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Many Americans Still Missing in Asia; Possible New Trial for Andrea Yates

Aired January 06, 2005 - 13:30   ET

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

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


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: CNN in the news this hour. Andrea Yates, convicted of murder more than two years ago in the bathtub, of drowning her children. Today news from Texas, she may get a new trial. An appeals court threw out some key prosecution testimony. It's complicated. We're going to pick it apart in just a few minutes with our legal analyst.
If it ain't one thing, it's another. Aboard the International Space Station, the two-man crew did get their almost critical resupply of food last month. Now the machine that gives them breathable air has quit working. It's not exactly a Houston, we have a problem, plenty of reserve oxygen on board. Still, NASA engineers would like to see that machine working again.

Tsunamis, unpreventable. Widespread death that follows the tsunami, preventable. That's the main message of today's multinational donor conference in Jakarta, Indonesia. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan appealed for nearly $1 billion in aid money to keep the recovery work going just for the next six months. The U.N. will soon take over that humanitarian mission.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The tsunami death toll, difficult as it is to get your head around, seems to have at least for now stabilized. About 155,000 plus. Of course, many thousands of people are unaccounted for and classified as missing, not just citizens of the countries directly hit, but of course, many visitors, tourists from dozens of nations. Many Americans are counted among them.

CNN State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel with us with the latest on the efforts to locate them. Got to be very emotional phone calls at that phone bank there, Andrea, as people try to desperately track down their loved ones.

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Miles, and it is truly an arduous and a tedious process for all involved to try get an accurate handle on as to just how many Americans may have perished in the tsunamis. Just one example. As of this morning, the death toll actually dropped from where it was yesterday, at 36 to 35 today. And State Department officials say the reason for that is one of the victims was actually counted twice because the name was confused.

And so it's just one example as to why State Department officials say they have been so reluctant in coming forward with this information and why it's been so difficult for them to get a handle on exactly how many Americans are, in fact, missing and dead. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL (voice-over): These are just some of the dozens of Americans believed killed in Thailand and Sri Lanka.

ADAM ERELI, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: In each of these cases, there is a specific reason to believe that the individual was in harm's way at the time of the tsunamis.

KOPPEL: The reason, officials say, firsthand accounts from survivors. The State Department also says some family members found photos of their loved ones on this Thai government web site, which has posted pictures of hundreds of unidentified victims.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm calling from the Department of State's Tsunami Task Force.

KOPPEL: Since December 26th State Department officials have been working the phones around the clock, calling family and friends for updates on unaccounted for Americans.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I'm happy to hear your good news.

KOPPEL: Eager to whittle down a list which once stood at 24,000 and is now at just over 3,000.

Touring the devastation in Indonesia, Secretary of State Powell made clear finding out how many Americans are truly missing is a top priority.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: And we're working as hard as we can to get that list down. With each passing day, we're removing hundreds of names from the list. And we'll try to get...

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: An example of that, Miles, just today, earlier this morning, the list of inquiries stood at 25,000 -- 26,000. And now it stands at 25,000. State Department saying that they are making steady progress because people really are working around the clock. And also just to emphasize that doesn't mean that there are 24,000 or 25,000 missing Americans -- it's not a one-for-one equation here. It's just that there have been 25,000 people who called in and they still don't have final answers yet from them as to whether or not they've heard from their loved one, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, Andrea Koppel. Thank you for tracking that for us. Stay with LIVE FROM. In just a few moments, Stan Grant in tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka. He is a reporter with a lot of experience. He saw something there that touched him deeply and changed his life. He will share that experience with us in a special reporter's notebook that you will see only here on CNN.

All right, it's tough to put a finger on the most tragic side of this disaster, but one that will reverberate the loudest for generations involves the thousands and thousands of children suddenly without parents, brothers, sisters, even homes, leaving them vulnerable in more ways than one. Here's Tom Foreman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Amid the wreckage and refugees, relief workers now estimate one-third of the people killed by the tsunamis were children, about 50,000 in all. An untold thousands more lost their homes, their parents, or both.

"All the houses in our neighborhood were destroyed," this girl says. My mother is dead. We found her body." Such stories have children's aid groups sounding an alarm.

ANDREA BERTONE, HUMANTRAFFICKING.ORG: The more out in the open they are, the definitely more at risk they are for being exploited by, unfortunately, a lot of people who are going to come in not only for sex, but for domestic labor, for adoptions.

