happened because it happened in their custody. a black man dies in police custody. >> to some folks even in 2015 that remains the fact. >> prolific and profound a conversation with oscar winning screenwriter john ridley. >> you we begin with an end to the bombing campaign. the saudi arabia military announced it was halting operation decisive storm after a month of mattering. the saudi defense ministry said that the airstrikes had achieved their objectives paving the way for the next campaign face operation restore hope. they called on the houthis to negotiate a peace deal. >> they have destroyed the capabilities of the country. they have spread into the provinces, and they must withdraw from the cities and surrender weapons and go back to the political process. >> president hadi said that an agreement to share power with the outies has houthis has been improvised. the uss theodore roosevelt is now standing by, blocking a cargo. >> the iranians were calling for a cease-fire. the saudis said that they were going to cease their air campaign now that their objectives have been met and we heard president hadi calling for reconciliation but a confrontation with the u.s. off the sea of yemen a possible confrontation has everyone concerned. >> a scene full of chaos and misery. battles in the street as houthi fighters take control of much of the country. now four weeks launching airstrikes against the houthis saudi arabia said that it's objectives have been achieved, and is calling for a halt in the air campaign. >> the operation of returning hope to the yemeni people will begin with the government, which has to rebuild yemen in a safe and secure manner. >> but there is little indication the houthis have retreated from their newly won territory, and the saudi-led coalition has been criticized for the number of casualties caused by the strikes. the "world health organization" said that 944 people were killed and more than 3,000 injured since the campaign began. u.s. coalition leaders said that the houthis are proxies for iran and accuse iran for supplying aid. iran's president has called for a cease-fire. >> we hope that everyone has come to their senses and we hope that iran's proposal is realized. it's for an immediate cease-fire cease-fire. >> the crisis threatens to entangle the united states and iran now in final negotiations over the disputed iranian nuclear program. the aircraft carrier theodore roosevelt and the cruiser normandy are on the way to join other warships off the coast of yemen. the stated mission for the american vessels: insure the free throw of commerce navigation in the region, but they are concerned there iran are carrying arms for the houthi houthis. >> we're mindful of that as we carry out this deployment. >> and john, late today the national security council at the white house welcomed the saudi announcement that they were suspending their air campaign call forgive a renewal in the u.n.-brokered peace talks around yemen. those fashion, of course n a shambles. >> mike viqueira in washington. thank you. and mike lions is retireed army major and al jazeera contributor, he's back in our studio tonight. give me a sense--first of all why did the saudis stop had this air campaign? >> they've been in control since the beginning and they look at it as the humanitarian crisis will turn against them. the level of bomb, the level of civilian casualties over 900 now at this point. they have to take a better control because we're going to have a human humanitarian crisis crisis. >> the guard to join the campaign. >> 120,000 troops. that's a fighting force. if they enter yemen with what the plan can be, that's an occupying force. that's similar to what the u.s. had in iraq. i hate to use the word, but that's going to be a quagmire if they decide to get in there and i'm not sure how they get out that have situation. >> what impact could it have? does this just make the war go on longer? or how do you stop it? >> it's going to drag things out, and where saudi arabia may think this is a show of force that they have to do at this point it's clearly going to drag things out. local commanders on the ground are going to have heavy weapons i wouldn't be surprised if you see some of these airstrikes continue. >> let's talk about the u.s. blockade when it comes to iran sending some sort of supplies and maybe weapons to yemen. how far does u.s. go on this? and what's the u.s. willing to do here? >> well, there is a lot of risk at this point knowing that the houthis travel on their stacks, they have come through this bath in the gulf of aden. what does america do? do we go and inspect it? does the iranian navy respond to that? there is a lot of poker being played in that part of the world in terms what have the u.s. will do should one of the ships get close. >> and uss roosevelt what does that mean? >> that means firepower, a regional type of presence there from a show of force that can literally do anything. now there is going to be potentially use for that humanitarian effort that is in the back of everybody's mind. >> big aircraft carrier versus some iranian vessels. >> iranian vessels and the united states navy have played this cat and mouse game similar to what russia and the united states do in russia. the iranians have no match for the united states navy in that part of the world but again they'll do what they can to keep the americans off guard. >> thank you. new concerns about a looming deal between russia and iran. moscow is lifting its ban on selling anti-aircraft missiles to tehran. critics that would give tehran a bullet-proof field against possible attacks. this comes as russia and four other countries meet with iran in vienna to hammer out a final nuclear deal. jamie mcintyre is at the pentagon tonight. >> reporter: russia says that the nuclear agreement is good enough to pave the way for the sale of high tech anti-aircraft