[Cuomo:] So, just after 8:30 there in the east. Getting ready. If you haven't left yet, you want to know what's going on outside. There's a lot of wind. There's a lot of weather out there. Indra Petersons is following it for us. Indra.
[Indra Petersons, Ams Meteorologist:] Yes, I mean a big, major storm we saw move across the Ohio Valley yesterday and today we're still talking about severe thunderstorm watches. So if you're in Philadelphia this morning, you're really seeing those winds kicking up. We still have the potential there for winds as high as 70 miles per hour. And they're not the only ones. Still strong winds, just not as strong as in Philly, are really going to be all the way even through the Northeast, New England again, all the way down even stretching to the Carolinas. So gusts today as high as about 50 miles per hour. And really a lot of you are already seeing these strong winds. So much so that we are talking about air travel delays. LaGuardia, right now, seeing delays over three hours. Philly almost about two-hour delays. Again, that's thanks to those really strong winds that are kind of blowing out there. Taking a look at some of the winds we are currently seeing. Notice, Buffalo, gusting right now to about 53 miles per hour. Philly gusting to about 35. New York City currently gusting to about 33. Boston, same thing, very strong winds, about 35 miles per hour. Very easy to see though as you look across the country what's going on. You see that one system, all this moisture kind of making its way to the Northeast, that a system trying to go offshore. That's also the reason it feels so warm today. You're getting all that warm air really kind of filling in. This is going to change. All of this cool and dry air behind it will start to fill in. Let's take a look at the cold front as we go through the weekend. There are three of them, one, two, three, going right into the Northeast. That is going to bring very cold, arctic air into place. So by the end of the weekend, even though you're talking about beautiful 70s today in New York City, looking for 71, Boston 72, look at the drop. By Sunday, your highs are just going to be in the upper 40s. That means your overnight lows are going to be 20s and 30s. So big change for the weekend.
[Bolduan:] Big change. Break out the big coat.
[Petersons:] Yes, every time I fly, just so you know, don't fly because three-hour delays again, I'm flying today. Just a little mental note.
[Bolduan:] Good mental note. You need to give us an alert next time
[Petersons:] Absolutely.
[Bolduan:] So we can adjust our travel plans.
[Petersons:] Yes, bad luck.
[Cuomo:] Up side, maybe you get to use the cell phone and the iPad.
[Petersons:] Yes.
[Bolduan:] A silver lining. Nice for a Friday. Thanks, Indra.
[Petersons:] Sure.
[Bolduan:] All right, we want to give you an update now on that wild trial out of Utah. The cause of death is now an issue in the murder trial of Martin MacNeill. Prosecutors say the former Utah doctor drugged, killed his wife to be with his mistress. They hope that the latest people to take the stand can help corroborate that. Here's CNN's Ted Rowlands.
[Ted Rowlands, Cnn Correspondent:] Today, Dr. Martin MacNeill could expect to see some old friends, four inmates he met in federal prison who are set to testify against him claiming he admitted to them that he killed his wife. Their identities are being kept secret for their protection. MacNeill's defense team says they're ready for them.
[Randall Spencer, Defense Attorney:] Every witness that we have in this case, we obviously are prepared for.
[Rowlands:] Thursday, the prosecution addressed its biggest hurdle, cause of death. While they believe the doctor killed his wife, 50- year-old Michele MacNeill, by drowning her in a bathtub after giving her a toxic combination of drugs, none of the three medical examiner reports ruled her death a homicide.
[Dr. Todd Cameron Grey, Chief Medical Examiner For The State Of Utah:] I did not feel that I could reach a conclusion of homicide.
[Rowlands:] Utah Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Todd Gray says Michele's cause of death was likely a combination of heart problems and drugs, but thinks that the drug levels found in Michele MacNeill's body were too low to suggest an intentional overdose. But he did testify that it's technically possible that the prosecution's theory is correct.
[Unidentified Male:] If you were to learn that the defendant here had told somebody or others that he had drugged up Michele MacNeill, would that scenario be consistent with how Michele MacNeill may have died here?
[Grey:] Yes, it certainly is possible.
[Rowlands:] In addition Thursday, Martin MacNeill's daughter, Alexis, continued her testimony. Also a physician, she was suspicious from the beginning and pushed investigators to pursue a case against her father.
[Alexis Somers, Martin Macneill's Daughter:] I believe my father killed her.
[Rowlands:] During cross-examination, Defense Attorney Randall Spencer used inconsistencies in statements over the years to imply that she and her sisters were lying to implicate their father.
[Spencer:] You've made up the story that you told today since this interview, haven't you?
[Somers:] No, I have not.
[Rowlands:] Ted Rowlands, CNN, Provo, Utah.
[Cuomo:] Tough talk to have with the daughter of the defendant. Let's break it down now with Danny Cevallos, CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney, and Sunny Hostin, CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor. Good to have you both. TGIF to you. Sunny, thanks for being here. I can only safely assume that Vinnie Politan is hiding from me because of his "my goodness" campaign, and now the prosecution puts on their witnesses, their M.E. witnesses, and they're saying it's possible this could have happened, I don't really see it myself but maybe sounds like defense testimony going on. How did you see it?
