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CNN NEWSROOM

Jurors Decide Aria's Fate; Tornadoes Hit U.S. Midsection; Emergency Landing Nightmare; Tornadoes Rip Across Five States; New Storm Threats Today; Emergency Landing Nightmare; Teachers Protest School Closings; Airplane Makes Belly Landing; Powerball Winnings Not Yet Claimed; Severe Storms Hit Heartland

Aired May 20, 2013 - 13:00   ET

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


WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: She said she wants death. This hour Jodi Arias faces the jury once again to find out if that's her fate after being convicted of stabbing and shooting her boyfriend. We're live in the courtroom. Plus --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bret (ph), get back here. We got to go soon!

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BLITZER: Terrifying moments as tornadoes touch down across the Midwest. And it's not over yet. There's another round of severe storms today. And it's every passenger's worst nightmare, the moment you think your plane is going to crash. It happened to these travelers. Their dramatic emergency belly landing, we'll have details ahead.

This is CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting in Washington.

So, will Jodi Arias get life or death? And which one would she prefer? The jurors deciding her fate are back in the courtroom right now in Phoenix. And we'll hear from Jodi Arias herself though she may not necessarily take the stand.

Ted Rowlands is covering the penalty phase of this trial, the final phase of the trial. Ted, Arias, I understand she could go before the jury, answer questions. Or she might just release a statement, is that right?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, she could go into the witness box. That's one of her options is to actually take the stand under oath. If she does that, her lawyer can sort of guide her through her history, her childhood and all the rest of it. All the points they want to bring up. The downside to that is that Juan Martinez then gets to go after her, the prosecutor in this matter. Her other option is just to make a statement to the jury, that is likely what we're going to see at some point today.

First, we're going to hear from at least one of her friends, if you will. An individual that she dated at one point and maybe other witnesses. We're not sure if both the scheduled witnesses are going to take the stand, but then she will likely have the last word. And, again, we think it will be a statement to the jury rather than her taking the witness stand because she wants to avoid likely the cross- examination.

BLITZER: And with that statement, do we have any clue, would it simply reiterate what she said in that local affiliate interview after she was convicted of first-degree murder that she would prefer death to spending the rest of her life in prison?

ROWLANDS: Yes. That's the big question, what is she going to say? If -- you know, after the guilty verdict, within 20 minutes, she sat down and did a local interview. And in that interview, she said, I would much rather be put to death than get life in prison. Now, some period has gone by, maybe she has changed her mind, maybe she will plea to this jury to save her life, or maybe she'll simply try to just apologize and make some sort of statement. We just don't know, especially in this case.

BLITZER: Who's going to testify in her defense?

ROWLANDS: First off is going to be Daryl Brewer, and this is an ex- boyfriend who testified during the trial in chief and his testimony basically brings to life the other side of Jodi as a girlfriend saying that she was a wonderful girlfriend. She associated with his daughter and spent time alone with her. And it was a -- he's bringing some humanization to Jodi Arias that she wasn't able to do in the trial in chief. And then, Patricia Womack is the other scheduled witness. There's a chance, however, that she may not take the stand. She had some reservations because of all of the media attention. And now we're hearing there's a possibility that she may back out and not testify for her long -- lifelong friend.

BLITZER: Her lawyers, we're told, they're going to show some of Jodi Arias' artwork, is that right?

ROWLANDS: Yes. It sounds ridiculous. How would artwork work into this? But now we're talking about the value of somebody's life. And that is one of the mitigating factors that the lawyers are arguing to this jury. Don't kill this person, keep her alive. And there are a number of things that they're argue, but one -- they'll argue, but one of them is her artwork. They're saying that this is a talented artist that can bring something to prison life, to people incarcerated and the general public, if you want to take it to that point, but it's just another piece of detail that they're going to argue to these eight men and four women to spare this life. Don't kill her. She's this, this, this and she's an artist.

BLITZER: All right, Ted, we'll stay in close touch with you. You'll let us know what's going on. Ted Rowlands in Phoenix for us.

Let's move to another major story we're following right now, the tornado terror right in the nation's heartland.

Take a look at this, the size of this huge tornado. The tornado was a monstrous half-mile wide in Shawnee, Oklahoma. In all, 26 tornadoes were reported in the state after -- overnight. We're talking about Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, all those states. The storm's left hundreds of homes damaged or destroyed. Two elderly men are confirmed dead, dozens of people are injured. A helicopter pilot from our Oklahoma affiliate, KFOR, explained what he saw.