FOREMAN: Even before the disaster, some of the hardest-hit areas were infamous for a black market trade in children, kids sold for everything from camel racing to prostitution, serving sex tourists. Aid workers have no proof this is happening to refugee children now, but despite police crackdowns, rumors of predators on the prowl are rampant.

CATHERINE CHEN, SAVE THE CHILDREN: Well, across Indonesia, we know that 100,000 to 210,000 children are engaged in sexual exploitation every year.

FOREMAN (on camera): This seems like really one of the worst places in the world that this could have happened for children.

CHEN: Yes. Yes. That's very true.

FOREMAN (voice-over): Child advocates fear traffickers may even try to profit from well-intentioned offers to adopt orphans, snatching and selling children who are simply separated from their families in the chaos.

DAN TOOLE, UNICEF: What we do first is register those kids. We start to post photos of children to make sure that the relatives elsewhere can find them.

FOREMAN: In Aceh province, the government will not anyone under 16 leave the country except with a documented parent. It may seem a desperate measure, but for many children here, these remain desperate and dangerous times.

Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Again, don't forget our program tonight. It is dedicated to the efforts to protect and care for those young lives in the wake of the tsunami disaster. CNN's "Saving the Children," it's a primetime special tonight, 10:00 Eastern right here on CNN. Well, Andrea Yates. The story of her drowning of her five children in the bathtub shocked the nation, resulted in murder convictions and got Yates a life prison sentence. Case closed, you might think. Well, wrong. An appellate judge in Houston, Texas today threw out some testimony given during her trial back in 2002 and ordered a new trial right from scratch.

We'll bring in Jeff Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst, to help us figure out what happened here. Jeff, good to see you.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: Hey.

O'BRIEN: First of all, you watched this trial pretty closely. Is this a surprise?

TOOBIN: It is, because we're dealing with Texas, remember. Even though this was a case that a lot of people had problems with because it seemed like Andrea Yates was insane in a colloquial, if not a legal sense, Texas courts don't the let people go lightly or often. And here three judges on Texas first round of the court of appeal said this -- she has to get a new trial, so all bets are off. New trial should start.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's give people a little bit of the back story on what was at issue here. There was a consultant to the program "Law and Order" who said there was a program that Andrea Yates saw which depicted a mother drowning a children in the bathtub. Turns out he had suggested that idea, but it never got on TV, right?

TOOBIN: Correct. Really bizarre set of circumstances. Park Dietz, a very celebrated forensic psychiatrist, testified as the sole witness for the prosecution on the issue of whether Andrea Yates was sane or not. And he said that he had been a consultant on an episode of "Law and Order" where a woman killed her children and pleaded insanity and got away with it. Prosecution argued that that was a way out for Andrea Yates. That she may have used that in this case here. It was all fiction, it never happened, there was no such "Law and Order" episode.

O'BRIEN: And that fact, however, did became evident after the conviction before the penalty phase. So could the judge have done something then to rectify it, I guess?

TOOBIN: Well, what's interesting is that they did do something to rectify it. There was a stipulation between the prosecution and the defense, which was read to the jury, which said the witness was mistaken. There was no such episode, yet the appeals court still overturned the conviction, which suggests to me that if you read between the lines of this opinion, they really had a problem with this case. They didn't like the result. They thought she was insane, and it this was a convenient excuse to get a new trial.

O'BRIEN: So looking at it from a broad national reach here, if the Texas appeals court says, wait a minute, this person is insane, probably they should take that to heart, because they they're very -- they play for keeps down there? TOOBIN: It's a tough jurisdiction, as everyone knows, and you know, this is something, whether it's the John Hinckley case, or any case where insanity is raised, it's something the legal system has never really successfully come to grips with, because all of us know that at some level a lot of people who commit these crimes are insane, or crazy, or nuts, but we don't want to help them a benefit because of that, we don't want to help them get away something, so we're torn on the issue of insanity, and I think this case illustrates it perfectly.

O'BRIEN: Such a tragic story. Jeff Toobin, thanks for your time. Appreciate your time -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: More news across America now. New Jersey is one of the latest states to get walloped by winter and could see up to eight inches of snow. The bad weather part of that huge storm that has hit all the way from the Rockies to New England, stranding travelers and downing power lines along the way.

