Jury: Madison Square Garden Must Pay $11.6 Million in Sexual Harassment Suit; Court Examines Disparity in Cocaine-Related Sentences; Fossett Search Called Off
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour, happening right now, Isiah Thomas found liable in a sexual harassment suit. Millions of dollars. Someone is going to have to pay, but it's not him. Our Allan Chernoff is following the story for us and he tells us who is going to have to pay a lot of money -- Allan.</s>ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN SR. CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. A huge amount of money. We're talking about $11.6 million won by the former executive vice president of marketing for the New York Knicks, Anucha Browne Sanders, winning in court today a sexual harassment victory against Isiah Thomas, the current coach of the New York Knicks, as well as Madison Square Garden and James Dolan, who is the chairman of Cablevision, which is the parent of MSG, which owns the New York Knicks. The damages, let's run through them -- $11.6 million, just coming out shortly ago, decided by the jury. Madison Square Garden to pay $6 million for a hostile work environment, $2.6 million for retaliation. Ms. Browne Sanders was fired after complaining of advances and also complaining that she had been verbally abused by Isiah Thomas. You're seeing him right there. Also, Mr. Dolan being assigned $3 million in damages. So, in total, $11.6 million. The jury actually had been deadlocked as to whether or not Isiah Thomas should have to pay any damages, and as a result he personally does not have to pay. Mr. Thomas, Madison Square Garden, Mr. Dolan, all planning to appeal this verdict. And we should note that this is a very big victory for Browne Sanders. These are not easy cases to win. The charges of sexual harassment often very difficult to prove, but the jury clearly siding very much with the former executive from the New York Knicks -- Don</s>LEMON: CNN's Allan Chernoff. Allan, thank you for that report.</s>PHILLIPS: Should crack cocaine dealers get tougher sentences than people who sell the powder form? It's a hot-button issues before the Supreme Court today and it's rife with racial overtones. Right now, sentencing guidelines come down much harder on crack defendants. Opponents say that's not fair to African-Americans. CNN Justice Correspondent Kelli Arena is at the Supreme Court.</s>KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: In a real-life application, race is very much a factor, but we didn't hear a discussion of race in this courtroom today. What we did hear is an argument from the government that says, look, sentencing guidelines are necessary because when you have two people that are convicted of the same crime, you need some similarity in the way that those folks are treated. And that judges just can't ignore laws that have been set by Congress and just dismiss them from the courtroom. Now, the law as it stands says that possession of one gram of crack cocaine is equal to possession of 100 grams of powdered cocaine, and these were laws that were set up years ago by a sentencing commission and then adopted by Congress. Well, a district judge who was confronted with that said, well, this is ridiculous, and I'm not going to pay attention to these guidelines, and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to sentence you the way that I see fit. That case has made it all the way up here to the Supreme Court, Kyra. And basically the defendant's argument is, look, there are lots of other mitigating factors that should be considered and that judges should be given as wide discretion as possible.</s>PHILLIPS: Well, the sentencing disparity grew out of a 1986 law passed amid a wave of violent crimes committed to get money to feed crack habits.</s>LEMON: The use of hired guns in a war zone, is it backfiring? Well, right now a House panel is holding a hearing on private security contractors in Iraq. Specifically, Blackwater USA now being investigated for a September shooting that the Iraqis say killed innocent civilians. Blackwater's CEO says his employees were responding to an attack.</s>ERIK PRINCE, BLACKWATER CHAIRMAN, CEO: The bad guys have figured out killing Americans is big media, I think. They are trying to drive us out. They try to drive to the heart of American resolve and will to stay there, so we have to provide that protective screen. We only play defense, and our job is to get those reconstruction officials, those people that are trying to weave the fabric of Iraq back together, to get them away from that X, the place where the bad guys, the terrorists, have decided to kill them that day.</s>LEMON: We're going to talk to CNN's Suzanne Simons about the Blackwater issue in just a moment, but first we have some developing news -- Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: Let's get straight to T.J. Holmes. He's in the newsroom working this story for us. It sounds like it's a bit of sad news coming out of Nevada with regard to Steve Fossett.</s>T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, there was some renewed hope, and now hope lost again, if you will. Kind of sad news that once again we're getting another official word, if you will, that the search for Steve Fossett, the millionaire adventurer, has again been called off. There he is. A lot of people know this -- recognize his face, and certainly a story we've been following for the past -- really a month now. But he disappeared September 3rd after taking off in his small plane over the Nevada wilderness, and he disappeared, no sign of him. The search had been going on. It had been called off a few weeks after the search had been going for some time, kind of an official call off of some of the aerial patrols, but there was some renewed focus and some renewed optimism just last week after some analysis of some data, some radar data, gave new hope. And the technicians thought that they might have possibly been able to spot some clues to the route that he did take. He actually did not file a flight plan when he took off on this flight, but they looked at SAM radar data and thought some of these satellite images actually helped them figure out the track he had taken, so they tried again over the weekend, renewed the search. But now once again nothing had been found, so they are officially, Kyra, once again, calling off the search for Steve Fossett. No signs no, clues as to what may have happened to him. And who knows if we will ever know -- Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: It might be one of those mysteries a lot of people will be asking questions about. All right. We'll keep following, it, T.J. Thanks.</s>HOLMES: All right.</s>LEMON: Whether you smoke it or whether you snort it, it's cocaine in both cases. So why are penalties for possessing one form harsher than the other? The Supreme Court has been asked to answer that one for us.</s>PHILLIPS: Plus this -- women prone to panic attacks may be at risk for more serious trouble. We'll have details on this new study straight ahead.</s>LEMON: And a California judge decides that Britney Spears' kids don't belong in the eye of a media storm. That story is ahead on CNN, the must trusted name in news.