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JOHN WELSH, CHOPPER PILOT, KFOR: I'm used to seeing trees ripped up but the house is usually there. This, it was gone. Everything was just -- it was just gone. If, like, you took the house, you put it in a gigantic blender, turned it on pulse for a couple minutes and then just dumped it out.

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BLITZER: Shawnee, Oklahoma, certainly one of the hardest hit areas by these tornadoes. Nick Valencia is on the scene for us. Nick, what's it like now that the residents are beginning, slowly but surely, to come back to what's left of their homes?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, just to give you a sense, we just heard blood curling screams behind us of a woman that presumably just saw her house for the very first time. We're standing in the kitchen of what was somebody's home. This is littered with memories and mementos. It's just a terrible scene for Jessie Addington. Jessie has lived here her whole life. This is her childhood neighborhood. Jessie, you want to come through and join me? You're going through this. Your mom was here at the time. Your dad's ashes are among the items that are missing, your dad's urn?

JESSIE ADDINGTON: Yes, it's somewhere around here. There's no telling where it's at. But, yes, that and his guitar. Those were, like, the two main things that we wanted to get was his guitar and his urn.

VALENCIA: What are you thinking about coming back here and seeing this for the first time?

ADDINGTON: My mind, like I -- I mean, like I said, my mind's blown. Like, it's -- everything's gone. It's like -- it's just like -- it's traumatic. It's -- I don't know. I can't -- like I said, I don't know what to think.

VALENCIA: It's a terrible situation for you and your family. And our hearts and thoughts and prayers are with you and your mom. Is she doing OK?

ADDINGTON: Yes.

VALENCIA: Is she doing better? She was hurt.

ADDINGTON: Yes, she was hurt bad. She just had a lot of external injuries, nothing internal. Like I said, she had that hole in the back of her neck and just the bruises everywhere was really the main thing that really got, like -- you know, it was bad. But other than that, she's OK. VALENCIA: We feel for you, Jessie. And, Wolf, this story is not -- it's not unique here. There's a lot of residents that are coming back and going through this very same thing right now. Going through the mementoes, trying to piece together their lives again. And they're not out of the woods just yet either, Wolf. You mentioned that a second round of perhaps severe weather is expected in town. There's a possibility for that. So, just as residents are recovering from what they went through yesterday, there's a possibility that they can go through the very same thing today -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Even in the same area in Shawnee where you are? Do they -- are they bracing for more of this? Is that what I'm hearing, Nick?

VALENCIA: Yes, residents are timid. They're very reluctant and anxious about the weather. In fact, our crew was looking up to the sky a short time ago and we thought to ourselves, we hope we don't get hit with severe weather.

But as you can see, Wolf, if - Gil (ph), if you just want to pan. Look at this. This just goes back. The depth of this, this was a whole community here, mobile homes, lives, strong families now reduced to this, diminished to rubble, diminished to wood planks. This was Jessie Addington's home. This is her front door. This is where she would come in every day as a child. And now, it's flattened. It's terrible, Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, it's heartbreaking. It's not over with yet. All right, Nick is on the scene for us. Nick Valencia reporting. And as we say, the worst may not necessarily be over. People are now bracing for more brutal weather. It's probably on the way.

Let's bring in our meteorologist Chad Myers. He's at the CNN weather center in Atlanta. Chad, what do we expect?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Typically, on a day like yesterday, Wolf, you'll get a cold front. It will push ahead. And then the storms will be another 150 to 250 miles farther to the east. Well, if Nick goes out there like he is all day, he can feel the humidity. It's back. The cold front never moved through Shawnee or Oklahoma City or Tulsa. So, the potential is back again to the same place we had tornadoes yesterday. Probably only 10 tornadoes on the ground total. But we talked about 28 reports of damage. That's different damage reported from different angles by different reporters, different storm spotters.

The big tornado now EF-4 was the Shawnee tornado. It started just to the east of Norman and more, moved right across about this, it's called Highway 9, and right into the Shawnee area. A very large single cell thing. This is called a super cell tornado. When they're out there all by themselves like that, that's when they rotate. And this thing was probably in the neighborhood of probably 200 miles per hour.

Today, we're seeing sunshine. And you would think to yourself, well, that's a great thing. No, that's exactly the opposite of what they want. That sunshine's heating the ground. It's heating the humidity. It's all going to go back up in the sky just like a hot air balloon. And it's going to cause same places, the same storms, probably more hail than tornadoes today. But still, you wouldn't want to be out there without any protection with wind and hail damage whether it's a tornado or not -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Chad used to work in that area. He knows the story well.