It's back to work for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, at least part time. A spokeswoman says that the 80-year-old justice has been going to his office for a couple of weeks, fitting in work around ongoing treatment for thyroid cancer. No word whether he will be back on the bench next when oral arguments resume at the Supreme Court next week.

And Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun has apparently pulled another disappearing act. Hassoun already charged with desertion after going missing from his unit in Iraq last year, failed to report to Camp Legeune, North Carolina on Tuesday as ordered. The Pentagon says Hassoun may have fled to Lebanon, where he turned up last July.

O'BRIEN: Well, maybe the military should have given him some sort of portable tracking device, which they probably have at the Consumer Electronics Show. Daniel Sieberg is there. We never lose track of him. This is the moment I've been waiting for, Daniel, to see what cool toys I just got to have.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: I know, Miles. I know you can't wait, lots to talk about here. We are at the Consumer Electronics Show, and videophone technology has finally arrived. We're going to be talking about that and some other smart phones when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Three little victims amidst the crushing reality of so many deaths, it wouldn't seem that three more would stop a reporter in his tracks, but this reporter is also a father.

CNN's Stan Grant was one of the few journalists to cross the border into the remote Tamil Hill region of Sri Lanka. That's where he witnessed a site that will likely stay with him forever.

His words alone paint a haunting image.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) STAN GRANT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): We've been traveling with a group of Tamil Tigers collecting the bodies of the dead from one of the areas that's been devastated around this particular part of Sri Lanka. And we came across a group of bodies in the distance. And from where I stood, I could see that they were children, no more than babies, really, aged maybe between 1 to 3.

And from a distance, it just really didn't look real. They looked almost like mannequins or dolls. But as I got closer, I saw that their arms were locked around each other, they were hanging onto each other. Their bodies had been tossed in the torrent of the wave as it came through, but somehow these 3 little kids had hung together, clung together and died together.

At those moments, you stop being a reporter. The tools of our trade, the objectivity and the distance that we need to be able to do our job effectively in most cases desert you. Being a reporter just doesn't cut it anymore.

I was standing there looking at it. I couldn't help thinking about my own children, because I have 3 little boys of my own. And I know I look in on them sometimes before they're about to go to bed, and they're often laying there, and they've got their arms around each other. And I remember looking at those 3 little babies, and they had their arms around each other and it reminded me so much, so much of my own kids.

And I started thinking about the little things, because being a father, it's never the big things of life that really matter. It's the little things. It's how I get angry with my boys when they're watching videos, playing games and not doing their homework, when my littlest one wants to run around the house without any clothes on and I'm yelling at him to get dressed, or my oldest boy is trying to get out of math homework for the hundredth time. I remember wrestling with them before they go to bed and how they loved that so much.

And I wondered about the little of these boys' lives. I wonder what they were doing at the moment before they died, if they were playing together on the beach with no idea this water was about to come through. I wondered about their father, I wondered if their father was alive or dead, if their father wrestled with them before they went to bed or got angry for them watching movies when they should have been doing their homework.

As I stood there I actually started to broadcast live. I had a phone in to one of the programs. Richard Quest, one of our London anchors was on the other end of the line. As I was speaking to him, the bulldozer came through and lifted up these three bodies onto a funeral pyre. They had stacked the wood about a meter or so high.

I remember standing there live on air describing the scene in front of me, trying to do my job as a reporter, which was just futile, because I stopped being a reporter. I was a father. I remember getting to the end of it, just not knowing anymore what to say. Richard came on, and he said, at this moment, obviously it's a very solemn moment, there is nothing I can ask you. I hung up the phone at that moment the fire was lit, and it was a funeral service. That's what I was witnessing, a funeral service. No priests, no mourners, no parents, just three little babies in this barren landscape lifted up on a funeral pyre and set alight. I remember then just thinking of a little prayer for them and wanting to be with my own family. And I tried to ring my wife a few minutes later. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't do it, because I was working. I wanted to hear my wife's voice so I could do that, but she wasn't home. I think it's that image and how it touched me and how it made that scene so more real, that is still what this story is about for me, down to its basics.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: It is January, and like swallows to papistrano (ph), the geeks have once again descended upon Sin City USA. They're not there to gamble, see Circus Sole, nor are they Elvis impersonators. They might do all of the above. But they actually came to Vegas to catch a peak at the coolest gadgets in all the land. It is the Consumer Electronics Show. Let's see. Who should we sent to do this story? Pick me? Oh, too late, I guess we are going to have to give it our sultan of silicon, or emperor of electronics, our God of geekdom, Daniel Sieberg joining us from Las Vegas.

