America Goes Crazy For Guns and Ebola

Criminal defense attorney Mike Cavalluzzi discusses a possible appeal by the prosecution in the Oscar Pistorius case and gives his views on a videotape just released of a police shooting in 2012 of a homeless man. Plus, the discussion also turns to the controversial Ebola quarantines ordered in New York and New Jersey, an update on the Michael Brown case and on new flare-ups of school shootings.

Cavalluzzi makes the point that the appeal – which he says is based on the theory that Oscar Pistorius should have known that someone was behind the bathroom door before he shot into it, regardless whether or not it was his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp . The idea is that by shooting into the door, there was a reasonable likelihood that whomever was on the other side would be killed, and therefore the judge should have convicted Pistorius of murder.

“In South Africa, because you have a judge, you’re talking about one person, and the appeal might be more reasonable because you could look more into her thought processes, and that she, the judge, who should know better – she’s a lawyer who got the law wrong.”

But he gives his personal opinion that the appeal might not really get off the ground because the judge in the Pistorius case was very clear that she thought the shooting was accidental, amounting to the lesser conviction of culpable homicide.

On the five-year sentence given Pistorius, Cavalluzzi said he believes it was predictable based on the conviction. But he adds that the fact that Pistorius might in reality only serve about 10 months would never happen in the United States. “Ten months, even for someone like me, feels a little light,” he said.

Cavalluzzi also discusses the recent strict Ebola quarantine requirements imposed on New York and New Jersey residents returning to the United States from West Africa. “I think it’s how you look at how the quarantine is actually being used. I think there is a way to use it responsibly and any personnel that are returning from West Africa, to make sure they are not going to contaminate anyone else,” Cavalluzzi said.

“And then, there’s putting a woman inside a tent with no plumbing for 21 days – those are two separate issues in my book,” he added, referring to the case of Kaci Hickox, a nurse who returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, only to be quarantined in New Jersey for 65 hours before being transported to her home state of Maine on Monday.

“The way she was treated feels a little bit like a human rights violation for somebody who had really put herself in harm’s way to do good in the world. I means she was working for basically the French version of Doctors Without Borders,” he said. “She was doing her best to help a very dire situation in West Africa, and then she comes back to the United States and is treated like a second-class citizen I have issues with that.”

But then Cavalluzzi also addresses the case of Dr. Dr. Craig Spencer, who admitted going for a run in New York and visiting a bowling alley in Brooklyn the day before he was hospitalized. “On the other hand, we have the doctor from New York and that is a scary situation – that’s a huge metropolis, New York City, and he’s going bowling,” he said.

“I do understand if you’re (New York) Governor Cuomo, or (New Jersey) Governor Christie, that you maybe are overreacting, but if you don’t overreact, and you suddenly get multiple cases of Ebola, you’ll be attacked far worse than that.”

Also explored is the shooting by police of Milton Hall, a 49-year-old mentally disturbed homeless man in 2012 – an incident that triggered broad community criticism and led to a federal investigation that concluded the shooting was justified.

Video footage of the incident – obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union from lawyers for Hall’s family - was finally made public this week. The footage shot from a police car dash camera appears to show six officers gunning Hall down during a confrontation in a parking lot.

“If this were happening anywhere but the United States, it would just seem like such clear, official misconduct. As a public offender, I represented people like Milton Hall who were mentally ill, and who were on the streets because of that illness.”

He says many of these people live normal lives as long as they take their medication, but when they don’t they become a completely different person. “(Police) should be better trained to deal with people like Milton Hall. I mean this seems literally like a firing squad. It’s about a half-dozen officers that were actually discharging their weapons, and I think 45 rounds were expended.”

Cavalluzzi adds that he doesn’t understand why the U.S. Justice Department didn’t have the video when they were evaluating the case, which he describes as “clear misconduct.”

Watch the full episode to also get an update on the Michael Brown case and a discussion of new school violence.