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CNN NEWSROOM

Ariel Castro Pleads Not Guilty; NJ May Allow Cops to Check Cell Phones; Opening Statements End in Bulger Case.

Aired June 12, 2013 - 11:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Plea in Ohio today, he was indicted on 329 counts for raping and imprisoning three women for a decade, also, for aggravated murder for purposely terminating a pregnancy.

CNN correspondent, Pamela Brown, is live in Cleveland.

Pamela, tell us what happened in court this morning and what's next?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, Ariel Castro looked very much the same today as he did when he first appeared before a judge several weeks ago. He walked in wearing an orange jumpsuit, was shackled on his feet and handcuffed, kept his head down the entire time, not looking at his attorney, even the judge, when he pleaded not guilty. It almost looked as though he had his eyes closed during the minute-long arraignment. It all happened in a flash. He left the courtroom, then his attorney came out and basically sounded like a plea to the prosecutor saying look, for the first time, he admitted some of these charges Ariel Castro faces, some of the 329 charges are indisputable. What we're really focused on here is that aggravated murder charge where Ariel Castro could face the death penalty. He hopes a resolution will be reached so it doesn't go any further and doesn't reach trial. Today, a trial judge was set. We learned next Wednesday there will be a pretrial hearing. From there, we could see some negotiations for a plea deal. And it is going to be a fairly lengthy legal process. This is just the beginning.

Also, John, you have to remember, we could be seeing more charges from the grand jury again Ariel Castro. The charges now are only up to 2007.

BERMAN: A lot of information there.

Pamela Brown in Cleveland. Thank you so much.

Let's chew over this. Let's bring in Danny Cevallos and Christine Grillo again.

Danny, let me start with you.

You heard Pamela just report, the defense isn't saying we didn't do any of this, none of it happened, it is a not guilty plea. Why do it? Is it the right move?

We're having problems again with Danny's audio.

Christine, can I get you to answer that for me now? Again, why issue the not-guilty plea? And do you think it is the right move?

CHRISTINE GRILLO, PROSECUTOR, BROOKLYN D.A.'S OFFICE: It would be premature as a defense attorney. I am not a defense attorney. I have it make that clear. But it would be premature for any defense attorney to enter a plea of guilty at this point. He or she needs to have the opportunity to evaluate all of the evidence and get the best deal possible for this defendant. So in saying what this defense attorney did, I think we have -- there are claims that he cannot dispute. There's no defense to some of them. The evidence is overwhelming. In that regard, they're almost suggesting to the prosecution, the prosecution stop adding the charges on and we will come to an agreement or disposition that is -- that will speak justice to this horrific crime.

BERMAN: You have to say not guilty now to get any kind of deal?

GRILLO: Absolutely. If you're saying guilty, any charge that the prosecution puts forth, they won't be held to task to prove.

BERMAN: Pamela mentioned before and you just mentioned, we're only seeing half the possible charges. It only covers half the time these women were allegedly held captive. Why not go with all 10 years instead of the first five?

GRILLO: First off, you have to look at statute of limitations. Some of those charges might not be able to be brought. I'm not sure what the statute of limitations are in that state. But also remember, there's 329 charges so far, and there is such a thing as overkill on an indictment. If you have the most serious charges there and you have enough to back up what you're doing, there's no need to put so many charges on there.

BERMAN: Most serious seem to be aggravated murder for purposely causing unlawful death of the children. Those would carry death penalty?

GRILLO: Yes, they would.

BERMAN: In theory, this is what the plea bargaining will be about?

GRILLO: Yes. The prosecution now has the upper hand, if you would. Besides having all of this evidence, they have some serious charges that they can bargain with the defense attorney and say, let's not put these girls through anything more, not have them testify. Take the charges, do life imprisonment without possibility of parole, and we will take the death penalty off the table and save everyone the time and energy of having to put the victims through this.

BERMAN: And that would be the goal for the prosecution, for everyone, spare the young women more pain and having to sit through a trial.

Christine Grillo, thank you so much.

GRILLO: Thank you.

BERMAN: Coming up, phone calls, texting, following your GPA, all things you may do behind the wheel. Distracted driving could get you in an accident. One state wants police to check your cell phone to see if you have been doing it. Is this going too far?

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BERMAN: More than 3,000 people died last year and nearly 400,000 injured in car crashes caused by distracted drivers, and the number one culprit, won't surprise you, cell phones. One New Jersey lawmaker is proposing allowing police to confiscate cell phones after an accident to determine if they were in use at the time.

Hands-free devices were supposed to make driving safer, but as our Chris Lawrence discovered, hands free is not problem free.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We all thought hands free would allow us to combine the morning commute with the demands of staying connected.

YOLANDA CADE, AAA: Making the decision to talk hands free and interact with this technology does pose a considerable risk.

