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U.S. Teen Runaway Deported to Colombia; Casey Anthony Apparently Resurfaces; President Obama Unveils New Military Strategy; Gingrich Speaks To Supporters; Oklahoma Woman Kills Home Invader; Hope on Jobs Front; App Turns Phones Into Walkie Talkies

Aired January 05, 2012 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour. I'm Suzanne Malveaux. I want to get you up to speed.

President Obama just this last hour announced plans for a leaner, cheaper, more agile military. One he says that will maintain its superiority and its ability to fight terrorism as well as confront new threats around the world. The president says his strategy is centered on the military the country needs after the long wars of the last decade are over.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That's why I called for this comprehensive defense review, to clarify out strategic interests in a fast-changing world and to guide our defense priorities in spending over the coming decade, because the size and the structure of our military and defense budgets have to be driven by a strategy, not the other way around.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: The race is on. In New Hampshire, the nation's first primary, just five days away, and the candidates, well, they are fanning out across the state today. Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman have all had campaign events already today, and all of them but Romney have more stops in New Hampshire throughout the day.

Romney heads to South Carolina. That states holds the country's first southern primary. That is on January 21st.

A police officer is dead, five others are wounded. This, out of Ogden, Utah.

Jared Francom and his fellow officers were shot while serving a search warrant in a drug bust. Now, Francom had served on the Ogden police force for seven years. Police say the suspect was also shot, but is expected to survive.

A young mother in Oklahoma, baby in her arms -- right? -- grabs a shotgun when two men break down her door. She barricades herself and then calls 911. Now listen to this.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've got two guns in my hand. Is it OK to shoot him if he comes in this door?

911 OPERATOR: Well, you have to do whatever you can do to protect yourself. I can't tell you that you can do that, but you do what you have to do to protect your baby.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Here's what happens next. She opened fire. One of the home invaders is killed.

We are all over this story today. In a few minutes, you're going to find out why the intruder who survived is facing murder charges.

And do you know if your state has a stand-your-ground law or a castle law? That, too, coming up.

Three sisters who died in a horrific Christmas morning house fire are being remembered at a public mass in New York today. Ten-year-old Lily Badger and 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah died, as well as their grandparents. The fire marshal in Stamford, Connecticut, he believes that smoldering embers from a fireplace started that fire.

A former Libyan military officer who fought against Moammar Gadhafi's troops last year is now the country's new chief of armed forces. Youssef Mangoush worked as a field commander in the battles against Gadhafi forces back in February. He was arrested by the Gadhafi military in April. Now, this appointment comes as Libya's new interim government is working to disarm the militias that emerged during the war between Gadhafi forces and rebels.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai seems to be ready to endorse talks between the U.S. and the Taliban. In a palace statement, Karzai says -- quoting here -- "Afghanistan, to save the country from war, conspiracies, the killing of innocent Afghans, and reach peace, agrees with the talks between the United States and Taliban that will end up in establishing an office for Taliban in Qatar."

Karzai's announcement comes a day after the Taliban tentatively agreed to open an office in Qatar for talks on the Afghan conflict.

Well, she was a teenage runaway from Texas, and after a year-long search, her family finally found her. Where? In Colombia. How did she get there? Well, she was deported by U.S. immigration, who mistakenly thought she was an illegal immigrant. Now her family, they want some answers.

Ed Lavandera, he is live in Dallas.

Ed, this is such a bizarre story. Very hard to believe how all of this happened.

Explain how it is that you've got a runaway, an American, who's deported. ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Suzanne, this is simply baffling on many, many levels. But this story starts out in November of 2010.

Fourteen-year-old Jakadrien Turner lives here in the Dallas, Texas area. She runs away from home.

Over the course of the next several months, her family works to kind of try to figure out where she might be. We'll cut forward to April of last year.

She's arrested for shoplifting at a mall in Houston, Texas, and instead of giving authorities -- she didn't have any identification on her. Instead of giving authorities her real name, she tells the local investigators there that she is Tika Cortez (ph), 21 years old. She's booked into the jail there, she goes through the process, pleads guilty to the shoplifting, spends four days in jail.

During that time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, put a hold on her. So, after she served that sentence, she gets reprimanded over to ICE custody. And according to ICE officials, she had been telling them that she was from Colombia.