Hello. You having fun.

SIEBERG: Hello, Miles.

They are just streaming through the doors here. It just opened here at the show floor, and we're talking about cell phones, but not just any cell phone, we're talking about cell phones that are so smart they could have a Phd.

And joining us right now to talk about these cell phones is a rather smart guy, Brian Cooley from CNET.

And, Brian, the first you got, it's technically a called a smart phone. But what makes it so smart?

BRIAN COOLEY, CNET: I am not sure I am as smart as this phone it's got so much going on. A smart phone typically has a Web browser, e-mail for software, it has to applications, like, work on documents, it's going to have broadband, it's going to have organizer functions -- it's going to have everything basically.

This is the Samsung I-730. It's in the Korean market now, coming to the U.S. later this year, second half. One thing it's is what's called the slide body design. You slide it up, more thumb typing, full keyboard, but it's fairly pocketable. It's not the smallest phone in the world, but it's got a lot going on.

What you can't see is it's got broadband. This little antenna here is connecting to an advanced network that gives you 384 kilobits of speed. Translation: it's like a decent DSL connection to your phone. So when you take the high-res pictures or video clips with this phone, you can actually send them, because you've got a lot of bandwidth.

O'BRIEN: Hey, Brian, I'm loving that. First of all, is it quad band, GSM, or is it CDMA.

COOLEY: This guy is going to be is EVDO. That's the new third generation.

O'BRIEN: EVDO?

COOLEY: A new acronym for you.

O'BRIEN: Where do you use that? Are there any EVDO networks anywhere?

COOLEY: Very few major markets. But by the end of this year, there's going to be saturation.

O'BRIEN: Is this Windows, or Palm?

COOLEY: Windows, Pocket PC 2003.

O'BRIEN: All right, good, I got that one, I-730 by Samsung.

Go ahead.

SIEBERG: The next one here, this is not a flip phone; it's more of a twist phone.

COOLEY: You can't tell what it is unless you get some coaching on this. Looks like a camera this way, right, little Sony Ericsson camera, looks like a little TV this way. Looks like a phone this way. It's all of these, 2.8-inch high-res screen, very nice, standard phone keyboard, 1.3 megapixel camera here, which is good, you're getting into kind of real camera land there. This also has the broadband connection I talked, so when you take those high-risk photos, you've got enough speed to send them without waiting all day.

O'BRIEN: I love that broadband connection. That is way cool.

COOLEY: This one uses another high-speed network one called EDGE, so add that to your little book of acronyms.

SIEBERG: Now, speaking of high speed, we should go one to the next one, because this really does involve DSL at high speeds, futuristic technology that's finally arrived.

COOLEY: This is my buddy, Miles, over at Motorola. This is the Motorola Ojo (ph) videophone. You can see me I'm in the little window there, and he's in the big window there. We're connected by a broadband, just like a cable or a DSL connection at your house, so it doesn't try to make it work over the phone lines. That's why these things didn't work for 25 years. Now we've got broadband in the home. They work great.

Miles, wave to me there. Look at that.

O'BRIEN: Miles, doesn't look very excited about it.

Miles, smile. Come on.

COOLEY: Miles just woke up I think.

SIEBERG: I think his name actually might be Herschel (ph), because Miles is back in the studio.

Brian, thanks so much. We're going to have to...

O'BRIEN: Wait a minute. I got in trouble because I threw out all that CDMA, GSM stuff. What I was talking about -- Brian, you can help on this -- CDMA is basically the U.S. cellular networks. GSM is what is used in Europe and is being adopted more and more in the United States, and I was just asking about that, OK?

SIEBERG: We'll let it go, Miles. All right, you're just showing off, we know that.

But hey, look, in the next hour, we're going to be talking about "Popular Science's" picks, including -- I had to show this -- we've decided this is kind of like the boombox for the Hampton crowd. You know what I'm talking about.

O'BRIEN: Oh, very nice.

SIEBERG: So, yes, Suzanne Cantra (ph) is going to drop by in about an hour.

O'BRIEN: I don't know if that one is going to take off. That's my take on that one, but you never know, we will see.

Daniel Sieberg, Brian Cooley with CNET. Sorry about the acronyms, folks, but I get carried away sometime. Anyway, have fun out there, I know you will.

