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Jake Tapper wants you to know C.J. Rice’s story · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Wednesday, October 12th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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  "CNN" anchor Jake Tapper covers politics. He's interviewed all kinds of world leaders, including President Biden just this week. But I recently spoke with Jake Tapper about a story that's quite personal for him. It's about something that happened over a decade ago, in his hometown of Philadelphia. And the tip came from his own dad, Dr. Theodore Tapper.
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  Jake Tapper: Eventually, I told him I'd take a look at it as a journalist, and that began this two-year project that culminates in the cover of "The Atlantic" magazine this month.
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  Dr. Tapper was a pediatrician. In 2011, he saw one of his patients, a teenager named C.J. Rice, who was in bad shape. He'd been shot, and he had dozens of staples along his torso where a surgeon had removed one of the bullets.
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  Tapper: My dad says he didn't like taking painkillers. Could barely move. He shuffled like a 95-year-old man, not a 17-year-old boy.
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  Soon after he examined C.J., the teenager was wanted by police. They suspected him of carrying out a shooting in South Philadelphia.
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  Tapper: He's not a naive guy, my dad. He understands that teenagers are capable of all sorts of things, even polite and smart ones. But he said C.J. could barely walk four or five days before this crime he was convicted of happened. And he just didn't think it was possible.
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  C.J. was convicted of attempted murder. He's now serving up to 60 years. In "The Atlantic" article that's out today, Jake lays out what he's learned about C.J.'s case and why he believes that his dad is right, that C.J. didn't do it. I asked him to explain what he thinks went wrong with the defense.
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  Tapper: I mean, I know our criminal justice system has problems. I'm not oblivious to that. I cover them. But the degree to which the promise of the sixth amendment of a right to counsel is an empty promise shocked me, and in this case, C.J.'s mom knew a woman named Sandjai Weaver, who was an attorney. And I don't know what kind of attorney she was in general, but I can tell you, reviewing the court transcripts and talking to lots of lawyers, she was inadequate. It was an incompetent defense, embarrassingly so. Very basic mistakes were made. She didn't meet with witnesses ahead of time. She didn't visit, apparently, the crime scene. She got C.J.'s name wrong in trial. It really was a travesty. And that's one of the things that was so shocking about this story for me, was yes, I think there's an excess of reasonable doubt that C.J. did this. The only testimony, the only evidence against him was a woman who was a witness, who was there that night, who knew C.J. from the neighborhood. And the night of the incident three times said she had no idea who shot them. And then a confidential informant told the police: Hey, we think it was C.J. The police, the specific detective investigating, go to the woman in the hospital, show her a photo lineup. Low and behold, all of a sudden, she remembers, clear as day, it was C.J. I don't believe that. But even if you do believe it, that's pretty thin evidence to sentence somebody to 60 years in prison for a crime in which nobody was seriously injured.
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  Basu: Not to mention a minor. Right?
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  Tapper: Yeah, and his lawyer, Sandjai, did not even petition to have his case heard as a minor, even though he'd never been convicted of anything violent before, and he was 17.
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  Basu: Yeah. Yeah. I should say that you spoke to C.J. a few times, right? Over the course of trying gather these details together. And even he'll say things that he asked his lawyer to do that she didn't do. Right? Gathering cell phone records, among other things. What does he see as his possible recourse now? You know, there's supposed to be things that you can do if you feel like you got an unfair trial. What has C.J. tried to do?
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  Tapper: One is there is a habeas petition, a habeas lawyer that is trying to get this case looked at, and the other one is a pardon or commutation. And that's what I'm appealing to. To the individuals in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania who can look at a case and say, "This is not justice."
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  Basu: Why did you wanna share C.J.'s story and your personal connection to it, your father's personal connection to it, in this way?
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  Tapper: Because I have this platform, and it is this quirk of fate that this one particular kid who got a raw deal happened to have a pediatrician who is convinced he physically could not have committed this crime. And that pediatrician happens to have a son who is a journalist. I recognize that in some ways that's unfair because there are lots of people, I'm sure, in prison for crimes that either they didn't commit or, at the very least, they didn't get the kind of legal representation that you or I, or probably most of our listeners, would've gotten. I realize that's not fair, but at the same time, this is an injustice that I had to report on once I found out about it.