Houston PD says that they do not ask citizenship of anyone they arrest, so they say that that information wouldn't have come from them. But ICE officials insist that she declared herself as a Colombian.

She was then deported. And then, to get deported into Colombia, she had to get the necessary paperwork from the Colombian government. So, basically, what we know so far is this 14-year-old girl, 15 now, was able to fool local authorities, also the ICE agents and ICE officials, and the immigration process. And on top of that, the Colombian government, to get the necessary paperwork to get deported back into Colombia without any of her own identification.

Her family insists that there is no way this 14-year-old girl could have pulled this off alone. They think there is something much more sinister going on here.

MALVEAUX: Ed, do we know why she claimed she was from Colombia? Was she trying to get away from her family and she wanted to be taken to Colombia? Why did that happen?

LAVANDERA: You know, why Colombia is completely unclear. There is a lot of people who have been working with the family who have some theories as to what might be going on. But why she would say Colombia, and how she would end up there, and then at the point of being deported at the very last minute, why not raise her hand and say, whoa, wait a second, I'm not who I say I am? They don't understand that.

We have learned from officials in Colombia that as soon as they were told about this -- and Dallas detectives have been working with various agencies to track her down in Colombia -- that she is now in the custody of essentially, I think the best way, is a government agency that almost runs like a foster care situation. So we do know that she is in the custody of officials in Colombia that they say are looking after her, and that they are in the process of working on it to get her sent back.

But remember, she's been given paperwork that says she is a Colombian citizen, so all of that has to be revoked. And all of this very confusing. We're trying to get word from Colombian government officials as to where all of this stands and how all of this could have happened. So the big story here is that this girl has fooled many people on many different levels, and it's absolutely bizarre.

MALVEAUX: And Ed, are immigration officials from the United States, are they explaining this, saying how this could happen? I assume that they took her fingerprints and that there was a process that she went through.

LAVANDERA: Well, in my conversations with the federal authorities here in the United States, they say that this name that she had given him, Tika Cortez (ph), came back as someone who was not in their system, so that this was a brand-new name, brand-new fingerprints, and because of that it wasn't anyone. Some of the initial reporting in this case said that Tika Cortez (ph) actually matched someone who was a criminal illegal immigrant that needed to be deported, so there is some question here and some confusion.

ICE insists that this person was not in their records, that they didn't deport someone that they didn't already know about, and so all of this is very confusing. They say that they just learned about this a couple of days ago and that they are still tracking down all the facts in this case, and that they are taking this very seriously, obviously.

MALVEAUX: Yes, it is very confusing, Ed. OK. Thank you very much.

Obviously, still a lot of questions regarding that kind of immigration snafu that happened with that young woman.

Thanks, Ed.

Here's a rundown of some of the stories that we are covering over the next hour.

First, apparently we haven't heard the last of Casey Anthony. She may have reappeared now on YouTube. But is it really her?

And just last hour, President Obama announced a new defense strategy. We're going to break down that plan.

Then, how does Rick Santorum really feel? Well, we're going to look into the views of the man who almost won the Iowa caucuses.

And instant voice chats, how a former soldier uses technology to help other soldiers phone home.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've got two guns in my hand. Is it OK to shoot him if he comes in this door?

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: The answer to that question, not always yes. We're taking a look at, when is it legal to open fire?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Well, we haven't seen her in months, but a woman who multiple sources say is Casey Anthony, the Orlando mother who was accused of killing her child, apparently appearing in a video diary online.

Well, my colleague Ashleigh Banfield covered her murder trial extensively last summer.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Suzanne, it's just really such an unusual video. And I can tell you from staring across a courtroom at Casey Anthony for 80 days, it certainly does look a lot like her. I've also spoken to the NBC producer who confirmed this through Casey's camp, and it is, according to him, without question Casey Anthony.

And here's what's so unusual about this. Casey says on tape that she taped this in October. It's just surfacing now. And perhaps what the most strange aspect of this tape is that she doesn't say a word about the biggest legal story last year that involved her, a death penalty murder trial involving the death of her daughter Caylee. Doesn't say a word about the death of Caylee, doesn't say a word about the actual trial, doesn't say a word about being acquitted, doesn't say a word about being in jail, and doesn't talk about her family.