LAWRENCE (on camera): Right here?

(voice-over): I wanted to get a firsthand look.

(on camera): Let's drive.

(voice-over): Researchers wired me up to see if I could still drive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is sort of measuring your background mental work load.

LAWRENCE: Making hands free calls.

(on camera): Good. I'm out here on the driving test.

LAWRENCE (voice-over): Using voice-to-text technology.

TEXT-T-VOICE PHONE: We should get together sometime soon. OK. What would you like to say? How about Sunday?

One message seemed simple enough.

TEXT-TO-VOICE PHONE: Next message. Text from Courtney.

LAWRENCE: Until you realize they just keep coming.

TEXT-TO-VOICE PHONE: Your next message is loading. Message from psychology survey. Text from Victoria. "Are you busy tonight"?

LAWRENCE: "Does 8:00 work for you"? The more I tried to multi task, the less my brain could do.

CADE: It's how your driving performance deteriorated. Your brain activity really was reduced and transformed during the process of trying to perform tasks behind the wheel.

LAWRENCE (on camera): It is hard to disconnect. I get it. My daughter is in daycare, catches every call known to man. My wife works 10 hours a day and is nine months pregnant. My bosses at CNN want what they want when they want it, so when can I put this down?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They also collected your brain waves while driving.

LAWRENCE: Those proved, even when I wasn't using my hands, my brain was still engaged in conversation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Siri, do I have text messages in?

LAWRENCE: And the automakers and app designers aren't making it easier, adding Facebook and Twitter to our dashboards.

CADE: This is a serious looming public safety crisis.

LAWRENCE (on camera): When I try to look at the red and green light and listen to the message, keep my eye on the pylons, it was tougher than I thought it was.

(voice-over): Chris Lawrence, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: We hope Chris gets to keep the hat. Also wish him the best with the birth of his next child, 9 months pregnant.

One study found drivers using cell phones are four times more likely to be injured in an accident, but that doesn't seem to deter them using the devices anyway. So one New Jersey lawmaker wants to let police confiscate phones after an accident to check their call history. This has raised a lot of privacy concerns and flat-out constitutional concerns.

David Strayer has done a lot of research from University of Utah. He joins us from Washington. Alexander Shalom also joins us from ACLU in New Jersey.

David, let me start with you.

I don't think it comes as a surprise to everyone that distracted driving is a bad idea, that cell phones and texting are a major culprit.

DAVID STRAYER, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH: They very much are. The crash risk associated with using some of the technologies, especially things like texting, eclipse what we see in terms of impairment for someone who is legally intoxicated. So providing some tools that would help lawmakers try to establish if someone was in fact using some of this technology to, say, send a text message could actually be an aid in terms of their decision about what the ultimate cause of the accident was.

BERMAN: A deterrent, perhaps.

Alexander, I assume, with the ACLU, you may have issues with police seizing someone's cell phone. They say if they have reasonable ground to check the cell phone records to see if you were texting or making calls.

ALEXANDER SHALOM, ACLU-NEW JERSEY: The problem is the Constitution doesn't allow searches based on reasonable suspicion of things and it doesn't allow searches generally speaking without search warrants. And so this is a problem, properly identified.

But there's a solution, a solution being cell phones preexist automobiles. Go to a judge, get a search warrant. Once you do that, you can search a person's cell phone records to see whether they have been texting while driving. Generally speaking, what someone can do on the phone doesn't enable them to delete the records from the cell phone provider.

BERMAN: Good point. They used the language "reasonable grounds." Is that a legally different term than probable cause?

SHALOM: It is a lower standard, the standard that generally speaking would allow a police officer to stop you on the street, ask you some questions. It wouldn't allow a police officer to engage in a full- blown search of your person, of your home or of your car. Here, with cell phones, we deal with devices that contain a great deal of highly private information. It contains your address book, calendar, people with whom you have associated. In addition to Fourth Amendment, search and seizure implications, there are also First Amendment implications in terms of limiting your freedom of association when the government monitors who you're talking to and when you're talking to them.

BERMAN: David, even in the forefront, the harmful effects of distracted driving, what sacrifices do you think people could make, what liberties should they give up that would make a difference and perhaps save lives?

STRAYER: I think that's a little hard to know for sure. People a lot of times use the technologies either because they think they're safe, harbor a false illusion that they are. What happens in terms of trying to understand what the actual risk is at a societal level is useful so we have a good understanding of crash causation. From a scientific perspective, it is helpful to understand if someone was using cell phones and that was a cause of an accident, to enter that into the database to get a precise accounting of exactly how many people are actually being injured or killed on roadways.

I think it is worth saying that certainly some of the activities when you're distracted by especially things like texting, but also talking on a cell phone, particularly things associated with your eyes off the road, hands off the wheel, it eclipses impairments you see when someone is drunk. If someone has been in a crash and they've caused some kind of injury, to try to be able to nail down exactly what the source of that impairment was, if the cell phone is related, it seems reasonable.

