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Judge Roberts Faces Scrutiny in Confirmation Process; Australian Gets Second Chance in Drug Trial; Rebuilding in Fallujah

Aired July 20, 2005 - 14:30   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Courting support. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts visiting senators on Capitol Hill this hour. They're the ones who will have to confirm him, of course. And Republicans are expressing strong support. Democrats say they want to hear more from Roberts on key issues.
Lots of rain. Forecasters say Hurricane Emily could dump as much as 15 inches as it moves inland. It slammed into Northeastern Mexico this morning, packing winds of 125 miles an hour. No immediate reports of any deaths or injuries.

NASA will have an announcement later today on a possible new launch date for the Space Shuttle Discovery. NASA engineers haven't been able to pinpoint the cause of a fuel sensor malfunction which stopped the clock on last week's launch.

Getting ready. The British government plans to stockpile two million doses of bird flu vaccine in case of a worldwide epidemic. And so far, the disease is mainly transmitted between animals. It's blamed for 60 human deaths in southeast Asia.

More now on judging a judge for a lifelong appointment to the Supreme Court. With the keenly anticipated announcement of his selection now passed, Judge John Roberts now enters the highly scrutinized and politically-charged confirmation process. How tough will the going get? Well, what kind of questions is he likely to face? We wanted to ask somebody who has actually been there himself.

Stephen Orlofsky served as a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey from 1996 to 2003, and knows what it's like to go through the process that can be pretty grueling. And they find out everything they could possibly find out? More than your doctor and your shrink, right, Judge?

STEPHEN ORLOFSKY, FORMER FEDERAL JUDGE: That's correct.

PHILLIPS: Well, tell me what it was like when you went through the process. Your feelings, the comfortable factor, were you concerned about the kind of questions they were going to ask? And how did it turn out?

ORLOFSKY: Well, it turned out well, because I was ultimately confirmed without much difficulty, but it is a grueling process. In addition to being vetted by the White House and the Justice Department, the FBI conducts a full field investigation. And then, of course, you have to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which conducts its own investigation both before and during the confirmation hearing. So it is a pretty thorough investigation which requires you to reflect upon your entire life from the time you reach the age of majority.

PHILLIPS: Well, let me ask you, when you're going through law school, when you start building your career, you become a judge. Are you in the back of your mind thinking, one day, I could be on the Supreme Court, and I better think about the way I live my life and what I do. Does that enter your mind when you're in this field?

ORLOFSKY: Well, I think it does. I think lawyers automatically assume that, even if they're not going to go on court or become a judge, that it's important for them to maintain high ethical, legal and moral standards. I think that comes with the territory when one goes to law school and takes the bar exam.

PHILLIPS: What are some -- do you remember some of the questions you were asked? Were there any surprises or maybe a question that you thought hmmm, that's odd.

ORLOFSKY: No. By the time I got to my confirmation hearing, all of the tough questions had been asked, and the senators were relatively gentle and friendly and very accommodating. But that is not true in the case of all nominees. And I think this is a small fraction of the nominees who are nominated by the president to the lower federal courts and the Supreme Court. Some encounter significant opposition and hostility, but fortunately, that was not my case.

PHILLIPS: Well, that's a good point. A lower court confirmation, you may deal with only a couple of senators, right? But with a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, you're talking about every single senator.

ORLOFSKY: It is extremely likely that most of the Senate Judiciary Committee will participate in the hearings involving a Supreme Court nomination. That is not true with respect to a district court nomination or a court of appeals nomination. For example, in my own case, there were only two senators, one from each side of the aisle, who participated at my confirmation hearing.

PHILLIPS: All right, you knew a lot of the individuals on the short list. John Roberts, of course, is now the nominee. What do you think -- what kind of questions do you think he is going to receive from various senators?

ORLOFSKY: Well, I think one of the important issues is going to be the question involving abortion in Roe v. Wade. However, there are cases which are percolating from the lower federal courts, for example, involving a partial birth abortion statute, which he cannot answer. In other words, he may decline to answer any question which requires him to express a view about an issue that's likely to come before the Supreme Court.