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Aired January 6, 2005 - 13:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: CNN in the news this hour. Andrea Yates, convicted of murder more than two years ago in the bathtub, of drowning her children. Today news from Texas, she may get a new trial. An appeals court threw out some key prosecution testimony. It's complicated. We're going to pick it apart in just a few minutes with our legal analyst.
If it ain't one thing, it's another. Aboard the International Space Station, the two-man crew did get their almost critical resupply of food last month. Now the machine that gives them breathable air has quit working. It's not exactly a Houston, we have a problem, plenty of reserve oxygen on board. Still, NASA engineers would like to see that machine working again.

Tsunamis, unpreventable. Widespread death that follows the tsunami, preventable. That's the main message of today's multinational donor conference in Jakarta, Indonesia. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan appealed for nearly $1 billion in aid money to keep the recovery work going just for the next six months. The U.N. will soon take over that humanitarian mission.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The tsunami death toll, difficult as it is to get your head around, seems to have at least for now stabilized. About 155,000 plus. Of course, many thousands of people are unaccounted for and classified as missing, not just citizens of the countries directly hit, but of course, many visitors, tourists from dozens of nations. Many Americans are counted among them.

CNN State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel with us with the latest on the efforts to locate them. Got to be very emotional phone calls at that phone bank there, Andrea, as people try to desperately track down their loved ones.

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Miles, and it is truly an arduous and a tedious process for all involved to try get an accurate handle on as to just how many Americans may have perished in the tsunamis. Just one example. As of this morning, the death toll actually dropped from where it was yesterday, at 36 to 35 today. And State Department officials say the reason for that is one of the victims was actually counted twice because the name was confused.

And so it's just one example as to why State Department officials say they have been so reluctant in coming forward with this information and why it's been so difficult for them to get a handle on exactly how many Americans are, in fact, missing and dead. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL (voice-over): These are just some of the dozens of Americans believed killed in Thailand and Sri Lanka.

ADAM ERELI, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: In each of these cases, there is a specific reason to believe that the individual was in harm's way at the time of the tsunamis.

KOPPEL: The reason, officials say, firsthand accounts from survivors. The State Department also says some family members found photos of their loved ones on this Thai government web site, which has posted pictures of hundreds of unidentified victims.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm calling from the Department of State's Tsunami Task Force.

KOPPEL: Since December 26th State Department officials have been working the phones around the clock, calling family and friends for updates on unaccounted for Americans.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I'm happy to hear your good news.

KOPPEL: Eager to whittle down a list which once stood at 24,000 and is now at just over 3,000.

Touring the devastation in Indonesia, Secretary of State Powell made clear finding out how many Americans are truly missing is a top priority.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: And we're working as hard as we can to get that list down. With each passing day, we're removing hundreds of names from the list. And we'll try to get...

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: An example of that, Miles, just today, earlier this morning, the list of inquiries stood at 25,000 -- 26,000. And now it stands at 25,000. State Department saying that they are making steady progress because people really are working around the clock. And also just to emphasize that doesn't mean that there are 24,000 or 25,000 missing Americans -- it's not a one-for-one equation here. It's just that there have been 25,000 people who called in and they still don't have final answers yet from them as to whether or not they've heard from their loved one, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, Andrea Koppel. Thank you for tracking that for us. Stay with LIVE FROM. In just a few moments, Stan Grant in tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka. He is a reporter with a lot of experience. He saw something there that touched him deeply and changed his life. He will share that experience with us in a special reporter's notebook that you will see only here on CNN.

All right, it's tough to put a finger on the most tragic side of this disaster, but one that will reverberate the loudest for generations involves the thousands and thousands of children suddenly without parents, brothers, sisters, even homes, leaving them vulnerable in more ways than one. Here's Tom Foreman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Amid the wreckage and refugees, relief workers now estimate one-third of the people killed by the tsunamis were children, about 50,000 in all. An untold thousands more lost their homes, their parents, or both.

"All the houses in our neighborhood were destroyed," this girl says. My mother is dead. We found her body." Such stories have children's aid groups sounding an alarm.

ANDREA BERTONE, HUMANTRAFFICKING.ORG: The more out in the open they are, the definitely more at risk they are for being exploited by, unfortunately, a lot of people who are going to come in not only for sex, but for domestic labor, for adoptions.

