:10:04]

I want to bring in our legal analyst and our law enforcement analyst, Charles Ramsey and Elie Honig. Charles, and Elie, good afternoon to both of you. Listen, I want to talk -- I want to speak with you, Charles. Because the police chief has called this "heinous, reckless, and inhumane," ahead of us even seeing the video. What does that say to you about just what is on this video?

CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I mean, we haven't seen a video, but she has seen a video, so has the district attorney so has the U.S. attorney, and all of them have stated that it is pretty, pretty bad and pretty gruesome. And so, that tells me that she -- one, she took strong action right off the bat by firing them, the DA is going to announce charges later today. And I think that's why we haven't seen the video yet.

They're trying to get as much in -- out front of this as possible, firing, charges, all that sort of thing, and get people psychologically ready to see what they're about to see because they're trying to avoid a George Floyd-type situation. This is not going to just affect Memphis, these could -- this could easily lead to protests around the country, depending on what the video looks like. And I have no reason to believe it's anything other than pretty bad.

LEMON: Charles, do you think this is the right thing to do? Do you think this is effective the way that she's handling it, she's not doing interviews, she's basically releasing videos and responses to social media and trying to get ahead of it rather than responding to a video that's already out there?

RAMSEY: Yes, I do -- I do. I mean, listen, we'll find out. But you're going to have widespread protests, you're going to have a small group of individuals and in -- maybe in Memphis or elsewhere that will try to hijack the peaceful demonstration and turn it violent. I mean, those things we can expect, and you have to prepare for it. And I think, you know, she's doing everything she can to try to minimize that. But, you know, nothing is going to be you know, absolute in terms of being able to, you know stop everything from perhaps occurring.

LEMON: Yes. Charles, one more for you, do you believe it is -- that it is different this time, especially when it comes to the possibility of violence? The victim, black, all five officers black, we don't know the ethnicity of the two fire department workers or firefighters who have also been fired. We don't know their ethnicities. The police chief black, the community black as well. Usually, when we're reporting on these incidents, usually it's white officers, black victim. Do you think that makes a difference?

RAMSEY: Well, the race shouldn't make a difference. It should not make a difference. I mean, if everything that I'm hearing and based on those charges, the officers acted way outside of their lawful authority, and they should be charged. And it shouldn't matter whether or not they're black, white, Hispanic, or what have you.

People should not die in police custody, period. And if they do, there has to be an in-depth investigation to find out why, and what happened. Sometimes you have to use force to take a person into custody. The question is how much is too much? Was it necessary? Was it proportional? Was it reasonable objectively?

I mean, those are the things you have to look for. If the answer to those questions are no, it doesn't matter the race of the officers. It's just wrong. They should be charged.

LEMON: I was speaking in terms of reaction from the public.

RAMSEY: I don't think it's going to make any difference because they'll see it as a police action. And what you'll start hearing is it doesn't matter about their color, it's about blue. And you'll hear about those kinds of things.

And I don't think it's going to have much of an impact. I think the first reaction people would have if it was a racial type of situation, white officers black suspects, you know, people would make certain assumptions. But I -- you know, I don't think it's going to be any different in terms of reaction from the public.

LEMON: Elie Honig, I want to bring you in. I want to talk about the charges here. These are the charges. Second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct, one charge of official oppression. That is, according to the Shelby County criminal court records. What are the consequences here? What are they facing?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Don, so I think it's important to start with the level of murder that's being charged here, second-degree murder. There is a first-degree murder statute in the state of Tennessee not charged here, which applies to premeditated murder. And you heard Sara before say that the family wanted to see first-degree charges. What is charged is second-degree murder, which means a knowing killing of another person punishable by 15 to 60 years in prison.

I think it's really important also to notice -- to know here, there were other lesser options available to these prosecutors. They could have charged voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, less serious versions of the statutes that apply to killing another human being, but they settled on second-degree murder, which is a very serious charge, it's not at the level of first-degree.

[14:15:09]

The other thing that I think is really noteworthy, and I'm looking for more information, and again, I think Sara flagged this, the kidnapping charges. People are probably wondering, what does that mean? I'm wondering what that means.

But I will tell you that generally, kidnapping means to restrict someone's movement, someone's ability to move freedom of movement, and then moving or transporting that person. So, I wonder -- I wonder if there will be an explanation for why that's the charge. Perhaps the police restrain this person and then moved him from one place to another on car or on foot. But that is unusual to see as well.

LEMON: Elie Honig, I was speaking to a source earlier and I said, will someone -- when -- will someone be charged? This is before the charge and the indictments came down. They said, somebody will be charged, somebody is going to jail, you don't commit -- or you know not involved in something like this without someone going to jail. Then they said, of course, it would -- an indictment would have to come first, and then an arrest warrant, and then that would trigger any sort of surrendering or apprehension.

So, listen. They haven't announced officially what the charges are. What we're hearing is coming from the Shelby County criminal court records. They have -- the DA hasn't announced officially what the charges are. But unless you were indicted, unless you're charged, you don't turn yourself in. So, they had been indicted earlier, they had been charged earlier before the announcements, otherwise, they would not have turned themselves in. And do you believe on top of that, that some -- they are going to jail here?