PHILLIPS: But don't you think...

ORLOFSKY: But certainly...

PHILLIPS: Well, let me ask you, Judge, don't you think he shouldn't dump questions like that? Because doesn't he have to prove that he's very forthcoming and he needs to show Americans that possibly for the next 20 or 30 years, this is somebody who is mainstream American thinking?

ORLOFSKY: Well, that's one side of it, but the other side of it, from a judge's perspective, is that he can't be perceived as having expressed a view in advance as to the merits of a case that's coming before the court. He has to be absolutely impartial. And if he were to express a view, for example, about something that might come before the court, one party or the other in that case might move to disqualify him because he's biased.

So I mean this is a -- there is a tension between the Senate's right or desire to know a Supreme Court nominee's views on a particular issue and the nominee's desire to make sure that if such an issue comes before the Supreme Court that he or she remains absolutely impartial and has not prejudged the issue.

PHILLIPS: Well, Judge, speaking of the issues we took a look at the 2005 October term docket. And you and I discussed a couple of things that were on the docket. Two interesting cases that if John Roberts is confirmed, he could face. He might be making a decision on, one, the Rumsfeld vs. Fair (ph) for academics and institutional rights. Talking about military recruiters on campuses. Why do you think this is an interesting case?

ORLOFSKY: Well, because it pits the government's right to recruit on campuses with its right to condition the receipt of federal funds by those institutions of higher learning to receive such funds. What was at issue in that case is what was called the Solomon Amendment, which restricted the receipt of federal funds to higher -- institutions of higher learning that did not give military recruiters complete access. Some law schools had declined to do so because the military discriminates based on sexual orientation. They challenged the statute, claiming it was a violation of their first amendment rights.

The district judge -- and this case came out of New Jersey -- refused to grant a preliminary injunction. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals did issue such an injunction, but split two-to-one on the issue. And this is a very tough issue, and is likely why the Supreme Court decided to review it.

PHILLIPS: And another tough issue in Oregon, of course, doctor- assisted suicide. But another tough issue we're dealing with is time and unfortunately, we got to wrap, Judge. Judge Stephen Orlofsky, it was great to have sort of the personal feedback to what it's like to go through one of these hearings. Appreciate your time.

ORLOFSKY: Thank you for having me.

PHILLIPS: All right, Judge. Well, she insists that the drugs did not belong to her. The Australian woman sentenced to 20 years in prison -- we can't forget this woman -- for trying to smuggle marijuana. Well, she gets another day in court.

And they fled the fighting and returned to find nothing. A new beginning, but same old fears for residents of Fallujah.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Indonesian judges give a jailed Australian another chance. Schapelle Corby, convicted of drug smuggling, a crime she says she didn't commit, has two more weeks to produce witnesses to testify on her behalf. Tim Palmer of Australian Broadcasting has the latest on a case reopened.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TIM PALMER, AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING (voice-over): Schapelle Corby's new legal team is acutely aware of the need for positive publicity in Indonesia, and so engineered a prison interview with the country's Metro News Network on the eve of the new hearing.

SCHAPELLE CORBY, SENTENCED TO 20 YEARS: My case is going to be reopened again tomorrow and no one from Australia has come. I need the Australian government to help me here.

PALMER: Schapelle Corby's legal team had told the high court they'd bring in 12 witnesses to this reopened hearing. But within minutes of the convicted drug trafficker's now familiar battle past local and international cameras, it became clear that only one witness had come. Her lawyers bristled at suggestions there may be no other willing witnesses to bring.

HOTMAN PARIS HUTAPEA, CORBY'S LAWYER: Don't blame me. You failed to get the witness. You failed. That's a bullshit question. OK don't ask me that question anymore.

PALMER: The sole witness today, Jakarta-based legal professor Intianto Sinahaji (ph) said Schapelle Corby shouldn't have been found guilty because the prosecution failed to demonstrate how the drugs came to be in her bag.

He told the court the mishandling of the plastic bag containing the marijuana by police and customs officers meant the evidence was contaminated beyond being legally useful.