FOREMAN: Even before the disaster, some of the hardest-hit areas were infamous for a black market trade in children, kids sold for everything from camel racing to prostitution, serving sex tourists. Aid workers have no proof this is happening to refugee children now, but despite police crackdowns, rumors of predators on the prowl are rampant.

CATHERINE CHEN, SAVE THE CHILDREN: Well, across Indonesia, we know that 100,000 to 210,000 children are engaged in sexual exploitation every year.

FOREMAN (on camera): This seems like really one of the worst places in the world that this could have happened for children.

CHEN: Yes. Yes. That's very true.

FOREMAN (voice-over): Child advocates fear traffickers may even try to profit from well-intentioned offers to adopt orphans, snatching and selling children who are simply separated from their families in the chaos.

DAN TOOLE, UNICEF: What we do first is register those kids. We start to post photos of children to make sure that the relatives elsewhere can find them.

FOREMAN: In Aceh province, the government will not anyone under 16 leave the country except with a documented parent. It may seem a desperate measure, but for many children here, these remain desperate and dangerous times.

Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Again, don't forget our program tonight. It is dedicated to the efforts to protect and care for those young lives in the wake of the tsunami disaster. CNN's "Saving the Children," it's a primetime special tonight, 10:00 Eastern right here on CNN. Well, Andrea Yates. The story of her drowning of her five children in the bathtub shocked the nation, resulted in murder convictions and got Yates a life prison sentence. Case closed, you might think. Well, wrong. An appellate judge in Houston, Texas today threw out some testimony given during her trial back in 2002 and ordered a new trial right from scratch.

We'll bring in Jeff Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst, to help us figure out what happened here. Jeff, good to see you.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: Hey.

O'BRIEN: First of all, you watched this trial pretty closely. Is this a surprise?

TOOBIN: It is, because we're dealing with Texas, remember. Even though this was a case that a lot of people had problems with because it seemed like Andrea Yates was insane in a colloquial, if not a legal sense, Texas courts don't the let people go lightly or often. And here three judges on Texas first round of the court of appeal said this -- she has to get a new trial, so all bets are off. New trial should start.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's give people a little bit of the back story on what was at issue here. There was a consultant to the program "Law and Order" who said there was a program that Andrea Yates saw which depicted a mother drowning a children in the bathtub. Turns out he had suggested that idea, but it never got on TV, right?

TOOBIN: Correct. Really bizarre set of circumstances. Park Dietz, a very celebrated forensic psychiatrist, testified as the sole witness for the prosecution on the issue of whether Andrea Yates was sane or not. And he said that he had been a consultant on an episode of "Law and Order" where a woman killed her children and pleaded insanity and got away with it. Prosecution argued that that was a way out for Andrea Yates. That she may have used that in this case here. It was all fiction, it never happened, there was no such "Law and Order" episode.

O'BRIEN: And that fact, however, did became evident after the conviction before the penalty phase. So could the judge have done something then to rectify it, I guess?

TOOBIN: Well, what's interesting is that they did do something to rectify it. There was a stipulation between the prosecution and the defense, which was read to the jury, which said the witness was mistaken. There was no such episode, yet the appeals court still overturned the conviction, which suggests to me that if you read between the lines of this opinion, they really had a problem with this case. They didn't like the result. They thought she was insane, and it this was a convenient excuse to get a new trial.

O'BRIEN: So looking at it from a broad national reach here, if the Texas appeals court says, wait a minute, this person is insane, probably they should take that to heart, because they they're very -- they play for keeps down there? TOOBIN: It's a tough jurisdiction, as everyone knows, and you know, this is something, whether it's the John Hinckley case, or any case where insanity is raised, it's something the legal system has never really successfully come to grips with, because all of us know that at some level a lot of people who commit these crimes are insane, or crazy, or nuts, but we don't want to help them a benefit because of that, we don't want to help them get away something, so we're torn on the issue of insanity, and I think this case illustrates it perfectly.

O'BRIEN: Such a tragic story. Jeff Toobin, thanks for your time. Appreciate your time -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: More news across America now. New Jersey is one of the latest states to get walloped by winter and could see up to eight inches of snow. The bad weather part of that huge storm that has hit all the way from the Rockies to New England, stranding travelers and downing power lines along the way.

