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William Jefferson Appeals Judge's Ruling; Singer LeAnn Rimes Hospitalized

Aired July 11, 2006 - 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: Toyota plans a multi-million dollar recall. Starting in September, Toyota will reportedly begin disabling the airbag-cutoff switches in Tundra pickup trucks from the 2003 through '05 model years. That's almost 160,000 vehicles. The switch activates the airbag only if the truck senses an adult is in the passenger seat. Toyota is hoping to avoid having to install a more expensive child-safety seat anchoring system.
How many people actually watch T.V. commercials? No one really knows, but one company is trying to find out. Susan Lisovicz is live from the New York Stock Exchange with more. Well we know they always watch them during the Super Bowl, right, Susan?

(MARKET REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Plenty of condemnation but no claims of responsibility yet in today's horrifying string of explosions in Mumbai. Seven explosions hit commuter trains in platforms in the India metropolis formerly known as Bombay. At least 145 are dead, hundreds more are dead. Those blasts left mangled wreckage and body parts and they put many cities across India on alert. New York City has even beefed up its trends of security as well, adding police and more searches.

Extending Geneva to Gitmo. The White House now says that terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere are entitled to the rights and protections of the Geneva Conventions after all. For years the administration had argued the detainees were not prisoners of war and, thus, not privy to special rights. The about-face follows a Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago against ad hoc tribunal trials for detainees.

Was it the real thing? Prosecutors say yes and plan on showing why today in the Coca-Cola conspiracy caper. Joya Williams, an administrative assistant at Coke headquarters in Atlanta is charged with trying to pedal secrets to arch rival Pepsi. She and her two alleged accomplices are back in federal court today for a hearing. Prosecutors want the case bound over to a grand jury.

They make the nation's laws, but they're not above them. That's the essence of a federal judge's ruling upholding the FBI's raid on the Capitol Hill office of embattled Congressman William Jefferson. Jefferson, a target now of a bribery probe, but he and other lawmakers argue the raid violated the separation of powers. He's appealing the judge's ruling. So what does all this mean for Capitol Hill and the courts and the Constitution? Let's get some insight from Eugene Volokh, he is a constitutional law professor at UCLA and Eugene, I want to confirm -- I want to confirm, is it Valick or Volokh?

EUGENE VOLOKH, UCLA LAW PROFESSOR: Volokh.

PHILLIPS: Volokh, thank you very much. We had two conflicting pronunciations, I apologize. Were you surprised by this?

VOLOKH: No. That's what I expected and I think most other observers expected, that a congressman, just like members of the media or just like ordinary citizens, can have their property searched assuming there's a warrant based on probable cause to believe that there is evidence of crime there. So a congressional office is no more immune from searches than is the CNN office.

PHILLIPS: Now, interesting. Well, the judge said, "Jefferson's interpretation would have the effect of converting every congressional office into a taxpayer subsidized sanctuary for crime. Such a result is not supported by the constitutional or judicial precedent and will not be adopted here." That's chief U.S. district judge Thomas Hogan. Tell us what the chief judge is saying here.

VOLOKH: What he's saying is that if there is a warrant, search property for evidence of crime, that you can't just immunize certain property from the scope of that warrant because then congressmen will just stow evidence of bribe-taking and various other things in this one immunized place and will be able to get away with crime.

Likewise, actually, the congressman wasn't asking for complete immunity but was asking among other things for advance notice and an opportunity to challenge the warrant before it's served. Well if you get advanced notice that your office is going to be searched for some evidence, then you're going to destroy the evidence.

So the judge took a dim view of that. Now, as it happens, congressmen do have one special immunity that might be relevant here, that's created by the Constitution. The Speech and Debate Clause says they cannot be held legally liable for things they say in congressional proceedings. So for example if somebody on the floor of Congress allegedly defames someone, he can't be sued for that or he can't be prosecuted for that. The only way of dealing with that is through internal congressional hearings, but the judge, I think quite correctly said, that that means Congressman can't be held liable for things he says in Congress. His office, nonetheless, can be searched for evidence of things that are quite outside what he says in congress, evidence of bribes that he took. So this immunity from liability for certain kinds of official actions does not extend to immunity from search of your office for evidence of other kinds of actions that are unprotected and, in fact, are felonies.

PHILLIPS: So Eugene, the judge said that with Jefferson's argument that members of Congress would become super citizens, can you explain what that means?