(on camera): Still, that's far from what high court judges expected, or what defense lawyers promised: Evidence that someone else was responsible for the crime. The defense team says it's only the federal government's refusal to grant immunity from prosecution that's stopping their client's mystery witness from coming forward to do just that.

(voice-over): In the end, Corby and her lawyers were delighted. The judge has granted them another day in court and the time they'd asked for.

HUTAPEA: And now we get in two weeks. I'm going to sleep well tonight. I have a very, very good massage, OK?

PALMER: They now have two weeks to finally deliver the kind of evidence they've been promising for months.

Tim Palmer, ABC News, Denpasar.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Another devastating suicide bombing in Iraq. This time eight people killed, 28 wounded. The bomber, wearing an explosives vest, blew himself up in a line outside of an army recruitment center. The attack came as the Iraqi government and many Iraqis observed three minutes of silence to remember the victims of two massive terror strikes last week.

Meanwhile, the committee writing Iraq's constitution says the process is on course. Officials say the three -- or the time frame, rather, for ratifying the document won't have to be changed. The draft constitution has to be ready by August 15th and it has to be presented to voters in a referendum no later than October 15th.

Meanwhile, four Sunni members of the constitutional committee have suspended their membership in the body. That's after a Sunni member and an adviser were killed yesterday.

Well, the town of Fallujah, so long a hotbed of the insurgency -- the fighting between U.S. forces and rebels there was so intense that many of the residents fled. Now they're returning and they're rebuilding, but it's an uneasy homecoming. Here's our Jane Arraf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fatima Ali only ever had a one-room house. When they returned to Fallujah after the fighting, it was gone. "We slaved to build it. You can imagine how we felt," Fatima tells us. They had fled to the countryside where Fatima says she and her husband and kids slept in someone's bathroom.

The sisters are married to two brothers. With money and compensation they got from the Iraqi government, they've started to rebuild, but they have to worry about things most of us can't imagine. There's no electricity, so they sleep on the unfinished roof, but Fatima is afraid that American or Iraqi soldiers will mistake them for insurgents and shoot them in the night.

"Every time I go up, I say the prayer for the dead for me and my children," she says. When we came back in January, two months after the battle for Fallujah, residents were returning to find rubble and human bones from the fighting. Six months later, with the first compensation payments, people are repairing homes, businesses and mosques. (on camera): Fallujah was known as the City of Mosques. To the military, these mosques were insurgent strongholds. This one, the al- Samarihi (ph) mosque was essentially destroyed, but now, like many things in this neighborhood, it's being rebuilt.

(voice-over): Nijam Abdullah has rebuilt his vegetable stand. He came back to find it destroyed. He didn't know how. Business is good, but most of the produce has to come from Baghdad. Some of it goes bad; waiting for half the day in trucks at checkpoints in the city. Marines have mostly switched from fighting insurgents to helping in reconstruction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've redone all of these columns.

ARRAF: With his $20-a-day wages, Nijam Abdullah plans to get married as soon as he's finished working on this house. When the city was in the grip of insurgents, it would have been impossible, he says.

NIJAM ABDULLAH, FALLUJAH RESIDENT: If the barber gave us a crew cut they would blow up his shop. They didn't let anyone have wedding parties. They only allowed events in the mosque. That was it.

ARRAF: Nearby Farham Mijbil Jassim Al-Asawi, a retired government official, is overseeing reconstruction of a home for his five sons. Soldiers are occupying his own house. His furniture and two cars were destroyed. He says he thanks God he's alive, but his life is a mess.

"Democracy and I are in the same boat," he says. Although students are returning to makeshift schools in a city like this, it's impossible to have anywhere near a normal childhood. Here Marine Major Chris Phelps tells a young boy a toy gun could easily be mistaken for a real one.

MAJ. CHRIS PHELPS, U.S. MARINES: We're in a dangerous city, OK? OK? Don't walk around with a fake gun, OK?

ARRAF: For people coming home to Fallujah, rebuilding those homes is just the first step.

