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CNN Saturday Morning News

Interview With Kendall Coffey

Aired August 10, 2002 - 08:04   ET

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

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: In New Jersey, a jury could not answer all the questions in the case of the friend who did not stop another friend from driving drunk. Was Kenneth Powell responsible for a deadly accident simply because he picked up his friend in jail and dropped him off at his car? That is the question jurors were deliberating.
CNN's Bob Franken has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For Kenneth Powell, his day of reckoning had not come. The unprecedented questions raised by his trial had not been answered.

JUDGE WILLIAM FORRESTER, NEW JERSEY SUPERIOR COURT: With considerable regret, I will declare a mistrial.

FRANKEN: In their third day of deliberation, after a three and a half week trial, the jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked on two of three charges against Powell -- vehicular homicide and aggravated assault, although they did reach a verdict on the third, manslaughter.

FORRESTER: What was that unanimous verdict?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not guilty.

FORRESTER: Not guilty.

FRANKEN: It was an inconclusive result in a unique legal action. The charges against Powell grew out of two deaths caused by the drunk driving of a friend. Powell was nowhere around when Michael Pangle slammed his car, a bit more than two years ago, into an automobile driven by Navy Ensign Johnny Elliott. Elliott had graduated just two months earlier from the Naval Academy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want you to count from one to 30.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From one to 30?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three -- oh.

FRANKEN: But Michael Pangle had already been arrested once that night for driving under the influence. He called his friend Kenneth Powell to pick him up at the state police barracks. Powell took Pangle back to his car and left. Pangle got behind the wheel and went drinking again. Before the night had passed, his vehicle swerved into Elliott's oncoming car and both were killed.

WILLIAM D. ELLIOTT, VICTIM'S FATHER: Today you are looking into the faces of the saddest family in America, not because of this decision today, but because two years ago we lost the finest son and brother that any family could hope for.

FRANKEN: Johnny Elliott's family got a promise from prosecutors -- Kenneth Powell will face another trial in January.

JOHN BERGH, PROSECUTOR: I'm here to tell you that the State of New Jersey, the Salem County prosecutor's office, we are prepared to proceed, to move forward in this case.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If the Salem County prosecutor's office decides to try this case again on January 6 against Kenneth Powell, they will be on for the biggest fight of their lives.

FRANKEN (on camera): For now, the legal question remains, is it a crime for someone not to do enough to stop a drunk from driving?

Bob Franken, CNN, Salem, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Well, joining us now for some legal perspective on some of the cases we just told you about, former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey.

Good morning. Thanks for being with us this morning.

KENDALL COFFEY, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Good morning.

WHITFIELD: Well, let's talk about this drunk driving case first off. Jurors said no to manslaughter but they're still not allowed, because of instructions from the court, to talk about the case because the prosecutors do want to try and get a retrial on vehicular homicide and aggravated assault.

Is this, you know, the right thing for those prosecutors to do? Must they explore their options? Would they be foolish not to? Or really is this a hopeless case for them?

COFFEY: No, I think they should pursue it. It's a very, very important message, not just that friends shouldn't let friends drive drunk, but if you give a drunken friend the car keys, you may face the potential for criminal charges and even jail time.

But it's a new case. It's a new, perhaps, unprecedented case, and that means that getting a conviction is not going to be a slam dunk. They should pursue it again. The fact that the jury did not acquit on the other two counts indicates that it presents very substantial questions and this is something that I think should be pursued. And one way or another, this will probably not be the last prosecution of its kind. Too many people die each year at the hands of drunk drivers.

WHITFIELD: You say it does make it obvious that there are substantial questions. You know, it's difficult to ever read into the jurors' minds, and they're not able to talk right now. So what do you suppose those questions were? I'm sure a lot of those jurors put themselves in the place of Kenneth Powell and said well, wait a minute, you know, if I were to do this, should I be held accountable for my friend, who was obviously the one who was drunk, whop caused death.

COFFEY: I think you're exactly right. I think that's what is troubling for the jury, the fact that many people have in some way felt they haven't done enough to keep a friend from driving when the friend had some drinks. Ordinarily, of course, that doesn't lead to a terrible tragedy. This time it did.

So what the prosecution needs is a near perfect case to create this kind of precedent and there were some questions here that maybe made it less than the perfect case. For example, the defense is arguing that the police had something to do with the crime because they not only released the drunken driver, but they released his car keys to his friends.

But beyond that, the other question that a jury may wonder about is how drunk was the guy at the time his friend returned him to his own car? Because, remember, Pangle kept drinking and so it's not clear on the record just was he absolutely drunk at the time he was turned over to his own car by his friend or did the worst part of the drinking occur afterwards?

So there's some questions here. Prosecutors need a near perfect case to create a precedent and it's not clear if this case is going to establish that precedent.

WHITFIELD: OK, we promise to keep you pretty busy this morning because there are an awful lot of cases on the map that we want to explore.

Let's now turn our attention to the child pornography ring. Prosecutors say that they've got a despicable, repugnant crime here, a ring that they've broken up. But might this be a difficult one in which to prosecute, at least in the U.S., perhaps because you are dealing with minors ages two to 14, many of them may be sworn to secrecy because of their involvement in this. You know, these adults who are involved in this ring have probably told these kids don't tell anybody. But now they've got to hear their version of events from the kids, at least the prosecutors do.

Is that going to present quite a hurdle for them?

COFFEY: Well, you make a great point about the difficulties of cases involving child victims, because many times the justice system doesn't hear their voices as well as, perhaps, we should. But here you've got an Internet crime and the bad news and good news of Internet is that on the bad side it allows pretty sick people to get together with other sick people, feed on each other and come up with bizarre, horrendous things. Let's face it, from a child exploitation standpoint, parents exploiting their own children through child pornography is about as low as you can imagine.

But the good news is that because law enforcement, Customs, the FBI and others are getting mighty good at working through computer and Internet trails and e-mail trails, that they have an excellent chance, I think, of getting a conviction here, because they have woven together an intricate global ring of communications, pornographic images, which I think, in the end, will create the kind of forensic evidence that is likely needed to obtain convictions.

WHITFIELD: All right, in the Santa Ana, California area you've got the case of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion, who was found dead. Alejandro Avila, a 27-year-old who was charged in her murder, pleads not guilty yesterday. His attorney now says she's likely to pursue a change of venue. Is that a plausible option?

COFFEY: The judge may or may not do it. Obviously there's a massive amount of publicity in that area. But there's a massive amount of publicity throughout the state, throughout the nation. It's not clear here if a change of venue is really going to mean that much of a difference.

WHITFIELD: OK...

COFFEY: But the judge can go either way on something like that and sometimes, especially in a capital case, to give sort of the benefit of the doubt, the judge could move it to another venue. I don't think it's going to make a big difference.

WHITFIELD: All right, another child killing case, the case of David Westerfield, up for murder charges in the death of Danielle van Dam. The jurors are now heading into their third day of deliberations. Is this an indication that this really is not a cut and dry case, as prosecutor thought it would be? These jurors feel like they've got to think about this and talk about it some more, going into day three now.

COFFEY: Yes, I wouldn't read it as a good sign for the defense. But I think a conscientious jury looking at perhaps as many as 100 witnesses in a trial, several hundred exhibits, a two month trial, is really going to go through the evidence pretty carefully before reaching conclusions in something as serious as capital murder, the murder of an innocent child.

WHITFIELD: All right, Kendall Coffey, thanks very much for joining us this morning. Good to see you.

COFFEY: Well, thanks. Thanks for including me.

WHITFIELD: Appreciate it.

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