She's in a hiding location. She has been since she was released from prison. And she does say something along the lines of how much things have changed. have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just a little surreal of how much things that changed since July and how many things haven't changed. But the good thing is that things are starting to look up and things are starting to change in a good way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Short of that, she goes into really nothing else except hopefully leaving the location from which she's broadcasting. She says possibly February, because she's hoping for an early release from her probation.

But here's the deal -- she's in hiding because the judge acknowledged the danger that she faces because of the hatred towards this woman. And if she does actually leave her location, then she's just going to be among the masses, the rest of us. And who knows what her life will be after that? She does say there are going to be more videos though -- Suzanne. MALVEAUX: All right. Thanks, Ashleigh.

In the video, there's also no mention of Anthony's parents. She did say she adopted a dog and she says she loves the dog. So there you go.

U.S. defense at a turning point now. President Obama wants a leaner, agile, more technologically advanced military. The president laid out the plan to revamp strategy just in the last hour at the Pentagon as well. We brought that to you live.

Our Chris Lawrence, he was in the briefing room.

Chris, first of all, having covered the Pentagon for some time, and you being there, this is the first time that you've actually had a president in the Pentagon briefing room make this kind of announcement. What is the significance of that, actually going and showing up with his top brass?

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Still don't know, Suzanne.

It is 2012. It's an election year. You don't want to ascribe political motives to a move like this.

But there have been a lot of big events to come out of the Pentagon in the last decade or so -- the launch of the war in Iraq, the post-9/11 attack in Afghanistan, the killing of Osama bin Laden -- and none of that merited an actual appearance by the president behind the podium here. But this is a major, major shift in strategy when you talk about going from a two-war strategy down to a one-war -- or one-war strategy, and then deploy troops to fight off other adversaries as needed. That's a big shift.

They're also going to draw down the size of the Army and the Marine Corps significantly. You could be down to about what it was pre-9/11. So these are some very big strategic changes that are coming up in the next five to 10 years.

MALVEAUX: And Chris, why are they doing this?

LAWRENCE: Well, bottom line, they'll say that the strategy drives everything else, but we heard from the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs that, look, the fiscal crisis forced them to address this new strategy right now. And that's the bottom line.

You've got a half a trillion dollars in cuts to make, possibly even more depending on what Congress does. And they simply can't afford to do everything. So you can't have these extra 70,000, 80,000 troops in uniform, and providing for their pay, their retirement, everything else, while at the same time, trying to repair equipment that was damaged or run down during the wars, and project force into Asia and the Pacific, which is where the president and the Pentagon now says will be the focus of U.S. military efforts going forward.

MALVEAUX: And Chris, one last question here. How do they explain that they're going to be able to maintain national security, our safety here, if they are making these kinds of drastic cuts?

LAWRENCE: Well, what they're saying is basically that the wars are changing. I talked with one official who said, look, if you think the greatest danger is right around the corner, then you keep the size of the Army very, very large right now. But if you think the threats are only going to grow down the road five, 10, 15 years, then it makes sense to draw down a little bit now and put that money into weapons systems, research, development, things like that, and then be able to adapt that when those threats do emerge later on.

MALVEAUX: All right.

Chris Lawrence.

Thank you, Chris.

So now it's your chance to "Talk Back." Today's question: Is President Obama's military plan the right move for the United States?

Experts are already weighing in with very strong opinions on this. James Carafano with The Heritage Foundation -- it is a conservative policy research group -- he says, "It's a ticket to World War II. It is the worst idea ever."

On the flip side, Larry Korb of the Center for American Progress, he refers to the U.S. spending more money on defense than any other country in the world. He says, "We already spend more than the next 17 other countries combined. We've got to put this into perspective. Who are we going to fight? What are their forces?"

So tell us what you think. Today's "Talk Back" question: Is President Obama's military plan the right move for the United States?

Post your responses to my Facebook page at Facebook.com/SuzanneCNN. We're going to air some your responses later in the hour.

So, we want you to forget for a minute the polls, the politicking here. Where do the candidates really stand on some of these tough issues? We're taking a hard look at what the White House hopefuls plan to do about the war in Afghanistan.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: It's been a decade of war and counting. So whoever is sitting in the White House next year is going to have some enormous responsibility of deciding what to do about Afghanistan.

President Obama has promised to remove 33,000 more troops by the end of next summer. The Republican candidates have all been critical of his approach, but they vary greatly amongst themselves about the best way forward.

So, here's where they stand on the issue.