[Sunny Hostin, Cnn Legal Analyst:] I saw it the same exact way, Chris. I mean usually when the medical examiner testifies for the government, that's your day, that's the big day for the government. You usually bookend that testimony, meaning you want to end on the medical examiner. I don't think I've seen a case where I've had three not one, not two, but three medical exercises all say that it was either natural causes or perhaps heart disease plus toxicity, or even perhaps drowning, and none of them can say definitively this is a homicide in terms of the cause of death. It was a terrible day for the prosecution, and I think at this point what they really do need in a case like this, in a circumstantial case is, they need a confession, but not a confession necessarily to an inmate, to a jailhouse snitch.
[Cuomo:] All right.
[Hostin:] And so I look at this case, Vinnie, and I think possibly game over already.
[Cuomo:] One, you just called me Vinnie. Two
[Hostin:] Oh, did I say that?
[Cuomo:] Danny, you have a very nice pocket square on today, but I don't know why you're so confident because, one, you just yelled at the guy's daughter on the stand. Everybody's sympathetic to her. You're calling her a liar. And there are people you told that your client told that he did this. And even though they're coming from a jail, people want to believe that he did it, maybe sitting on that jury. How do you deal with that?
[Danny Cevallos, Cnn Legal Analyst:] That's the key. The people that he allegedly told are not his priest. They are not his psychiatrist. They are jailhouse snitches. And study after study shows that jailhouse snitches are not only incredibly unreliable, but they result in a lot of false convictions. Think about it. These same people at a trial, their own trial, maybe a year before, the prosecution was talking about what a horrible, lying person this jailhouse snitch was. That same prosecution put them in jail and now they're holding hands with them in another trial and talking about what a reliable witness they are. Jailhouse snitches simply are not reliable. So the fact that they are telling the story, we can evaluate the veracity, the validity of the story based on who is telling it. And in this case, the jailhouse snitches will not be able to overcome that bit of sound that we just heard from the M.E., which is, it's certainly possible that that's how she died. Expect to hear that again in closing.
[Cuomo:] No, but link it. But you have to link it. You have to link it. The possibly goes to if you heard somebody say it. So now they bring the person on. Danny Cevallos and any good defense attorney, Sunny is going to beat your witness over the head with a stick saying, you're in jail, you're bad, you're a liar. But here's the key maybe for the prosecution, so is the defendant. That, you know, you may not have you may have an equivalency of character. Ordinarily you can say the defendant is so much a better person than this person you're bringing in from jail to talk about them, but maybe that doesn't work here. Thoughts?
[Hostin:] Yes. You know, I've used jailhouse snitches before. I've used cooperators. I've used informants in court. And some of them actually I disagree with Danny, some of them are quite reliable. I think juries sometimes do believe them. My issue with this case, Chris, not Vinnie, is that, you know, you've got such a circumstantial case and you have these M.E.s that can't classify the death as a homicide. In a case like that, when you don't have any eyewitnesses to the alleged murder, you don't have anyone seeing him drug her, you don't have anyone seeing him drown her, you really do need a confession, but a confession perhaps to a police officer, to an undercover detective. A confession to a jailhouse snitch, given the context of the evidence, I'm just not sure that it gets the prosecution where the prosecution needs to be in a first- degree murder case. I mean they've got to prove intent. This is the highest of the highest bars in homicide cases. I just I think possibly there's overcharging here, but they're pretty far away from a first-degree murder conviction in my opinion.
[Cuomo:] Overcharging meaning they went for too harsh a homicide here for what they could prove in intent beyond a reasonable doubt. And also, where's the proof of killing her in the bathtub? Where is that proof? Forget your sides for a second. Somebody give me a good argument for what we've seen introduced at trial that goes in as proof for how she died in the bathtub that comes to his hands? Anybody? Anybody got anything?
[Cevallos:] I'll go further than that. I'll go further than that. I mean the prosecution has to has to prove what we call corpus delicti. It's not enough to have a dead body. You have to prove not only that the death was unnatural, but beyond that, that it was the cause of criminality, and then beyond that, that the criminality was done by the doer, in this case the defendant. It's a really difficult burden in a case like this where you simply have an undetermined manner of death and the prosecution may never be able to get around that problem.
[Cuomo:] And yet, at the end of the day, when we talk about juries and nullification, it is always about whether or not they are able to see the proof for what it is. And you have a case here that is unlike any I've seen in quite some time, where there's going to be such motivation you have to believe by those jurors to want to find this man guilty. I know that's not their job, but it's almost emotionally impossible that, Sunny, let's end with you here, when they hear everything this man said, everything this man has done, that he's inconsistent about his stories about this situation, and if there's any really good chance that she died from an unnatural situation, it almost had to be him. Could it be enough?
[Hostin:] Yes, and, you know, I think it could be because they've painted him out to be such a bad guy. I mean what father has three of his daughters testify against him and one yesterday saying, I believe my father did it. When you look at that, I think, you know, you may have that juror that says, I've got to convict this guy. He's such a bad guy. He's had all of these affairs. His daughters hate him. He's not a good guy. He's probably guilty. But that, in my view, is not how our system is supposed to work. That's really not enough. Probably guilty is not guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
[Cuomo:] Sunny Hostin, thank you and thank you for the huge compliment, confusing me with Vinnie. He is a handsome and intelligent man. Danny Cevallos, neither of us are as good looking as you are, so thank you very much. Have a good weekend, to both of you. It's one of the reasons that this is such an intriguing case, because you have someone whose character seems to make them one kind of person, but can you prove it? Kate, that's what our system's all about. You only know what you show in court.
[Bolduan:] Thanks, Chris. Coming up on NEW DAY, Axe body spray is supposed to make men irresistible, but could it also make your kids sick? That is next.