MYERS: I did.

BLITZER: All right, Chad, we'll stay in close touch with you as well.

MYERS: All right.

BLITZER: Here is what else we're working on this hour. She thought she was never going to see her kids again.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thought it was it. I'm going down. You see it on the news all the time and not many people survive plane crashes. That was my thought.

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BLITZER: A terrifying flight for passengers as their plane was forced to land on its belly. And it was like a bombshell, that's how one of the first officers described the scene when he went to the house where three women were held captive in Cleveland. We're going to hear from him. That's coming up.

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BLITZER: In Chicago, teachers have taken to the streets.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're no stranger to this fight. It is going on in cities throughout America dismantling our public schools.

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BLITZER: Dozens of people including teachers, parents and students, they are in a three-day 30-mile march. They're protesting the city's plan to close more than 50 schools. The protest was organized by the Chicago Teachers Union. They just re-elected its president who took on Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a strike last fall. The school board is scheduled to take up the school closures on Wednesday.

In Bridgeport, Connecticut, five people remain in the hospital, one in critical condition after that train collision on Friday. That happened on one of the busiest tracks in the country. A northbound train collided with one that was headed south. Two thousand feet of track is being repaired. The morning commute was expected to be a nightmare but turns out commuters took the government's advice and carpooled, took buses or took the day off so things seemed normal. Connecticut's governor says people should be patient while the tracks are repaired. Federal investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the crash. They do not suspect foul play. There is another transportation close call, this one from the air. A U.S. Airways flight with 34 people on board had to make an emergency landing without its landing gear.

Our Pamela Brown has the exclusive report on the belly landing in New Jersey and one passenger's fear that she was never going to see her family again.

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thirty-four people sat aboard this U.S. Airways flight as it made this dramatic emergency belly landing at Newark airport due to trouble with the landing gear. Linda Demarest was one of them and never thought this could happen to her.

LINDA DEMAREST, US AIRWAYS PASSENGER: Thought it was it. We were going down. Basically it was a controlled crash, but it was a plane crash. You see on the news all the time not many people survive plane crashes. That was my thought.

BROWN: The mother of two says she was exhausted. She was making her way back home to New Jersey after training for her new nursing job in Dallas. The flight was going smoothly until.

DEMAREST: The captain comes out of the cockpit with a flashlight and he starts looking at the wing. At this point everyone on the plane knew something was going to happen.

BROWN: Moments later the crew confirmed her worst fears.

DEMAREST: The flight attendant told us that there's something mechanical problem. You can see the flaps opening for the landing gear on the right side, but the left side the flap would not open.

BROWN: Demarest's first thought, contact her family.

DEMAREST: I wrote to my husband, we can't land, one landing gear went down. They're trying to fix it before we make an emergency landing. Then I wrote to him, no announcement from the pilot yet, I love you. And then I wrote we are crashing. And that's when I turned off the phone.

I kept thinking of my kids and my husband. That they would (INAUDIBLE) lose me. Then I thought back about 9/11 how families left messages for their loved ones. So I text each one of them that I loved them. And I turned off the phones not knowing.

BROWN: And what she heard next she says she'll never forget.

DEMAREST: So about 200 feet before we hit the captain comes on the speaker yelling crash, crash, crash, crash, crash. While she's yelling stay in position, head down, keep positions, heads down. So we're like this on the back of our seats. BROWN: With sparks flying, the cabin of the turbo prop quickly filled with smoke, emergency shoots deployed, passengers evacuated and the plane was quickly foamed. Demarest said those minutes felt like a lifetime.

DEMAREST: I just kept saying to myself stop, stop, stop, stop, please stop. And when you finally stop, it's like, oh, elation, you made it.

BROWN: U.S. Airways says nobody on the plane was injured, but Demarest says for her and her family the gravity of what happened still hasn't sunk in.

DEMAREST: I was joking with somebody I should have played the megamillions, but then I thought, you know what, I already won. So I don't need to play. I have my family.

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BROWN: And Demarest says throughout the ordeal the crew was very comforting and calm. She says she wants to give a big thanks to the pilot, Edward Towers and crew, even saying that the pilot is the, quote, "Captain Sully" of land. a U.S. Airways spokesperson told CNN that the incident is, quote, "a testament to how our crews are trained to respond and act with the utmost professionalism."

Pamela Brown, CNN, New York.