Mitt Romney, the front-runner, says it's up to the generals on the ground to decide when it's safe to pull out, and he favors a more gradual handoff to Afghan forces.

Jon Huntsman says the call should be made by the commander-in-chief, not the generals. He says the American people are tired of war, it's time to bring the troops home now.

Ron Paul also wants to bring the troops home immediately. Not just from Afghanistan, but foreign military bases from all over the world.

Rick Santorum says insurgents are just waiting for troops to leave. He says we should stay in Afghanistan as long as we have to, and he opposes a timetable for withdrawal.

Newt Gingrich has also been critical of President Obama's timeline for withdrawal. Now, he wants a change of approach in Afghanistan and to move the focus to the larger long-term war on what he calls Islamic extremism in general.

Rick Perry wants to bring troops home as soon and as safely as we can depending on the situation on the ground.

Tune in tomorrow, when we're going to take a look at where the candidates stand on another tough issue -- securing the border.

Well, listen to the voice of this young woman. She has a shotgun in her hand. This is after home invaders break down her door.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've got two guns in my hand. Is it OK to shoot him if he comes in this door?

911 OPERATOR: Well, you have to do whatever can do to protect yourself. I can't tell you that you can do that, but you do what you have to do to protect your baby.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: So she was in her home with a gun when an armed intruder broke in. We're going to tell you what happened next, and we're going to discuss what you're legally allowed to do if you're in that situation.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Here's a rundown of some of the stories that we are working on.

Next, a young woman shoots an armed home intruder to death. Full details and a conversation about whether you'd be legally cleared if that happened to you.

And then, cautious optimism on the job front. We are live from the New York Stock Exchange.

And then later, a great idea born on the battlefield in Afghanistan. It's a cool new app that turns your phone into a walkie-talkie. But first, we want to go to a live event that we're keeping our eye on. This is Newt Gingrich at a town hall in Littleton, New Hampshire. Let's listen in.

(BEGIN LIVE SPEECH)

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

NEWT GINGRICH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I think that I am the only person that can defeat Obama, because I am the only person who can create a clear choice between a Reagan conservatism and the European socialist model that Obama wants. And I'm not afraid to defend free enterprise. And as "The Wall Street Journal" reported, the governor said he was afraid to defend the successful because he thought it was a dead loser.

I'm in the Margaret Thatcher tradition. She said first you win the argument, then you win the vote. Believe me, I look forward to winning the argument with Barack Obama, and I am confident that with your help we will defeat him.

And I look forward to your questions.

(APPLAUSE)

GINGRICH: Do we have a microphone? Yes.

OK. Why don't you -- this gentleman here in the red, and we'll work our way across. We're going to work our way across, and then back around here.

DR. JOHN ANDERSON (ph), RETIRED NUCLEAR PHYSICIST: It is an honor to meet you.

GINGRICH: Thank you.

ANDERSON: My name is Dr. John Anderson (ph). I'm a retired nuclear physicist. And I live up in Pittsburgh, New Hampshire.

I want to say one thing first, and then I have a question. So you don't get accused of attacking Romney, I lived in Massachusetts when he was governor, and you're telling the absolute truth because I lived through it. And anybody -- there's just no difference. You call him a moderate, and that's being generous, because he's -- I don't even think he qualifies for being a moderate.

And as a Vietnam vet, I was pretty upset with a certain person that endorsed him the other day. But in any case, my question is this, as a nuclear physicist.

I'm very concerned that Iran has developed a fuel rod. If they have developed a fuel rod, then they're next door to a nuclear weapon very easily.

And certainly with the missile system they have, it is close enough that this is now going to threaten not only the Gulf, but Israel. So that's my first question, is what you would do there.

My second question is, is that I think it's a terrible security situation where we're borrowing all this money from China. You know? I still remember Tiananmen Square, and I'm sure a lot of other people do, too. And for us to be this indebted to a communist country to me puts us in a security breach.

Those are my two questions, sir.

GINGRICH: Well, they're really different. Let me start with the second one for a second.

Callista and I were in China in the summer of 2009, and we had this very funny series of dinners. We went through Beijing, and then we went north to a variety of cities in Manchuria.

And every where we went -- this was with Obama's stimulus and all this stuff they were doing -- every evening we'd have dinner with senior Chinese officials. And everywhere we went they'd say to us, why have you given up on capitalism? We're really worried because we don't want to buy any more of your debt. We really think you should get rid of these people who want to go to government control.