systems to iran, including a missiles that some experts say could shoot down all but the seattley american planes out of theout--stealthy american planes out of the sky. >> the anti-aircraft missiles is often referred to as the russian patriot because it works like the old u.s. patriot used in the first gulf war. it does not need to hit a plane to take it down. just guess close enough to explode into a cloud of deadly strap nell. in justifying the sale to iran, vladimir putin points out that the s 300 is a defensive weapon. some reports have suggested that advanced deterrence could give tehran an effective bullet-proof shield neutralizing all but the stealthy aircraft and forcing the u.s. to lean on its small force of 2. a daily beast headline screened that it could make u.s. attacks on iran nearly impossible. we put the question to america's top germany at an american top previousing. >> does that take the military option off the table. >> the military option to encourage the diplomatic solution and to insure there doesn't achieve a nuclear weapon is intact. >> intact? what does that mean? well for one thing the u.s. saw this day coming since 2009. back when russia first agreed to put the missile deal on hold. >> they actually stopped the sale paused or suspended the sale at our request. and i'm a frankly surprised that it helped this long. >> in those interveneing years al jazeera america has learned there have been new tack texts in defeating the s 300 and it's raiders. it used to be that they would have to be taken out by stand off weapons before manned aircraft could establish air superiority. but in the future as u.s. integrates the much criticized and super pricey f 35 into combat the thinking has change. and now the low observe were aircraft not just including f 35 but the f 22s will roll back air defenses allowing older unstealthy planes such as f-15s to carry follow-on attacks. and they see the iran scenario as justifying the air force super secret mystery plane so far seen only under a drape in a tv commercial, the highly classified long-range bomber price tagged $155 million for 100 planes. for this story i talked to both current and former top aid planners, and they admit the addition of return missiles to iran makes iran's defenses much more formidable but argue that u.s. technology is vastly superior. while iran's defense may be more impressive, they will not be impregnable. >> jamie, thank you. in iraq government forces say that they have taken keen territory back from isil. iraqi troops say that they have liberateed a children's hospital in ramadi that was seized ten days egg by isil, and they're reclaiming government buildings. the u.s. said 114,000 people have fled the area in just the past two weeks. the the captain of a ship has been charged with manslaughter in italy. more than 800 people died. today more than 400 migrants were rescued off the italian coast after their boat started sinking. we have more from italy. >> and still they keep on coming no matter how dangerous the journey. 446 people, their wooden boat leaking. all they could do is appeal for help in the sea south of calabria. they were lucky an italian fishing boat found them just in time. in sicily, meanwhile the authorities are helping the few frightened men who survived a sinking boat off the libyan coast. the initial story of that disaster has turned out to be horribly accurate. >> we have now interviewed most of the survivors of the boat tragedy in the mediterranean. according to them, the boat departed from libya on saturday morning and had some 850 people. many of these were children, among those on board were some 350 people from syria somalia gambia ivory coast and ethiopia. >> this man a tunisian, was the captain of the boat. he has been taken into custody charged with reckless homicide and causing a shipwreck. another suspected member of the crew has been arrested. accused of assisting illegal immigration. and more details are emerging as to how so many people died. >> migrants were crushed inside the fishing boat. that wasn't small. it was at least 23 meters long. a few hundred migrants were forced into the hole, at the lowest level. they were locked and prevented from coming out. another several hundred were closed into the second level. while on top under a cover they were another hundred migrants. >> there is lots of sympathy for the victims of this disaster and widespread outrage at the activities of the ruthless smuggling gangs. but governments have disagreed for years on ways to prevent this disaster at sea and how to keep people were risking the perilous journey. further west 44 africans rescued by coast guards. they've come from morocco on a wooden boat. some too exhausted to walk ashore. some so young they may not remember how they arrived here to start a new life in a new continent. barnaby phillips al jazeera, catania, sicily. >> a freelance journalist who has spent the last three years investigating and speaking with smugglers. he joins us from milan. so gianpaolo. who is the typical smuggler. >> a man like me, 40 years old or more or less, except for the age, there are some common factors in the smugglers we met and we spoke to. first of all, you have to be very social. you have to know how to establish a relation with all the people. having a job having worked as a fisherman as a truck driver, a taxi man is a plus in your career. having borne in the country like libya or turkey, which has mainly the main gates to europe. the main point you're a businessman. you have to coordinate many many actors in your network. i mean, you have to control the boat drivers. you have to speak to your clients. you need someone to help you in logistics for example you need to store--sorry for the word--to store your clients in a flat, an apartment, so on. the more you can play, the safer will be the journey. >> right but what is