Campus Cop Arraigned on Murder Charges
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The bond will be $1 million anyway.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a courtroom. You will conduct yourselves at all times appropriately. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a courtroom. You will conduct yourselves at all times appropriately. The next date is August 19th at 9:00 a.m. is the defendant waiving time? The next date is August 19th at 9:00 a.m. Is the defendant waiving time?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At this point he is not, Judge.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Very good. Gentlemen, I'll see you all here August 19th at 9:00 a.m.</s>COSTELLO: All right. A bit of drama in Hamilton County, Ohio, in Cincinnati. That was Officer Ray Tensing. He's accused of murder in shooting an unarmed black man during a routine traffic stop earlier this month. Jean Casarez was inside the courtroom. I have her now on the phone. Jean, where did the cheering come from?</s>JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, it was really something in there. First of all, it wasn't that large of a courtroom but it wasn't that small of a courtroom. It was packed. Four different rows completely packed. People lining the walls until the family couldn't get in, and Attorney Mark O'Mara representing him walked in, and he seems like to talk with court officials for maybe 10 minutes because the family was here. They were standing outside and while they were standing outside, family members said that we want to go in there. We want to see this defendant, this police officer, because he says that he is devastated by this. Well, we're devastated by this and we want to be in there. So they finally asked members of the community if they would give up their seats to the family, and so people readily did, and they walked in, and the proceeding, as you saw, was very short, very brief, but when that $1 million bail was announced by the judge, the family members of this young victim just started to clap and cheer and try to stand up. A few members of the community but really the family members of Sam DuBose, and at that point you saw the judge just absolutely stamping down, this is a court of law. I think they were exuberant, maybe not expecting a $1 million bail. As far as the defendant, we heard that his father was in the courtroom today, that packed courtroom. We don't know where he was or exactly who he was, but the defendant himself looked serious, looked stressed, and scared, and he was handcuffed as he walked in.</s>COSTELLO: All right. Jean Casarez, thanks so much. Very interesting doings this morning. To talk about this more I'm joined by legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson and the former commissioner of the Boston Police Department Ed Davis. Thanks to you both for being here.</s>JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: Sure, Carol. Good morning.</s>ED DAVIS, FORMER COMMISSIONER BOSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT: Good morning, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: So, Joey, just your reaction to what happened in the courtroom?</s>JACKSON: You know, it's a preliminary -- it's a preliminary step in the process and it's the first step, Carol. An indictment as we always -- as defense attorneys remind everyone is an accusation. Now it moves forward to being proved, but I think with the $1 million, in addition to these charges, it shows it's a very serious case. Of course, we know murder carries life in jail. He's also charged with manslaughter which is 3 to 11 years. And so ultimately with the judge setting a $1 million bail, it appears as though this is a matter that's going to proceed forward and he's going to have to defend. You know in terms of the nature of the defense, it may meet great difficulty depending upon and looking at that videotape. The video doesn't lie, and when you look at the videotape and match it against the report, and what is arguably him saying his state of mind there's a lot of explaining the defense has to do here.</s>COSTELLO: Exactly. And, Ed, is there any way to explain what happened? The prosecutor, even the initial traffic stop, the prosecutor in Hamilton County I think he -- I'm trying to see -- he called it chicken crap because this driver, Mr. DuBose, was pulled over for not displaying a front license.</s>DAVIS: You have to agree with that assessment, Carol. I agree with Attorney Jackson. This is a terrible situation. It's unfolded on video. We get to see exactly what occurred. It's striking to me in a couple of areas. One is that this was such a low-key conversation up until the time that the officer drew his weapon. It exploded in violence, and it just -- there were no indicators before that. There were no raised voices, no stress. It was being handled, you know, fairly low key and then all of a sudden there was an explosion. I think every time you introduce new technology into a field you learn things and we're learning things here that need to be addressed by police training and policy as we move forward.</s>COSTELLO: I do have a question about police training. This was a University of Cincinnati police officer. Is he trained in the exact same way as your local police department?</s>DAVIS: I don't know what the situation is in Ohio. In Massachusetts they are trained in exactly the same police academies. But, you know, I found that campus presidents, university presidents, trustees, don't have a good handle on what their officers are actually doing out there. They want security, they want police, they want to be safe, but some of these agencies turn into doing enforcement that doesn't make any sense in a university setting, and, you know, there's going to be an investigation into this, but it doesn't appear to be a university setting there, so why are they stopping vehicles for minor motor vehicle infractions away from the university when they should be interacting with students. It doesn't make a lot of sense.</s>COSTELLO: Right. I was curious. I think 75 percent, from what we could determine, 75 percent of universities across the country have police officers on campus who are armed, university police departments. The others don't, and the reason they don't is they don't want something like this to happen.</s>DAVIS: Exactly. The university presidents that I have worked with over the years have made it clear to me that they want a community policing setting, they want to feel secure, but, you know, sometimes these organizations when they hire ex-police officers to be the chiefs of these university departments, they end up with municipal policing coming into the university, and that might not be exactly what the trustees and the university president wants.</s>COSTELLO: All right. A final question for you, Joey Jackson, since you're a defense attorney. So there were body cameras on three different police officers. So you have the vantage point from three different ways, right?</s>JACKSON: Right.</s>COSTELLO: And the police officer obviously lied on the police department -- on the police report, rather, because he claimed the car was dragging him.</s>JACKSON: That's right.</s>COSTELLO: The video evidence clearly shows it was not true.</s>JACKSON: And --</s>COSTELLO: So how do you defend him?</s>JACKSON: And that he felt that he was going to be run over. I think what we as defense attorneys do is we evaluate a case. Number one, we ask, is it winnable? You look at this case, it does not appear to be. The next question then becomes, could you defeat the top count of murder? And that's really going to be what's at issue here. If you reduce that to manslaughter, make no mistake about it, in essence, for a defense attorney, that's a win. Why? Because murder, the intentional killing, carries a life sentence. Manslaughter, three to 11 years. So you have to demonstrate if it's manslaughter that it was acted out of some anger or out of some heat of passion. Clearly there was bad judgment used, and I think the difficulty for the defense, of course, again is the police report matching it up to what the body camera says, and it just doesn't lie. So if you can mitigate and lessen what he's looking at here, I think, you know, of course you do him a great justice but the justice that needs to be done at this point, of course, is for that victim and his family.</s>COSTELLO: Joey Jackson, Ed Davis, thanks to you both. I appreciate it.</s>JACKSON: Thank you, Carol. Thank you.</s>COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a plane's wing flap found on the beach of an island in the Indian Ocean but will this major lead really help determine what happened to flight 370?