"Don't you know anything? You don't want to have government control. It doesn't work."

Now, these are the Chinese lecturing us on capitalism, and they just thought what we were doing in the stimulus is crazy. They said, you're borrowing money from us to throw it away.

So your point is well made. I am committed to getting back to a balanced budget. I'm the only candidate in the race who has four times helped develop a balanced budget. And I can assure you, I will undertake the steps necessary to get us back to a balanced budget.

I am for a balanced budget amendment, and I am for running a surplus until we get the debt down to about 40 percent of GDP. And I think that has to be our goal, because it is dangerous to have that much debt overseas.

I'm also for dramatically rebuilding our manufacturing base, because you cannot be the arsenal of democracy if you don't have an arsenal. And we have to rebuild our manufacturing base in competition with China and India, and that's why I have such dramatic tax proposals to do that.

On nuclear weapons, this is my number one argument with Ron Paul. I helped create the Hart-Rudman Commission. And when I stepped down, President Clinton was very generous in appointing me to serve on it.

It served for three years looking at national security out to 2025. It reported in March of 2001, and it said the greatest single threat to the United States is a weapon of mass destruction in an American city, probably by a terrorist group. OK?

So I start -- you don't need to deliver these weapons by missiles. You can have a ship come into your harbor. You can have a cargo van come across the border. There are a lot of ways to deliver a nuclear weapon.

And I believe that the idea that Ron Paul has that it doesn't matter, if the Iranians have a nuclear weapon is unbelievably dangerous to the survival of the United States.

MALVEAUX: Newt Gingrich out of Littleton, New Hampshire taking on, one of his opponents, Ron Paul over the issue, hot-button issue of Iran.

A young mother in Oklahoma, baby in her arms, grabbed a shotgun when two men break down her door. She barricades herself and then calls 911. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH MCKINLEY, 911 CALLER: I've got two guns in my hand. Is it OK to shoot him if he comes in this door?

UNIDENTIFIED DISPATCHER: Well, you have to do whatever you can do to protect yourself. I can't tell you that you can do that, but you do what you have to do to protect your baby.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: So this is what happens next. The 18-year-old Sarah Dawn McKinley opens fire with the shotgun, killed the man she said broke down her door and entered her home. Now listen to her describe to HLN Dr. Drew what led up to the shooting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When he showed up on Thursday, what did he say to you?

MCKINLEY: When he showed up on Thursday, I answered the door and I kind of poked my head out, just, you know, to see what he wanted. And he said that he worked for my landlord and he had moved in on the property that I was on.

And there's 2,000 acres and he said that he moved somewhere back in there. And it was dark so you don't come introduce yourself to your neighbor late at night like that. And so that was the first thing that made me know that he wasn't good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You said that at that point was your sister and brother-in-law were there? Did they want to stay with you that night? Did they confront this guy?

MCKINLEY: Yes. They stayed with me because he had went to approach me when I opened the door and my sister's husband was standing behind the door and he didn't -- he did not realize that.

When he jerked the door open, my sister's husband, he stopped and you know, kind of hesitated and was stumbling over his words a lot and asked me who the man was. And I told him it was my sister's husband and just didn't seem right. He seemed very nervous, very --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sarah, when he was at the door pounding to get in, was he saying anything? Was he calling to you? Did he threaten you in any way?

MCKINLEY: No. No. But he first started knocking -- he knew that I was home because my son was screaming. He was in the bedroom. My son was screaming and I pushed the couch in front of the door and when I did the couch hit the door.

And it made a noise and he then started knocking more aggressively and more louder. Like it had made him mad so I got the shotgun and I put -- I went to the bedroom, put the bottle in the baby's mouth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: Sarah Dawn McKinley says that's when she pulled the trigger. The man whom she said entered her home is dead and the man who was with him is now facing murder charges.

I want to bring in Paul Callan in here. He's a criminal defense attorney and former New York City prosecutor. So, Paul, explain to us.

Before we get to the topic about whether or not she was justified in killing this home invader, the fact that she actually asked for permission on the phone is pretty extraordinary.

Explain to us why the accomplice here is actually the one who's facing the murder charges.

PAUL CALLAN, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, Oklahoma has a statute as do most American states called the felony murder rule. What it means basically is that if you're committing a serious felony and somebody dies in the course of the commission of that crime, you're chargeable with the murder.