It's back to work for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, at least part time. A spokeswoman says that the 80-year-old justice has been going to his office for a couple of weeks, fitting in work around ongoing treatment for thyroid cancer. No word whether he will be back on the bench next when oral arguments resume at the Supreme Court next week.

And Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun has apparently pulled another disappearing act. Hassoun already charged with desertion after going missing from his unit in Iraq last year, failed to report to Camp Legeune, North Carolina on Tuesday as ordered. The Pentagon says Hassoun may have fled to Lebanon, where he turned up last July.

O'BRIEN: Well, maybe the military should have given him some sort of portable tracking device, which they probably have at the Consumer Electronics Show. Daniel Sieberg is there. We never lose track of him. This is the moment I've been waiting for, Daniel, to see what cool toys I just got to have.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: I know, Miles. I know you can't wait, lots to talk about here. We are at the Consumer Electronics Show, and videophone technology has finally arrived. We're going to be talking about that and some other smart phones when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Three little victims amidst the crushing reality of so many deaths, it wouldn't seem that three more would stop a reporter in his tracks, but this reporter is also a father.

CNN's Stan Grant was one of the few journalists to cross the border into the remote Tamil Hill region of Sri Lanka. That's where he witnessed a site that will likely stay with him forever.

His words alone paint a haunting image.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) STAN GRANT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): We've been traveling with a group of Tamil Tigers collecting the bodies of the dead from one of the areas that's been devastated around this particular part of Sri Lanka. And we came across a group of bodies in the distance. And from where I stood, I could see that they were children, no more than babies, really, aged maybe between 1 to 3.

And from a distance, it just really didn't look real. They looked almost like mannequins or dolls. But as I got closer, I saw that their arms were locked around each other, they were hanging onto each other. Their bodies had been tossed in the torrent of the wave as it came through, but somehow these 3 little kids had hung together, clung together and died together.

At those moments, you stop being a reporter. The tools of our trade, the objectivity and the distance that we need to be able to do our job effectively in most cases desert you. Being a reporter just doesn't cut it anymore.

I was standing there looking at it. I couldn't help thinking about my own children, because I have 3 little boys of my own. And I know I look in on them sometimes before they're about to go to bed, and they're often laying there, and they've got their arms around each other. And I remember looking at those 3 little babies, and they had their arms around each other and it reminded me so much, so much of my own kids.

And I started thinking about the little things, because being a father, it's never the big things of life that really matter. It's the little things. It's how I get angry with my boys when they're watching videos, playing games and not doing their homework, when my littlest one wants to run around the house without any clothes on and I'm yelling at him to get dressed, or my oldest boy is trying to get out of math homework for the hundredth time. I remember wrestling with them before they go to bed and how they loved that so much.

And I wondered about the little of these boys' lives. I wonder what they were doing at the moment before they died, if they were playing together on the beach with no idea this water was about to come through. I wondered about their father, I wondered if their father was alive or dead, if their father wrestled with them before they went to bed or got angry for them watching movies when they should have been doing their homework.

As I stood there I actually started to broadcast live. I had a phone in to one of the programs. Richard Quest, one of our London anchors was on the other end of the line. As I was speaking to him, the bulldozer came through and lifted up these three bodies onto a funeral pyre. They had stacked the wood about a meter or so high.

I remember standing there live on air describing the scene in front of me, trying to do my job as a reporter, which was just futile, because I stopped being a reporter. I was a father. I remember getting to the end of it, just not knowing anymore what to say. Richard came on, and he said, at this moment, obviously it's a very solemn moment, there is nothing I can ask you. I hung up the phone at that moment the fire was lit, and it was a funeral service. That's what I was witnessing, a funeral service. No priests, no mourners, no parents, just three little babies in this barren landscape lifted up on a funeral pyre and set alight. I remember then just thinking of a little prayer for them and wanting to be with my own family. And I tried to ring my wife a few minutes later. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't do it, because I was working. I wanted to hear my wife's voice so I could do that, but she wasn't home. I think it's that image and how it touched me and how it made that scene so more real, that is still what this story is about for me, down to its basics.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: It is January, and like swallows to papistrano (ph), the geeks have once again descended upon Sin City USA. They're not there to gamble, see Circus Sole, nor are they Elvis impersonators. They might do all of the above. But they actually came to Vegas to catch a peak at the coolest gadgets in all the land. It is the Consumer Electronics Show. Let's see. Who should we sent to do this story? Pick me? Oh, too late, I guess we are going to have to give it our sultan of silicon, or emperor of electronics, our God of geekdom, Daniel Sieberg joining us from Las Vegas.

