NEWS INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT / CNN
THE SITUATION ROOM
September 14, 2007 19:00 ET
O.J. Questioned in Robbery
TATTON: These are some of the photos, these photos are some of the memorabilia Beardsley collected. Today, Beardsley making a statement to tmz.com that O.J. Simpson was one of the men who robbed him at the hotel. According to the AP Simpson is in Las Vegas for a friend's wedding and went to the hotel with other guests of that wedding. Suzanne?
MALVEAUX: Very interesting, Abbi. Now we want to talk more about this case involving O.J. Simpson. Joining me by phone from Miami, Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney who has been very familiar with this case. I want to ask you, first and foremost, how important is it that the police have obtained a weapon in this case? We've heard two very, very different stories here?
KENDALL COFFEY, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: It's certainly critical. From the standpoint of the police, this is a completely different matter that is to say an argument over who owned memorabilia as opposed to a serious crime. And walking into anybody's room, yelling, screaming, threatening with a gun is in every state in this country a very serious felony that guarantees you jail time. How do the police sort it out? Sounds like they said -- they said. And the police would actually like to see a weapon but let's keep one thing in mind. When you get into one of these swearing contests and a few people have different sides, you always look at who has the motive to lie. Why would the people in the room make up a story about O.J. and company, whether it was one of his colleagues or O.J. himself having a gun? What's their incentive to lie? When the police are unscrambling this thing, they start out with the assumption people don't normally walk in and make up a story of somebody having a gun.
And by the way, O.J. doesn't walk around with a biggest mountain of credibility when it comes to the perspective of law enforcement officials.
MALVEAUX: So, if you believe his story, O.J. Simpson's story, that he told our colleague Ted Rowlands, he says, he alleges that there were two people who walked ahead of him and he followed them. If those two individuals did have weapons, did have guns and followed them into the room, perhaps even unbeknownst to him that they were brandishing the weapons or their intention, what could he be charged with?
COFFEY: First of all, if he, in fact, walked into the room behind people with guns, it is going to be pretty clear that they were part of a same package. That he knew what was going on, he had to be aware of the guns and that makes him fully as guilty as the people who are actually holding the guns. Even if there's no guns involved, and again, giant question, if he's going in and yelling and bullying and kicking and screaming at people to get them to turn over property to him, he doesn't have any right to do that, either. You can't take the law into your own hands just like you and I can't walk into somebody's living room and take things out of -- off their dining room table or living room tablet that we think belong to us but it is such a different landscape for Simpson. The question of whether there were guns being used or whether it was in effect an argument and they walked off with some stuff that might have been his. That's what the police work through the weekend to try to determine.
MALVEAUX: Thank you so much, Kendall Coffey.
Find this transcript at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0709/14/sitroom.03.html