More often than not you see it when, say, there is a hold-up and there is a look-out guy out in the car and two guys go in and pull the trigger. The guy in the car says I didn't know they were going to pull a gun and kill somebody.

Felony murder, he's guilty as they are guilty. This is a little bit unusual here because obviously this is one of the burglars who is being charged with the murder of a fellow burglar. But it is called the felony murder rule.

MALVEAUX: Is it a strong case for prosecutors to charge this accomplice to this crime?

CALLAN: Well, we have to look at the facts. Of course, he is presumed innocent at this point. One of the news accounts said that his initial claim to the police was that he was back looking over a fence while the accomplice was trying to get in. If that's not true, if the two of them planned to break in to the house and steal drugs, that would fall under the scope of the felony murder rule and he may be facing a murder conviction here. But it's not an easy case against the accomplice.

MALVEAUX: All right, Paul, stay right there. Want to talk next about what is called the castle doctrine. It's a law that allows Americans to defend themselves in their own homes and it doesn't apply everywhere. We're going to talk about that after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: So we were talking about the case of Sara Dawn McKinley, 18 years old with a baby. Her husband died of cancer on Christmas Day.

Now she says that two men broke into her home. They were armed. She was armed. She shot and killed one of these intruders. The other faces murder charges for that death.

Paul Callan is with us from New York. He's a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor. So Paul, let's talk a little bit about there. I want to read to you, it's Oklahoma state law.

It says that a person who is not engaging -- engaged in an unlawful activity, has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.

That is Oklahoma's version of the castle doctrine. Many states, not all of them, have this kind of law in place. What does it mean?

CALLAN: Well, you know, the law used to be in most states that you could use deadly physical force on somebody else if they were going to use that kind of force on you.

And then there were some cases involving home invasions where somebody used a shotgun to kill somebody coming in to the house and there was a question in court as to whether that was an overreaction to the threat.

So a lot of the states passed laws, which we call castle doctrine laws which basically say, if somebody is coming in to your house, breaking in to your house, you don't have a duty to retreat.

Out in the street, you have a duty to retreat. In your house, you have no duty to retreat in most states and you can use deadly physical force on that person even if they are not armed.

Now this differs from state to state, and you have to be very, very careful about what the law is in your particular jurisdiction. But basically somebody invades your house, you have the right to protect yourself.

MALVEAUX: All right, what about the distinction here. What if someone is already in your home? Can you kill -- legally kill anyone in your home that you feel is a threat? CALLAN: No. That gets much more complicated. In that case, the person has to actually be a threat. A reasonable person would have to look at the situation and say, he is a threat.

In that case, you would have the right to use force. So obviously if you invite somebody into your house and they pull a gun, and then try to steal something from you, yes, you can use lethal force on them.

But there is a lot of case law, and this is what gets very confusing for people. When you just defending property, but not your person, in some states you can't use that kind of force. You look at window, for instance, and somebody's stealing your car.

In most states, you can't poke a shotgun out window and shoot the person who's stealing your car even though they're a thief. That's defense of property and the level of force is less.

But if you're personally threatened, somebody's going to hurt you or hurt your baby, you have the right to protect yourself by using serious or lethal force in most American states. Just as Sarah did in Oklahoma.

MALVEAUX: Yes, a lot of people, Paul, they look at this case and they think, you know, if I had kids and my baby is in my arms, I'm going to do anything I can to protect them, right? You're going to shoot. Why is the castle doctrine even controversial?

CALLAN: Well, it is controversial because you look at Sarah's case. Everybody says, gee, this is clear as a bell, why are we worried about this? She did exactly the right thing.

But let me tell you about another Oklahoma case that happened a few years ago. Couple of teenage boys broke into a pharmacy and they were going to steal drugs in the pharmacy. The pharmacist pulled out a gun and shot one of them.

Then after the 16-year-old boy fell to the floor unconscious, the pharmacist went over and pumped five more bullets into him, killing him. Now he claimed essentially the castle doctrine. He said they were trying to steal from my pharmacy.

But was he justified in shooting the unconscious man five more times? He was charged with first degree murder and convicted by an Oklahoma jury because he was not threatened at the time he used the lethal force.

