Opening Statements in the Boston Bombing Trial
CABRERA: He believed he was a soldier in a holy war, that's how prosecutors describe Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Opening statements in his federal trial began today. The 21-year-old accused of setting off a series of deadly bombs near the finish line of the 2013 Boston marathon. Now, three people died, including an 8-year-old boy. More than 260 others were injured, some severely having to lose limbs. Now Tsarnaev's attorney took kind of surprising approach in her opening statement before a packed courtroom. She said her client is guilty, that that he was unduly influenced by his older brother, Tamerlan who died in a police shooting after the bombings. CNN's Alexandra Field is in Boston who has been following today's proceeding. Alexandra, what else happened in court today? What stood out to you?</s>ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Ana. The defense isn't even doing cross-exam of a lot of witnesses that the prosecution already brought forward. We're seeing incredibly graphic images of the injuries that were suffered, video of the immediate aftermath of the marathon bombing and we're hearing just incredibly emotional testimony from the survivors, talking about the pain they experienced on that day. The prosecution opened up the trial today making their opening statement, building their case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. And in that opening statement they spoke in just excruciating detail about the extent of the injuries suffered by the three people who died at the finish line, the 260 others who were injured. The defense, Ana, then got up and said they're not here to dispute the facts of the case. They don't dispute Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's involvement at the marathon, in a carjacking, in the death of an MIT officer, in the shoot-out with Watertown police. But say they are here to draw a distinction about what motivated him to do this. They say that he's a young man unduly influenced by his brother, the mastermind of this. The prosecution says that in fact Dzhokhar was self-radicalized and that he spewing the rhetoric of Al-Qaeda. He left behind a note that parroted that rhetoric before he was found. What's the difference here, Ana? Why does all of this matter? Well, it comes down to phase two of this trial which is the penalty part of the trial. Seventeen of these charges come with a possible death sentence. So the defense will work over the next couple weeks or even months to build a sympathetic a portrait as possible of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev -- Ana.</s>CABRERA: Alexandra Field, thanks you for summing it up for us. The most talked about email address in politics today is hdr22@Clintonemail.com, that's the private email account of Hillary Clinton. The one she used as secretary of state, according to the Associated Press. This was linked to her own server. And now, her critics are having a field day asking why she didn't use a government account and whether she was trying to hide something. Let's talk more about this with A.B. Stoddard, the associate editor at "the Hill." Thanks so much, A.B. Clinton aid say nothing is nefarious what's going on. They turned over email requests. Some 55,000 pages of emails, in fact. Is that a good enough answer?</s>A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, THE HILL: No, it's not. I mean, even if you give Mrs. Clinton the benefit of the doubt that she's turned over everything, and that even maybe what she did wasn't illegal, I still think you have to look at the political damage it's going to do because of how it looks. You're the secretary of state. You have been involved in the highest levels of diplomacy with countries all over the globe and you choose not to ever conduct business on your government email, that you're instructed to do so when you arrive on the job. No one knew better than Hillary Clinton that when you work in government your communications are no longer private and they're no longer yours. That they are archived when you leave, they have to be captured by the system every single day, every single hour. She obviously aggressively worked around the system to conduct her business only in private, from a server of her own that was located in upstate New York. Just look at what this looks like to voters who don't know the Clintons' background, the history of their secrecy especially hers but not interested in anyone in government covering anything up. They want complete transparency. They want all of government online, millenials especially. They don't want their emails and their phones looked at by the government but think the government should be open and don't like any kind of indication that people are playing by another set of rules.</s>CABRERA: And you do have to wonder, too, if she were thinking about a presidential campaign, didn't she think that this was going to come up at some point? Now, I want to throw in another presidential contender's name, Jeb Bush. He was very outspoken after this, hammered Clinton tweeting this. Transparency matters, unclassified Hillary Clinton emails should be released. And you can see mine here. I mean, he put out some 250,000 plus pages of his own emails. But now we learn that he had his own server as well that he was using and he chose which emails to disseminate. So could that be a problem for him?</s>STODDARD: You know, it's going to be less of a problem for him simply because there's a huge field of other contenders. Mrs. Clinton certainly knew when she took the secretary of state job in 2009. She was likely to run for president again. It was very, very possible. She didn't know she'd be alone in the field. But Democrats are worried now that this is something that she is standing in a solo field, sort of the presumptive nominee, not being challenged in a primary process. They're worried she's not even have debates. What this will do to her when she faces someone ultimately in general election like maybe Jeb Bush. And because she's under investigation by the committee in the Congress over the death of one of our ambassadors and three other people, this story about where these emails are and what they say will be the subject line of her candidacy if, and unless and until she produces the emails. That's not Jeb Bush's problem right now. She also made her feelings dealing as secretary of state more insecure, subject to hackers from unfriendly nations, all her communications vulnerable by refusing to use a secure system.</s>CABRERA: Well, in fact, one of the concerns, the exact security measures taken we don't know yet.</s>STODDARD: And that's not the same as the governor in Florida.</s>CABRERA: A.B. Stoddard, we got to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me. I really do appreciate it.</s>STODDARD: Thanks.</s>CABRERA: Up next, just a day after a major speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, we have new information about the nuclear negotiations with Iran and whether they just hit a snag. Plus, 56 years later why the NTSB is considering taking a closer look at that infamous plane crash that killed rock star Buddy Holly amongst other famous musicians.