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Comments on the Tyre Nichols Beating; Key Economic Report for December; Detective Testifies in Murdaugh Trail. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired January 27, 2023 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

ROWVAUGHN WELLS, TYRE NICHOLS' MOTHER: I really feel sorry for them.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Why do you say that?

ROWVAUGHN WELLS: Because they didn't have to do this. And like I said, they brought a lot of shame to their own family. Once you see this video, and I know I didn't see it, but from what I hear, it's horrific. And the humanity of it all. Where was the humanity? They beat my son like a pinata. My son, he was -- he had Crohn's disease. He had surgery in 2013. My son weighed a buck 50. He was 6'3" and he weighed a buck 50. And those men, if you combine their weights, they all -- it was over 1,000 pounds beating and beating 150-pound person to death. Because that's what they did, they beat my son to death.

LEMON: He cried out for his mom.

ROWVAUGHN WELLS: Yes. Yes, he cried out for me because I'm his mother, and that's what he was trying to get home to safety. And it was funny, I was in the room earlier and my stomach started hurting so bad. And I went into the den and I told my husband, my stomach is hurting so bad. And once I found out what happened, it was just the fact that I was feeling my son's pain. I was feeling my son's pain when they were beating him to death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: I'm always struck most in a story like this by a mother's pain. And I'm sure anyone watching that at home right now could feel it in those tears. A video so powerful, it seems, so demeaning, that mother doesn't want to see it, unable to see it and - yes.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: And understandable to see your child's nearly final moments like that, to know that he's calling out for you, to know that he is just feet from home.

And also to have the world be introduced to your son because of this horrific tragedy. A man who had his mother's name tattooed on his arm, who went to her house for dinner breaks, you know, who loved taking pictures of the sunset. She talks about his smile. Those are the things that you want people to know about your child, not the horrific way that it ended. SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, this was -- this was a deep tragedy. The question

now many -- of many questions -- why? We're going to discuss much more just after the break.

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[09:37:32]

SCIUTTO: Well, just before the break we heard from Tyre Nichols' mother as she shared the gut-wrenching account of how her son was beaten at the hands of police. Beaten to death.

We want to continue our conversation now. So many questions to look into.

Joining us, CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers and also CNN law enforcement analyst Jonathan Wackrow.

Bakari, I always think of my mom in situations like that, imagine her reaction, or any mother's reaction. This is a mother in mourning and in shock. As you heard those words, and what she's learned so far from police about this, what was your reaction?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Exhaustion. This has become cyclical, this cycle of systemic racism, systemic injustice. We've been on -- I've been on with CNN since 2015 and this has to be the 10th, 15th time we've spoken about this. We've seen the pain of black families having to live through this. And I want people to truly understand the systemic nature of the injustice that we're seeing perpetrated against black bodies.

I am trying to be as diligent as possible when talking about the race of the officers because, Jim, practically speaking, that doesn't matter. This is a system whereby black folk are not valued.

And we heard from his father, we heard from his mother about the images you'll see on that video. And I think that those images will show you the basic tenet that we've been talking about since we've been blue in the face from Emmett Till to now Mr. Nichols, that black folk don't get the benefit of their humanity.

SCIUTTO: You know - you know, Erica, the Emmett Till name, Don Lemon, of course, brought that up, too. We think of these episodes as part of distant history, right, and yet here we are in the year 2023.

HILL: So, it's interesting too, Bakari, and also picking up on what you said, there have been -- it's come up, right, about the race of the officers and this is not what that's about. It's about the conduct of the officers.

And the police chief said as much to Don this morning, that you can take that out of it. This is about the way they acted.

Something else that stands out, Bakari, is, with hearing from the police chief that in her view this is as bad as, if not worse than, that video of Rodney King from 1992. You know, our colleague Josh Campbell pointing out what's interesting is in 1992 those officers didn't know that they were being filmed.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

[09:40:01]

HILL: Officers today, Bakari, know that they are being filmed. They know that they're wearing body cameras. They know there are cameras all around the city.

So, when you factor that in, in terms of conduct, in terms of where we're at, how does that sit with you?

SELLERS: That's a good question. That's actually a really good question, Erica.

I think that it goes to the gratuitous nature whereby individuals who look like me are treated by law enforcement, right? And so if you beat somebody behind closed doors, that just means you have a really fundamentally flawed character because character is who you are when no one's looking.

If you beat somebody out in the -- under just, you know, light with cameras and video around other people, that shows that you didn't believe that person to be human. You figured no one would care because that person was less than human.

And so that -- under that analysis it shows that this is actually worse than Rodney King because in Rodney King they thought they were doing something under the cover of darkness, which they had done many times before. In this case they wanted to beat him and beat him and pummel him because they figured no one would care. And that's my fundamental problem with this entire system. You can talk about the Jump Out Boys, you can talk about the Red Dogs, you can talk about the Scorpion Unit, that that is what they're called in different municipalities, which usually lead to bad policing. But, fundamentally, you've got to give black folk the benefit of their humanity, and we just don't see that often enough.

SCIUTTO: Jonathan Wackrow, you have the events during that beating. You now have law enforcement involved. You have charges issued. You have the reactions we're seeing now from the police chief and the family. And now you're going to have a video out and a public reaction to seeing what the police chief herself said, acts that defy humanity. She said you're going to see, she said to Don, a disregard for life.

What preparations must law enforcement be making now for reaction to this? And is there -- is there some benefit in that reaction in terms of teeing this up a bit, right, preparing people for exactly what they're going to see later today?