So this stuff gets very complicated when it plays out in real life. I have to tell you, Suzanne, having tried a lot of cases myself as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney, this thing about was self- defense there or not there, was use of force justified, it is what a lot of criminal trials really revolve around. So it is complicated in real life.

MALVEAUX: All right, Paul, thank you very much. Interesting case.

CALLAN: OK, nice being with you.

MALVEAUX: Thanks, Paul. Two new glimmers of hope today for the economy, but is it going to be enough to put people back to work? We'll have new details and an update on the markets.

And each week, we profile innovators, visionaries, folks who are agents of change. They are not household names. Not yet, at leaves, but they're movers and shakers in their own way.

We call it "THE NEXT LIST." This week, "THE NEXT LIST" is devoted to defining the idea of who is an agent of change.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Before the iPad, I used to joke that I made useless programs. But they are as useless as a song, a movie, a story, something like that.

All of a sudden with the iPad, I could just go directly to people and say, check this thing out. It doesn't even -- we don't even have to label what it is.

It is just called Gravel X. It is called Bubble Harp. See if you like it and all of a sudden they did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Not one, but two upbeat reports on the jobs front today. It all leads to tomorrow's big report from the government. Alison Kosik joins us from the New York Stock Exchange.

Alison, can we do the happy dance yet, or no?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I wouldn't quite do the happy dance just yet, Suzanne. You know, I talked with a few economists. They say, hold off on that happy dance because, yes, it's nice to see improvement in the jobs market, but, you know, not everybody's putting a lot of weight in the big job headline that we got today.

And the big headline came from ADP. That's the company that processes payrolls. It said that 325,000 jobs were added in December. And it's good news because, sure, it's double what was expected, it's the best in a year. But the reality is, it's a little questionable, though, because there may be some distortions because of some holiday hiring in December. But then you go ahead and you pair that up with another report we got, an upbeat report, on the number of people filing for first time jobless claims and then you see definite improvement.

And then I want to show you more improvement. Look at the past five years. In 2007, the recession started. We added just a half a million jobs. 2008, 2009, oh, yes, the job market fell off a cliff there. You saw some improvement in 2010. And now we're seeing even better. We saw in 2011, we add 1.9 million jobs in 2011. So, sure, things are improving. It just takes, you know, a little more of a trend here to see really this jobs recovery take hold.

Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: What do you think it's going to mean for tomorrow's jobs report from the government? Should we expect a big gain?

KOSIK: Well, I'll tell you this. Take that 325,000 private payrolls, those jobs added that we heard today, take that number kind of with a grain of salt because the reality is here the ADP reports, the government report that we'll get tomorrow, they don't always match up because of those seasonal adjustments that I mentioned. You know, they sometimes just throw the reports kind of off.

So, what the expectation for tomorrow is, is that 150,000 public and private jobs were added in December. There's also an expectation that the unemployment rate is going to tick higher, but that's not necessarily bad news because if that happens, it's likely because people are actually gaining confidence, they're out in the work force again. They count as unemployed because they are counted in the labor pool. So we shall see tomorrow. We'll have all those numbers for you, Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: How are the markets reacting to the numbers today?

KOSIK: You know what, stocks are well off their lows. You see the Dow is down 36. So doing a little better than before. But the upbeat sentiment from that jobs report also is kind of being trumped by new worries about Europe. We're watching the value of the euro falling. There are more fears about France's debt being downgraded. Greece is under pressure to push through austerity measures, which are clearly are not popular. So we've got those worries kind of coming into the market and putting out the good news about jobs.

Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: All right. We're going to be looking forward to seeing what those numbers look like tomorrow. Thanks, Alison.

Well, one soldier came up with an idea of instant voice chat technology while fighting in Afghanistan. We're going to show you how this technology is changing how we communicate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: People are texting more than ever, making communication less personal. But a former soldier decided to change it by creating an app that allows you to send instant voice chats. Now he got this idea when he needed better technology to talk to other soldiers on the battlefield. Our Dan Simon explains how this works.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For Tom Katis, the idea arose from the heat of battle.

SIMON (on camera): You were a communication specialist in the Army? TOM KATIS, CEO, VOXER: Yes. I was special forces communication sergeant.

SIMON (voice-over): And he found himself fighting in Afghanistan a year after 9/11. It was actually his second stint in the Army after this East Coast native graduated from Yale.

KATIS: If I ever thought of myself as a green beret, you know, then now's the time to do it. You know, if not me, who? If not now, when?