VOLOKH: Well, the judge's view, which I think is generally a sign view, is that all of us are bound pretty much by the same laws. And, at least as a matter of law, sometimes a matter of practice it's different, but as a matter of law a Congressman's office gets no special immunity that my office doesn't get or that your office doesn't get. That he's subject to the same laws that anyone else is subject to. The constitution does secure some kind of extra immunity and the judge acknowledged that, but that's a narrow immunity.

It's only an immunity from, as I said, being a prosecutor or sued for things you say, it's not an immunity from having your office searched for evidence of crime because that kind of immunity would essentially, in practice, put Congressmen above the law in certain situations and that's not something to be done lightly.

PHILLIPS: On that note, Eugene, Speaker Dennis Hastert and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi back in May said that these constitutional principals were not designed by the founding fathers to place anyone above the law, rather, they were designed to protect the Congress and the American people from abuses of power and those principals deserve to be vigorously defended. Where do you think the abuse of power took place in this case?

VOLOKH: Well, I don't think there was abuse of power on the part of the executive. It sounds like, based on evidence that there seems to be against Representative Jefferson, is there was abuse of power on the part on Representative Jefferson, that he was selling his power, selling the confidence in which the voters reposed in him and that that was the abuse of power and that Congress enacted a law, the federal bribery statutes, that the executive was supposed to enforce, together with the judiciary, evaluating applications for warrants and this law was properly followed in the FBI searches.

There is, of course, the possibility that eventually, there's no evidence of this in this case, that sometimes these kinds of searches can be used to harass Congressmen to keep them in line. But Congress has ample authority to try to resist that. Ranging from impeachment of the relevant executive officials, if it really has a good case that there has been abuse of power, down to defunding various programs, holding hearings and subpoenaing people and so on and so forth.

So Congress has ample authority under the existing legal scheme to try to resist government overreaching. Overreaching of which there is no evidence in this particular case, but its authority does not extend to just keeping Congressman's offices free from searches or insisting on official notice, which would allow evidence to be destroyed. Congress has substantial power that the constitution provides to resist the executive and even the judiciary, but, nonetheless, they're subject to the same rules as anyone else.

PHILLIPS: Eugene Volokh, UCLA professor of law, sure appreciate your time today.

VOLOKH: Always a great pleasure.

PHILLIPS: Talk about being in the right place at the right time. A Texas TV reporter gets in line at the bank right behind an alleged bank robber. That story and all the action caught on tape straight ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Sometimes a slogan doesn't mean much, but for Deborah Wrigley, a reporter at Houston TV station KTRK, eyewitness news meant just that.

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DEBORAH WRIGLEY, KTRK NEWS (voice-over): This is how the bank robbery ended on west park with a lot of police fire power pointed at 39-year-old Raulston Froman (ph). Ten minutes before he was demanding money from a bank teller at this Chase branch teller on Buffalo Speedway. I was standing next to him, but left the bank undetected, even as the robbery was under way.

SFT. J.B. WHITELY, FBI BANK ROBBERY TASK FORCE: He's already got in his mind he's going to do and he doesn't pay any attention to what's around him.

WRIGLEY: Neither did he notice when he left that eye witness new photographer Johnny Marquez and I followed him down West Park, even to the gas station where he replaced the license plates he removed from his car, 911 on the phone the whole time.

JOHNNY R. MARQUEZ, KTRK PHOTO JOURNALIST: Finally, when we saw the police department, Deborah and I signaled to the police that that was the guy.

WRIGLEY: And that was it, Froman was arrested. The money and the holdup note he'd shown to the teller were recovered from his car, stashed in an ice cooler.

(on camera): No weapon was found on Froman, police say he was out on parole when he was arrested today. In Southwest Houston, Deborah Wrigley, 13 eyewitness news.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, when you live near an airport, you never know who will drop in. Just ask Jerrold Fay of Georgetown, Texas who found this in his yard yesterday, a single engine plane that somehow missed the landing strip. His wife called 911 when she saw the pilot and a passenger pull themselves from the wreckage. They weren't badly hurt. No word yet on what went wrong.

It's funny, but it's true. Just about anything can be fixed with duct tape and that may include the safety jet backpack that kept coming loose during yesterday's space walk outside the Shuttle Discovery. NASA says Piers Sellers was never in danger of losing the jet pack and it won't be taking his duct tape recommendation, but close engineers suggest that captain tape, which is more slippery and durable. Sellers and fellow shuttlenaut Mike Fossum are preparing for their third and final space walk tomorrow.