JONATHAN WACKROW, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Listen, I -- from what we are hearing from Chief Davis and others who have witnessed this - this video, I don't think that there's a level of preparedness that is -- is going to really wholly allow us to prepare for what we're going to witness, right? Seasoned law enforcement officers, prosecutors, are describing this as

just such a horrific act. And, you know, when - when this video does get released, it is going to send a shock wave across the United States, not just Memphis. It undermines the credibility of law enforcement, their legitimacy, their ability to operate in the communities that they serve. It's going to raise a whole bunch of new issues.

But to Bakari's point, we have to solve the issues from the past, right? We have to get greater accountability. And what we heard this morning from the interview with Chief Davis by Don Lemon is that she's saying that accountability runs throughout the department.

The Memphis Police Department has actually put in to practice a whole bunch of policies to try to avoid this in terms of de-escalation training and other measures. Why wasn't that applied in this case, right? Why did these five individuals feel like they could act with - you know, we're talking about body-worn cameras, all of this surveillance, with impunity. That's the question why. Why did this happen?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: And the chief - the chief did reference that, talking about an unexplainable amount of reaction, saying that the escalation from officers was there before, you know, even the de-escalation training would have come in. There is so much more to this. Unfortunately, we have to leave it there for the moment.

But, Bakari, Jonathan, always appreciate your insight. Appreciate your observations. Appreciate you sharing them with us.

SELLERS: Thank you.

HILL: And, please, stay with us because you're going to hear that full CNN interview, that exclusive interview with the Memphis police chief, including new details about the reason that officers gave for pulling Tyre Nichols over. All of that coming up at the top of the hour.

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[09:48:44]

SCIUTTO: Just in this morning, perhaps some good economic news, a key economic report shows that prices rose at a slower pace last month.

HILL: CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans joining us now.

So, this is often called the Fed's favorite inflation gauge.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

HILL: What does it tell us about future rate hikes?

ROMANS: It tells us that price hikes are slowing. And that's a good thing. This is inflation cooling. And that's what you want to see. From month to month, prices -- the PCE, as it's called, up 0.1 percent, year over year up 5 percent. Five percent seems like a big number, but that's down from a peak of like 6.3 percent that we had seen this fall or -- there, see, that shows you clearly that peaking.

Let me show you another number, though, inside this report that I think is really important. Consumer spending pulled back a little bit, down 0.2 percent. That shows a consumer a little bit more wary and the savings rate now rose a little bit to 3.4 percent. That tells me that consumers are kind of trying to protect themselves against uncertainty in 2023. Maybe they've heard about somebody they know in tech who lost a job or maybe they're concerned about higher interest rates. There are still higher interest rates to deal with here.

I think a really good way to look at all of these numbers that we've heard this week is 2020 was the year of the Covid crash. 2021 was the year of this huge rebound, right, the fastest economy, the best economy since Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

[09:50:08]

And then 2022 was really a year of transition and we're not quite sure what 2023 is going to look like. A lot of head winds but still a Fed that's trying to navigate this and have what's called a soft landing.

The Fed meets this coming up week. That will be really important. We're expecting a smaller race hike. And we get a bit jobs report next Friday. So, there's still a lot of - a lot of information ahead to tell us where we are.

HILL: Yes, and we're only a month in. So there's that too.

ROMANS: That's right. That's right.

HILL: Christine, appreciate it. Thank you.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

HILL: Right now one of the detectives who worked the Murdaugh murder case is on the stand in South Carolina. We'll take you there live, next.

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HILL: Right now the prosecution is questioning its seventh witness in the trial of Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced attorney who is facing murder charges over the death of his wife and son.

SCIUTTO: Yes, just shocking charges. That trail, of course, now underway.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher, she is live outside the courthouse.

Dianne, today a detective on the stand. What's the focus of questioning? DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this detective,

Jim, Erica, is the one who actually prepared the search warrant on that night.

[09:55:06]

Yesterday, the first day of testimony for witnesses included six different members of law enforcement or other first responders, a 911 dispatcher. And essentially what we're seeing the state do here, we're kind of getting a picture of them attempting to set the scene in a timeline situation for what happened on June 7, 2021, but also what Alex Murdaugh's demeanor was when law enforcement arrived on scene to find the gruesome murdered bodies of his wife Maggie and Paul, his 22- year-old son.

And what we're learning is that while in court, Alex Murdaugh was openly weeping while they were playing this body cam video. The detective who first got on scene said that while Murdaugh was upset, and he was anxious, but he wasn't crying. He didn't have any tears.

And there was even a very strange moment on the body cam where he's kind of hysterical and then someone else walks by and he goes, hey, hey, what's up? How are you kind of thing. It almost like breaks out of character and then goes back.

We also note that the first thing that he says to the deputy who arrives on scene is about a 2019 boat crash that killed a friend of Paul's, and Paul was charged in and awaiting trial at the time of his death. Murdaugh says that Paul had been receiving threats. And he's like, I know that's what this is about.

He also mentioned it on a 911 call. We got to here previously redacted portions from the 911 call that Alex Murdaugh placed that night.

Jim, Erica, they're also attempting to talk about the scene. The defense trying to poke holes and say that this was not a secured crime scene. There were pictures that weren't taken that should have been of evidence that might have helped point to different killers, according to the defense.

HILL: Dianne Gallagher with the latest for us from South Carolina there. Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, coming up next, and you do want to see this, the full CNN exclusive with the Memphis police chief. Her preview of what that body camera video and other videos will show and why she immediately knew she needed to see those pictures, those images herself.

Please stay with us.

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