BERMAN: David Strayer, Alexander Shalom, thank you so much for your time in talking with us about this and not texting back and forth. Talking is much better. Thanks, guys.

He is an ex-con, a former FBI informant, and he was once on the FBI's Most-Wanted list. Now James Whitey Bulger is in court after so many years, charged with multiple murders. Some of his confidants will testify against him. Wait until you see who they are.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: After 16 years in hiding on the run, a reputed mob boss finally on trial. Opening statements just wrapped up for James "Whitey" Bulger's federal trial in Boston. He is charged with murdering 19 people. Some of the guys who say they worked for him, even helped him kill, will be testifying.

Deborah Feyerick is live in Boston.

Deb, I have to admit, I find this to be the most riveting case in the country. I am dying to hear what was said in opening statements.

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DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There's no question about that, John. For the people of Boston, this case is about justice, it is about redemption, it is about retribution after 16 years on the run, followed by decades as a reputed mob boss here in Boston, Whitey Bulger now on trial. The prosecutors took a tact saying look, this case is about the 19 people who James "Whitey" Bulger is accused of killing. Some cases, strangling them himself. He wanted the jury to focus on that, that this case is about the 19 victims.

But Bulger's attorneys, as you imagine, took a much different tactic, trying to plant seeds the minds of the jurors, saying, no, the death of government corruption is what is at the heart of this case. Rogue FBI agents who never got any information from Bulger but who were paid to let them know when there were wire tapping, surveillance, indictments as well as.

All of this, John, a big focus as the jurors really heard that the witnesses the government plans to call cannot be trusted. That, according to Whitey Bulger's lawyer -- John.

BERMAN: Deborah Feyerick in Boston. We plan to follow every twist and turn in this case.

Thank you.

We'll be back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: A bicycle accident severely injured a teenager boy, but now Ryan Boyles has reclaimed his life thanks to his bike and his faith.

Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta has this week's "Human Factor."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Like a lot of 9- year-old boys, Ryan Boyle loved to ride around and pop wheelies.

RYAN BOYLE, SEVERELY INJURED IN BIKE ACCIDENT & AUTHOR: I would always ride my mountain bike.

GUPTA: He was riding a friend's big wheel when a freak accident turned his life upside down.

BOYLE: I slid down the driveway backwards and into the road and into the path of a speeding pickup truck. It hit me in the back of the head at 30 miles per hour.

GUPTA: His injuries were catastrophic, broken arm, pelvis, femur, shoulder, six broken ribs and a devastating traumatic brain injury. Doctors doubted he would live through the surgeon.

BOYLE: My neurosurgeon came to my parents when I came out of surgery that, I operated on him as if he had a chance.

GUPTA: Boyle did have chance. Two months later, he woke up from a coma.

BOYLE: A neurologist took a look at me. He said, I am optimistic that Ryan will gain enough strength in his right hand to type. My parents just shout back, oh, no, he'll be running and riding his bike.

GUPTA: Obviously, his parents knew best. Boyle went from unable to speak or walk to riding a stationary bike during his therapy sessions. As he struggled to understand what happened to him, being able to ride became his salvation.

That was then. This is now.

Boyle is thriving as a college freshman, and just like growing up, his bike is always near by.

BOYLE: I'm on my own bike team. It's the first para-cycling team in the country.

GUPTA: He's not done yet. He hopes to represent Team USA in the 2016 Paralympics.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: What an inspiring recovery. Watch Sanjay every weekend Saturday afternoons at 4:30 eastern and Sunday mornings at 7:30 eastern.

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BERMAN: Other legal cases we're following. A former Kansas sheriff's deputy has been found guilty of murdering his wife days after she filed for divorce. The charred remains were found in the couple's burned out home along with a .44 caliber pistol. He was found guilty of two counts of arson and child endangerment. He now faces life in prison.

We also know how the jury foreman in the Jodi Arias case voted. He voted against the death penalty. Bill Zervakos finally stepped forward. He told KTVK it was the most difficult situation he had ever been. He did say that Arias has got to pay for murdering Travis Alexander. He said that she is going to.

Thanks for watching. AROUND THE WORLD starts right now.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: NSA leaker, Edward Snowden, gives a brand new interview to a Chinese newspaper. He said he's not traitor or a hero. He says he's not hiding from justice.

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MALVEAUX: A tearful reunion for young immigrants and their families taking place through the bars of that fence that divides U.S. and Mexico.

Pope Francis grabbing world headlines again. This time, with reports saying he confirms a so-called gay lobby existing inside the Vatican.

Welcome to AROUND THE WORLD. I'm Suzanne Malveaux.