BLITZER: That pilot did do an excellent, excellent job. Thank you to him. In a minute I'll tell you how a 26-year-old high school dropout got a billion, yes billion-dollar, payday. And he didn't win the Lottery.

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BLITZER: The Florida Lottery office has been open all day. They're waiting for someone to cash-in that winning $590 million Powerball ticket. Only one ticket matched all the numbers Saturday to win the record jackpot. It was sold in a Publix grocery store in the Tampa, Florida, area the at the peak of sales this weekend. By the way states like Texas and California were reportedly selling more than $1 million worth of tickets every hour.

There's a billion-dollar payday also in the works today also for a 26- year-old high school dropout. David Carp of New York City didn't win the Powerball Lottery. He sold his blogging website called Tumblr for $1.1 billion to Yahoo!. He created the site six years ago in the back room of his mom's New York City apartment. Carp is going to stay on at CEO and run the company as a separate entity within Yahoo!. It doesn't bring many much money, but the big appeal here for Yahoo! at least is that Tumblr has become the go-to blogging site for the 18 to 24 crowd. It already has more than 44 million users in the United States. 120,000 people are signing up every single day.

Yahoo!'s shares jumped just a little bit on the news this morning raising about -- rising I should say about 1 percent in trading. Let's take a look at how the broader market is doing right now. The Dow Jones Industrial Average looking at flat down six points or so right now. The flood of earnings reports in the past couple of weeks has slowed to a trickle and that's been keeping traders in check at least today.

As the president's speech at Morehouse college in Atlanta over the weekend, reminded us it's commencement season. But college grads entering the work force have to contend with high student debt and a tough job market out there. That means they need a battle plan. Christine Romans explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: After this, you may think you're done with this, but the homework has only begun. The good news, the economy is recovering. Stock markets are on a tear. And companies are flush with cash. The bad news is they're still not hiring robustly. And competition is intense among new college grads. One-third of recent grads surveyed said they were making no more than $25,000 a year. With tens of thousands of dollars in debt to pay off and a still sluggish jobs market, was it all worth it?

DAVID GARTSIDE, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ACCENTURE: The long-term data says that investing in a degree is the right thing to do, but you've got to treat it like an investment and treat it seriously. Really show interest and passion about the area you want to work in. And start networking early. And the last thing is take every opportunity.

ROMANS: Every opportunity because your dream job may not be attainable at first. And it's going to change with time.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE, UNIV. OF CHICAGO ECONOMICS PROFESSOR: People that have more skills and more education are doing better and surviving better in this comeback than our people who do not.

ROMANS: The data show is nearly two-thirds of recent college grads say they need more training in order to get that dream job. But fewer than half say they got it in their first job after graduation. Meaning, plan your next two or three career moves now. And figure how your first job out of college can help with those moves. Finally, start planning for retirement now. Does your company offer a 401(k) match? Take it. Start saving now and pay off your debt as soon as possible. Christine Romans, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Jodi Arias gets one last chance to speak directly to jurors today. She has said at least in the past she'd prefer a death sentence rather than life in prison. The difficult decision for the jury, that's straight ahead.

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BLITZER: Right now we're keeping a very close watch on the nation's heartland. More storms may be on the way. That's after being hit multiple times by powerful tornadoes overnight. Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, IowaM, and Missouri all reporting tornadoes. Two elderly men were killed in the storms. Dozens of people are injured. Hundreds of homes are damaged or destroyed.

Katy Blakey of our affiliate KOCO shows us what's left of a mobile home park in Oklahoma city.

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KATY BLAKEY, REPORTER, KOCO: This whole mobile home park just ripped apart. I want to show you this over here. You see this big slab right here of brown dirt, this huge rectangle? That's where a mobile home was. But where is that mobile home this morning? Well, it is shredded in pieces all over this mobile home park. See this cinder block, that's what they use oftentimes to rest on. Can you imagine this flying around in 150-mile-an-hour winds?

And as we go over here you see this pickup truck smashed. We don't know if this truck was on this property before the twister or if it landed he here afterward. And that is what we're seeing here, just damage everywhere. If you can imagine people coming back today, this is what they'll be returning to. I don't know what they could say from all of this. Everything appears to be ruined.

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BLITZER: Thanks to Katy Blakey of our affiliate KOCO for that report.

Now back to the Jodi Arias trial and this crucial question, will she get life or death? The jurors deciding her fate get back into a phoenix courtroom this hour. But we have a little preview of what Arias herself might prefer in an interview she gave to a local TV station.