Hello. You having fun.

SIEBERG: Hello, Miles.

They are just streaming through the doors here. It just opened here at the show floor, and we're talking about cell phones, but not just any cell phone, we're talking about cell phones that are so smart they could have a Phd.

And joining us right now to talk about these cell phones is a rather smart guy, Brian Cooley from CNET.

And, Brian, the first you got, it's technically a called a smart phone. But what makes it so smart?

BRIAN COOLEY, CNET: I am not sure I am as smart as this phone it's got so much going on. A smart phone typically has a Web browser, e-mail for software, it has to applications, like, work on documents, it's going to have broadband, it's going to have organizer functions -- it's going to have everything basically.

This is the Samsung I-730. It's in the Korean market now, coming to the U.S. later this year, second half. One thing it's is what's called the slide body design. You slide it up, more thumb typing, full keyboard, but it's fairly pocketable. It's not the smallest phone in the world, but it's got a lot going on.

What you can't see is it's got broadband. This little antenna here is connecting to an advanced network that gives you 384 kilobits of speed. Translation: it's like a decent DSL connection to your phone. So when you take the high-res pictures or video clips with this phone, you can actually send them, because you've got a lot of bandwidth.

O'BRIEN: Hey, Brian, I'm loving that. First of all, is it quad band, GSM, or is it CDMA.

COOLEY: This guy is going to be is EVDO. That's the new third generation.

O'BRIEN: EVDO?

COOLEY: A new acronym for you.

O'BRIEN: Where do you use that? Are there any EVDO networks anywhere?

COOLEY: Very few major markets. But by the end of this year, there's going to be saturation.

O'BRIEN: Is this Windows, or Palm?

COOLEY: Windows, Pocket PC 2003.

O'BRIEN: All right, good, I got that one, I-730 by Samsung.

Go ahead.

SIEBERG: The next one here, this is not a flip phone; it's more of a twist phone.

COOLEY: You can't tell what it is unless you get some coaching on this. Looks like a camera this way, right, little Sony Ericsson camera, looks like a little TV this way. Looks like a phone this way. It's all of these, 2.8-inch high-res screen, very nice, standard phone keyboard, 1.3 megapixel camera here, which is good, you're getting into kind of real camera land there. This also has the broadband connection I talked, so when you take those high-risk photos, you've got enough speed to send them without waiting all day.

O'BRIEN: I love that broadband connection. That is way cool.

COOLEY: This one uses another high-speed network one called EDGE, so add that to your little book of acronyms.

SIEBERG: Now, speaking of high speed, we should go one to the next one, because this really does involve DSL at high speeds, futuristic technology that's finally arrived.

COOLEY: This is my buddy, Miles, over at Motorola. This is the Motorola Ojo (ph) videophone. You can see me I'm in the little window there, and he's in the big window there. We're connected by a broadband, just like a cable or a DSL connection at your house, so it doesn't try to make it work over the phone lines. That's why these things didn't work for 25 years. Now we've got broadband in the home. They work great.

Miles, wave to me there. Look at that.

O'BRIEN: Miles, doesn't look very excited about it.

Miles, smile. Come on.

COOLEY: Miles just woke up I think.

SIEBERG: I think his name actually might be Herschel (ph), because Miles is back in the studio.

Brian, thanks so much. We're going to have to...

O'BRIEN: Wait a minute. I got in trouble because I threw out all that CDMA, GSM stuff. What I was talking about -- Brian, you can help on this -- CDMA is basically the U.S. cellular networks. GSM is what is used in Europe and is being adopted more and more in the United States, and I was just asking about that, OK?

SIEBERG: We'll let it go, Miles. All right, you're just showing off, we know that.

But hey, look, in the next hour, we're going to be talking about "Popular Science's" picks, including -- I had to show this -- we've decided this is kind of like the boombox for the Hampton crowd. You know what I'm talking about.

O'BRIEN: Oh, very nice.

SIEBERG: So, yes, Suzanne Cantra (ph) is going to drop by in about an hour.

O'BRIEN: I don't know if that one is going to take off. That's my take on that one, but you never know, we will see.

Daniel Sieberg, Brian Cooley with CNET. Sorry about the acronyms, folks, but I get carried away sometime. Anyway, have fun out there, I know you will.

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