SIMON: Katis found battlefield communication challenging. And something he says that hadn't really evolved since World War II.

KATIS: You could only talk to one group, one individual, one channel at a time, yet you have to maintain multiples separate of them simultaneously.

SIMON: Ten years later, Voxer hits the Apple app store, born out of his war time experience. It's an app that essentially turns your Apple or Android device into a walkie-talkie, a 21st century version.

KATIS: It does all these other things. And so people are attracted to it because it's a walkie-talkie, and then all of a sudden they realize, well, it doesn't actually interrupt. I can talk and get a notification.

SIMON: It acts differently by storing all your messages in the cloud so users can listen to the message live or later and then respond.

ANDY KELLY, GENERAL MANAGER, VOXER: Hey, Dan. I'm here. I'm showing off the software.

SIMON: It's a lot like text-based messaging, but adding a voice it.

KELLY: And as I'm speaking, it should be streaming live. So what you see is that --

SIMON: Though it was first envisioned as a technology for the military, Voxer is for everyday consumers. And since it launched in iTunes in May, it's been gaining a cult following. Recently it even beating out FaceBook and Twitter as the number one download social networking app.

KELLY: Over the last month we've seen it just explode. And that's where we really started to feel like, we've got something here that's got some legs. We've got users in Saudi Arabia. We've got users in Brazil. We've got users in Asia.

SIMON: The company attributes the app's success to what it believes is a new form of social etiquette driven by young people -- less phone calls, more texting. Katis believes he's invented a new form of communication with the marriage of the traditional phone call and the text message.

SIMON (on camera): At this point, Voxer has not made a dime because it's a free app. KATIS: That's right. It's lost a lot of money. It's very standard to lose money at first and to -- you're trying to prove something new. And if you put up a big barrier of charging for it up front, then people aren't going to try it. So, it's a classic sort of premium model. You get people using it for free, and then you find a way to get some percentage of them to pay you for some better stuff.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: Dan Simon joins us from San Francisco to talk about the better stuff.

OK. So this, basically, it turns your iPhone into a walkie-talkie, right, and it's available free right now. Do we think that's going to last much longer?

SIMON: Well, first of all, yes, it takes advantage of all your smartphone capabilities and then adds a walkie-talkie to it. So you have this new cool technology.

In terms of whether or not it will be free, yes, they plan on keeping this app free forever. But at some point, they'll add some premium features and then they'll charge money for it so they could actually make some money off of this app.

We should add that the CEO, Tom Katis, interesting back story there. This effort is almost entirely self-funded thanks to his other successful venture, a company called Triple Canopy, which is a private security firm. They got 8,000 employees. So they have a lot of money to keep going at this point.

Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: All right, good deal. It's a great idea. Thank you, Dan.

Are you a computer geek? Ready for a challenge? All right, take a look at this. This is a math problem. If you can solve this, it could actually lead to your dream job. We're going to explain.

Plus, we're getting a lot of responses to today's "Talk Back" question. We asked, is President Obama's military plan the right move for the United States? Your responses up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Facebook employs some of the best, brightest, innovative computer programmers in the world. I know a few. Well, do you think you have what it takes to actually work there? I want you to talk a look at this. It's a test that people who want to work at Facebook may have to pass before being considered for a job. Now, some people who are most prepared to solve this puzzle are actually hackers. That's right. Facebook officials say that hackers, they have the knowledge, the creativity, translates into great employees. In fact, the company actually hosts a hackers cup tournament to test the skills of computer experts and hackers. The winner gets $5,000. Not bad. Getting a lot of responses to today's "Talk Back" question. We asked, is President Obama's military plan the right move for the United States?

George says, "we have to realize we don't have the unlimited ability to wage wars all over the globe. The money is better spent investing in future technologies that could very well lead the world away from the mentality that wars are a necessity."

Joe says, "the U.S. cannot afford cuts in the military as unstable as the world is today."

Larry says, "losing an asset is unfortunate. Loss of life is tragic. This is the way to go."

S-Boatman says, "whatever is necessary to protect cannot be compromised with predetermined plans and predictions."

So, keep the conversation going on my FaceBook page, facebook.com/suzannecnn. We welcome your responses.

CNN NEWSROOM continues right now with Randi Kaye.

Hey, Randi.

RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Suzanne. Happy Thursday.