and continued to play. they waved it off as to say, they accept our apology. the trouble began when the ball bounced off a police car again. at that point, the officer got out and confronted him. he went over to my you thing brother and said you re under arrest. anthony was telling him, he knows his rights. he said, i know what you re doing is wrong. and the officer, he grabbed tony henry, demonstrate for me what you saw the officer do to your brother. what i saw him do on the opposite side, i was on the sidewalk. i saw the officer come around and bring him back like this, taking him down. tony eventually was taken to the hospital. the city s medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, saying tony died from asphyxia due to compression of his neck and chest and acute asthma. the similarities between the anthony baez case and the eric garner case are almost
oath. and federal prosecutors filed similar rights charges. more than three years after the assault, the officer was convicted and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. so will we see similar charges in garner s case? and how could a federal case be made? joining me now is zachary carter. corporation counsel of the city of new york and former u.s. attorney. thank you for being here. zachary, your office investigated if there was a pattern of misconduct in the nypd after the baez and la weema cases and you prosecuted the police officers in the la weema case, a case i was involved in too as you can see. it s your old office that would bring charges in the eric garner case. what would they be looking at now? they ll be evaluating the record of the evidence that was gathered by the state authorities.
federal sghcase? do you think the feds will move in here? i am optimistic. you have to be optimistic. we ve seen it in the case of anthony baez about 20 years ago as well where the department of justice did intervene. find out his civil rights have been violated and that officer went to jail. there have been opportunities where the department of justice has intervened. that has resulted in justice for the victims. and i really, my heart goes out to the fam loo. the garner family is one that we all suffer. and that family does not have him coming home at night. so for something that as you ve been showing in the video over and over was just incredible to see happen before our eyes. i m totally with you. thank you, madam speaker and michael steel. it s a tricky matter, but i think you were very clear. when we come back, much more on the garner case and what law enforcement can be doing differently. this is hardball, the place for politics. i ve been called a control freak.
from their comrades, their teammates, a lot of institutional pressure to be very reelectrluctant to pull th trigger an cases. they would much rather the u.s. attorney s office be dealing with it than a local elected prosecutor who has to work every day with the men and women in the police force. susan, we were talking about the anthony baez case that you represented. so many similarities between that case and eric garner s. i want to play a part of the today show from 1995 when his family was interviewed. let s watch this. baez was playing touch football with his brothers late one night when the football hit a police car. officer lavodi tried to break up the game, and it ended up in a struggle with baez. demonstrate what you saw the officer do to your brother? what i saw him do on the
biased against mr. baez because of his sexual orientation or religion or gender, then that s a federal crime. if it s just an ordinary oid, it s not a federal crime. and the issue there is, again, if it s a federal civil rights claim, there s got to be purposeful intent. negligence or recklessness would be good enough for a homicide in a state case but not for a federal case. so it s a much higher bar. in this case, the officer who put what appears to be in choke hold on mr. garner before he died, has had a couple of complaints, lawsuits, civil lawsuits brought against him just over the past couple of years from three different people alleging that he made essentially racially charged decisions to treat them improperly as a police officer. wi would that sort of evidence factor into a decision by federal prosecutors in this or would they be looking only at the interaction that happened between the man who was killed and the officer in this one instance? federal prosecutors, like