Straight ahead, entertainment news with A.J. Hammer of "SHOWBIZ TONIGHT." Hey A.J. A.J. HAMMER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Hey Kyra. Well a country star has been sidelined at a Los Angeles hospital. Plus I'm going to fill you in on exactly what's going on with Keith Richard's head. Plus, Elizabeth Taylor confesses. That and more ahead when LIVE FROM continues.

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PHILLIPS: Well a singer's surgery forces her off the stage, a legendary rocker gets both feet back on the ground and Liz says there's no pleasing other women. Let's go to New York now for the latest entertainment news from A.J. Hammer of "SHOWBIZ TONIGHT." A.J.?

HAMMER: Hey, Kyra. Well country singing sensation LeAnn Rimes is in a Los Angeles hospital today. She's undergoing surgery for her leg. The 23-year-old star suffered a tear in her leg that apparently became seriously infected, according to her publicist Diana Baron.

Now, the surgery itself is considered to be minor, but Baron says that the infection and the related issues around it were serious and Rimes' doctors advised her to address the problem immediately. So they are on it. The surgery has forced the singer, of course, to cancel three concerts this week. She can't perform with a hurt leg or while she's recovering. Thursday in Hampton Beach, that's a no go, Friday and Saturday in Niagara Falls also canceled. She is expected to play at the remaining date of her "This Woman" tour after a three- to-four day recovery.

And speaking of recoveries, check this out. Rolling Stones front man Keith Richards is good as new after his recent head injury. The Rolling Stones are going to kick off their 21-date European tour tonight in Milan. Now that Richards is well again, apparently well enough to be banging on his head like that. The tour was supposed to start earlier this year, but it had been postponed after Richards fell from a tree while he was vacationing in Fiji back in April. Well, after the fall, Richards underwent surgery to relieve pressure on his brain, but now all is well again and it looks to me like Keith is ready to rock.

And we go now from a hedonistic rocker to a superstar who really owns up to her own hedonism in a new interview. I'm talking about the legendary Elizabeth Taylor. The 74-year-old is coming clean about her increasing weight. All this appears in the August issue of "Harper's Bazaar." This is where Taylor says, quote, "I enjoy food too much. In the end, I'm too hedonistic. I enjoy pleasures."

The interview was conducted by fashion designer Michael Kors, who asked Taylor whether she dressed for men, women or herself. Now Taylor was quick to answer men first, then myself, then other women, because you can't please women. The film star of course has dressed for many men throughout her eight marriages and says that even though she's a romantic at heart, one thing she won't do for a man is starve herself.

Kyra, I have to ask you, who are you dressing for, other than the viewers?

PHILLIPS: I'm dressing for you, A.J. because you're so hip. I'm just trying to keep up with you.

HAMMER: And you look lovely today.

PHILLIPS: Thank you, my dear. Love the shirt. All right, what's up tonight?

HAMMER: Well, exactly what we're talking about with Elizabeth Taylor, the lengths that she will or will not go to. Tonight we'll be dealing with this. We're going to look into the obsession with staying thin in Hollywood. It is something we hear about all the time. We're going to tell you why so many big stars are now speaking out about it and the rumors of eating disorders.

Join us for T.V.'s most provocative entertainment news show, "SHOWBIZ TONIGHT," 11 p.m. Eastern on CNN Headline Prime. And another thing we'll be getting into tonight, whether or not, Kyra, there is this double standard. Is it OK for men to be flabby and fabulous, but not OK for women?

PHILLIPS: Oh, it's totally that way. There's way more pressure on women to be fit and be in shape, come on now.

HAMMER: No disputing that. We're going to be getting into it tonight.

PHILLIPS: All right, we'll talk about it. As a matter of fact, we were just talking about this over the weekend, a whole group of us. All right, thanks A.J., we'll see you tomorrow.

California's Joshua Tree National Park is still burning and firefighters are a lot closer to having the upper hand, we're told. Lightning started the blaze that burned more than 2,000 acres since Friday. Crews were able to contain that fire late yesterday, but not before it shut down roads that are popular with mountain bikers and ATVers.

Lightning also blamed for the fire that destroyed this $2 million mansion in Brevard County, Florida. Neighbors say that they were at that their kitchen table this morning when they saw a flash, heard a boom, spotted smoke and called 911. Still not clear whether anyone was hurt. Meteorologist Jacqui Jeras is here with your forecast. Hey, Jacqui.

(WEATHER REPORT)

PHILLIPS: Was it a terror attack? Explosions hit crowded commuter trains during rush hour in India. That's our top story, we're going to have a live report straight ahead.

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