Jane Arraf, CNN, Fallujah.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, good news when it comes to the economy, but are you seeing the boost in your paycheck. That's ahead on LIVE FROM.

Also: Bad boy in Hollywood. Colin Farrell's battle to keep you from seeing a private sex tape. A judge weighs in. Sibila Vargas has that and all the entertainment scoop from L.A -- Sibila?

SIBILA VARGAS, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Can't get enough of dancing with the stars? You know who you are. Then we've got something to make you happy.

And are you ready for Pope John Paul II, the mini-series? We'll have all of the details when LIVE FROM continues. s

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Members of Baylor University's national championship women's basketball team toeing the line at a White House ceremony this morning. No pun intended. Not a flip-flop in sight, by the way.

Last week members of the Northwestern University's women's lacrosse team caused quite a flap by wearing flip-flops to a similar White House ceremony. So of course, we got lots of shots like these -- foot-fetish shots, I guess. Sorry. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, here's some first quality pork for you. Yes, those are tattooed pigs. It's the latest art craze to hit China. Collectors buy them and become foster parents. They keep the tattooed skins after the pigs die naturally. No slaughterhouse in their future. These porkers live in luxury. Fans cool them in the summer, radiators warm them in the winter. There's an even art farm in the works, with surveillance cameras, for an Internet version of Pig Brother. Stay tuned.

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

PHILLIPS: All right, Susan, thank you. Well, fans are mourning the loss of the chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" series.

CNN entertainment correspondent Sibila Vargas, live in Los Angeles with all the day's entertainment news. Hi, Sibila.

VARGAS: Hey, Kyra. That's right. It looks like the galaxy has lost one of its finest members. James Doohan, known for playing Scotty in the original series, has passed away. Doohan became a familiar face in our living rooms, playing the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise. Who could forget him? His agent says he died this morning at his home with his wife of 28 years by his side. According to the agent, Doohan's cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease. He was 85 years old.

In other news, actor Colin Farrell has won the first battle to stop his sex tape from being seen by the public. A temporary restraining order has been issued against a woman who was allegedly trying to distribute the tape, which shows her having sex with the actor. Yesterday, a Los Angeles superior court judge blocked former "Playboy" playmate Nicole Narain from selling, distributing or displaying the 15-minute tape for now. Next court date is scheduled for August 10th.

And, well, CBS is bringing in the story of Pope John Paul II to the little screen. The network is touting the upcoming miniseries "a papal page-turner." The film will focus on the late pope's life and how he received his calling to join the priesthood. Ian Holm, who starred in "Lord of the Rings," will play the pope in his later years. And, finally, Kyra, this one's especially for you. Get ready to put on your dance shoes. ABC's uber-hit "Dancing with the Stars" is getting ready for another go around. The network has renewed the show for another season. The dance competition was the most watched series of the summer. Now, you may remember me trying to get my groove on with finalists, and now you can get your groove on again. A specific air date has yet to be determined, but Kyra, I think that they're still looking for some celebrity contestants and I don't know, it's just my opinion, but I think you would be perfect.

PHILLIPS: Hey, look, I love to dance, but you know what, Sibila, I don't have the moves like you. You are one hot mama, let me tell you.

VARGAS: You can do it. All you have to do is put this hand up and then, like, you know, take a page from John Travolta.

PHILLIPS: Look at that. Hello, Sibila!

VARGAS: Oh, no, no. OK, we have didn't have to slow that down now, did we?

PHILLIPS: Slow down and zoom in on. And you know, I think my whole control room will be doing it about ten more times once we've gone to break. All right there. I'll dance with you, OK? You give me a few lessons on the side there. Nothing on camera.

VARGAS: Thanks, then.

PHILLIPS: All right. Thank you very much.

Well, coming up next, a much more serious story, of course. We're talking about Hurricane Emily. We've been following it all day ashore and pounding Mexico now and Southern Texas. We're going to go live to South Padre Island.

And the revelation of her identity has set off a firestorm in Washington. Valerie Plame, along with her husband, talked to "Time" magazine about the controversy. We're going to talk about what they said when LIVE FROM rolls on.

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