HONIG: Oh, I think they are going to jail. It'll actually be an interesting question to see whether they get bail, whether the judge allows them to remain out pending their trial, and whether the DA asks to have them held pending jail. And, Don, it's important to note. We are seeing state charges here from the state of Tennessee. We also could see federal charges from the United States Department of Justice. That is not a double jeopardy problem. You can have both federal and state charges relating to the same conduct.

And the charges here, the federal charges that could be in play, are what we call a criminal violation of a person's civil rights. And if you want an example, look no further than Minneapolis, the officers involved in the killing of George Floyd. They were charged and convicted in the state of Minnesota. They were also charged and convicted federally by the United States Department of Justice. So, there are some very serious legal problems ahead for all five of these officers.

LEMON: OK. So, thank you very much, Charles. Thank you, Elie. I appreciate that. We'll continue to report. We want you to stand by. My colleague in New York, Victor Blackwell, Victor, we're in under an hour, the official announcing of the charges is supposed to happen here. And also at the bottom of this hour, we're expected to have the district attorney ahead of that press conference. I'm going to ask him some questions about what he's expected to say and what he thinks after these officers have now surrendered to authorities here in Memphis, Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right. We're just shy of 45 minutes away from those official statements and, of course, as you said, your interview coming. And also your sources telling you that video or the videos of this incident will be released tomorrow. Don, we'll get right back to you.

Until then, the latest checkup on the U.S. economy is out and it is better than expected. In just a few minutes, President Biden will speak on that promising news. And Meta says it's reactivating former President Trump's accounts on Facebook and Instagram nearly two years after his accounts were first suspended in the wake of January 6. How this could reshape his third White House bid?

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BLACKWELL: In just a few minutes, President Biden is set to tout the latest better-than-expected economic data that signals, for now, fears of a recession may be on hold. The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter, shrugging off high-interest rates and beating expectations.

CNN's Matt Egan is here to break down these numbers. All right, walk us through them. What do they mean?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Victor, today is kind of like report card day for the economy, OK?

BLACKWELL: OK.

EGAN: And the grades are in and they're pretty good 2.9 percent GDP at the end of the year. That is pretty solid, especially considering all the gloom and doom out there. You can see on that chart, we had negative growth to start the year. That's the economic equivalent of basically flunking.

If you look inside the numbers today, there were mostly a lot of positives here. I mean government spending that helped. Consumer spending, that slowed down but it stayed positive. Business spending also stayed positive. The big negative though, was housing. That's not a big surprise that housing has been a negative. That's because mortgage rates have come up so significantly. We also got new numbers today on jobless claims. Initial claims, they unexpectedly dropped to the lowest level since April. You know, on that chart, you can see they're down big time from the start of 2021. They're actually lower than they were a year ago. This is a proxy for layoffs and it shows that despite all of these job cut announcements we keep hearing about, the jobs market remains pretty healthy.

BLACKWELL: Yes. So, the report card, B works well with others?

EGAN: Yes, B works well with others.

BLACKWELL: OK.

EGAN: That works.

BLACKWELL: So, the question has been for quite some time now, can the Fed pull off a soft landing with these increases in the Fed rate? What's this? Tell us about that.

EGAN: Well -- I mean, today's numbers do suggest that this economy looks resilient, right? Like surprisingly resilient. Kind of isn't out of the woods, right? A recession is still possibility, but a soft landing is too.

I mean, I talked to the top economist at Goldman Sachs, Jan Hatzius. And he told me that he thinks a soft landing is not just possible, it's likely. Listen to what else he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAN HATZIUS, CHIEF ECONOMIST, GOLDMAN SACHS: No, we don't expect a recession. Our expectation is that we'll see still positive GDP numbers, we're saying -- estimating a 35 percent probability that there will be a recession.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EGAN: So, 35 percent chance of a recession. That's nothing, but that's a lot lower than what other economists are expecting. One catch though here, is what if Washington really fumbles the debt ceiling? Because that is a big concern out there.

And I asked the Goldman Sachs economist, I said, well, you know, could there be a recession if there is a default or even just a near default? And he said, yes. He said there could be so much mayhem in the markets that it would infect the rest of the economy.

[14:25:02]

So, it's interesting because we need to keep an eye on what happens with the debt ceiling. Despite some of this optimism, some of this growing sense of maybe a soft landing, the debt ceiling could really muddy the picture significantly.

BLACKWELL: Washington could just tip it all over.

EGAN: Yes.

BLACKWELL: Matt Egan, thanks so much.

EGAN: Thanks, Victor.

BLACKWELL: All five former officers in Memphis have been charged in the death of Tyre Nichols. The district attorney there will give more details on these charges any moment, and we will take you there live.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAVAUGHN WELLS, TYRE NICHOLS' MOTHER: My son, nobody's perfect, OK? Nobody. But he was damn near, OK?