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  Basu: You wanna tell us a little bit about C.J. and who he is today having spoken with him?
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  Tapper: He's a model prisoner. He is a nice guy. He's smart. I think he's still stunned after more than 10 years in prison that this happened to him. He is somebody who wants to maybe become an accountant, and he tries to have a sunny disposition. He is a meticulous expert on his case and all the ways it went wrong. I think he just, at the very least, would like a fair trial.
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  Basu: "CNN's" Jake Tapper writing about C.J. Rice's story in "The Atlantic." Jake, thanks for your time.
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  Tapper: Thank you so much for caring. It's important that we pay attention to these stories, and I appreciate it.
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  C.J.'s attorney died in 2019. Jake spoke to a lot of people involved in all aspects of this case for his "Atlantic" story. You can read the whole thing on the Apple News app.
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  Legal challenges aiming to block President Biden's plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in federal student debt are piling up. "Washington Post" higher-education reporter, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, is on the story, particularly a lawsuit by multiple Republican attorneys general from Iowa, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina.
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  Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: This is gonna be the case that I think a lot of people wanna watch because this probably has the strongest case of potentially halting the program.
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  Those who are trying to stop the loan cancelation make a few different arguments. One is that it could hurt their state's finances. Another is that Biden doesn't have the authority. See, the administration is doing this under a 2003 law that was passed after the 9/11 attacks. It gives the administration the ability to help borrowers who've suffered economic impacts of a national emergency. The administration argues that the COVID pandemic qualifies as an emergency. Critics say it's a misuse of a law that was intended to deal with terror attacks and war. Douglas-Gabriel says this could be a long legal battle.
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  Douglas-Gabriel: Even if the Department is successful and they move forward with the processing of these discharges, we're likely to see the six states appeal that decision as well. All that to say is that watch this case, watch this space.
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  And things could change more depending on how the midterms go.
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  Douglas-Gabriel: If the Republicans are successful and they take the house, right, in January, I am pretty certain leader McCarthy will do something similar to what John Boehner did when he was speaker and file a lawsuit to try to stop this particular policy. So, all of these things kind of play together and kind of put added pressure on the Biden administration to get as many of these loans forgiven as quickly as they can.
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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: The White House is encouraging borrowers to get their applications for student loan forgiveness in by November 15th. The form is expected to be available later this month.
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  We've talked a lot on this show about how brutal the car market has gotten lately. Well, reporter Alana Semuels recently lived it.
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  Alana Semuels: So, I bought a Subaru Forester 2022 model and I paid $34,447, which was about $3,000 over the sticker price and about $5,000 more than I wanted to spend.
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  Semuels writes about this stuff for work. She's the senior economics correspondent for "TIME" magazine. But she was surprised to learn, once she put herself out there on the dealership floor, that cars are still very much in short supply.
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  Semuels: I thought, more than two years after the pandemic had begun, we would be at this place where maybe there are some shortages, but it wasn't horrible.
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  Yeah, but it was horrible. See, cars take a while to make. And so do the microchips they need to run all the computers they have these days. So, even as supply-chain issues got better for other things, new cars are still hard to come by. And dealers know that they have the upper hand.
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  Semuels: You see a lot of dealerships posting their highest profits ever in 2022. They may be selling fewer cars, but they're more than making up for it by jacking up prices and adding on all sorts of fees.
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  Semuels talked to some bargaining experts to see how she might've gotten a better price. One approach they said: confidence. She needed a car quickly and the dealer could practically smell it. Her advice is, even if it feels like you don't have options, go into the negotiation acting like you do. The second approach, she says, is just patience. If you can stomach putting off a new car purchase a little longer, that might be smartest. It's hard to predict where these kinds of trends are going, but there are signs the supply problems are getting better, so waiting a few more months could pay off.
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app now, don't go anywhere. We've got a narrated article cued up for you. You'll hear a "New Yorker" story on the post-Roe abortion underground, how activists are working to get abortion pills to Americans in states where abortion is banned. I'll be back here with the news tomorrow.
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