the typical experience of someone who is smuggled on a cargo ship? >> it's hell. no one would like to experience something like that. i mean, you can experience violence. you can die. but again there is no choice. the main point of this tragedy. this tragedy was predictable. i think that the smugglers are providing the same service european union should give the migrants. the migrants, the refugees, they would like to ask for political asylum. in order to do that they have to put their lives in the hands of the smugglers. >> giampaolo. it's good to have you on the program. thank you very much. >> thank you very much to you. >> one american couple has made it a full-time mission to rescue migrants trying to cross the mediterranean. they have invested $8 million of their own money in this first person report christopher tells us about their extraordinary effort to save lives. >> as you go out there you kind of don't know what to expect, but when you see children as young as six months out there it's shocking. >> many, many lives are being lost every single day out there and there is no unified response at the moment we actually provide them life jackets food, water, if requested we'll take them on board the phoenix which is the rescue vessel. i think the international community needs to recognize the fact that there is nothing that is going to stop this migration flow that is happening. it is the biggest flow of migrants since the second world war, and the conflicts such as what is happening in syria and what is happening in africa is not helping the situation. people are fleeing for their lives. we're a band aid on this issue at the moment. and we're hopefully showing people that our concept of how we operate and how we save 3,000 lives in a short period of time in 2014 can be replicated. we can no longer allow people to die because of imaginary borders. >> they're trying to raise more money through crowd funding. the head of the u.s. drug enforcement agency is stepping down. officials say that michelle leonhart plans to retire. leonhart clashed with president obama mother marijuana. her departure comes as the agency face as scandal. alonglawmakers criticized leonharts handleing about reports. the navajo nation is heading to the polls. voting in the country's largest native american tribe will begin in november. it was postponed when one of the leading candidates was removed from the ballot. the reason? he did not speak navajo. still the ruling sparked an uproar and divided the community. >> language is important and identifies who you are and where we come from. we cannot be a nation without language. >> we've been told that your language has no value. so why use it? why keep it? why speak it? why teach it to your children? just learn english and be done with it. >> coming up at the half hour, much more on this story and what happened to the candidate who was barred from running. plus the multi billion dollar case pitting oil giant cheveron against a group of amazon villagers and their american lawyer. and the decision of life and death, the evidence in the sentencing case of the boston marathon bomber. >> an egyptian court sentenced ousted president mohamed morsi 20 years in prison. he was convicted of the torture of demonstrateors outside of the presidential palace in cairo. morsi and his party the muslim brotherhood, were forced out of power in 2013 by the egyptian military. now to a long battle over an environmental disaster in ecuador. it began 20 years ago with a class action lawsuit against an american oil giant. >> an epic legal saga, possibly the biggest environmental lawsuit in history. it's been litigated and re relitigated for decades in courts around the world but it boils down to this, billions of gallons of sludge in the amazon rain forest, and the indigenous people there say they're being poisoned. they sued texaco in 1973. cheveron bought texaco and have been fighting that in court. cheveron sued the ecuadorian lawyer for fraud and won. that case was here in new york. the lawyer's name is stephen donzager and that ruling has effectively blocked the ecuadorians from collecting that money. donzegar appealed and he said he's confident he'll win. >> many call you a hero, and cheveron calls you a crook. tell me about those charges. what do you have to say about them? >> first of all i've worked hard as a lawyer for my clients. i believe cheveron is the crook. cheveron has concocted a story to taint this judgment to evade paying what they owe the people of ecuador. instead of dealing with these issues on the merit and instead of accepting their legal and moral responsibility to pay for the damage they caused they attack the lawyers. >> now there was just one day of argument in that case, that was on monday. now it will take three months to decide so more time and there could be further actions after that. john this case has really probably a long way to go. >> and a tremendous amount of money at stake for the ecuadorian people. >> millions of dollars, that's right. >> coming up next, wounded and in police custody. the search for answers in the death of a black man arrested by police in baltimore. plus choosing a leader the navajo nation set to vote, but ruled that the candidate be fluent in and a half slow disrupted that election. >> hi everybody. this is al jazeera america. i'm john seigenthaler. use of force. civil rights investigation why a young baltimore man died in police custody. boston bomber, the sentencing phase begins. life or death for dzhokhar tsarnaev. local politics. >> language is important. it identifies who you are and where you come from. you cannot an nation without language. >> a battle over language and legacy as the navajo nation votes for its new president. plus john ridley the award winning film writer talks about his new project for the small screen. >> let's deal with the families and those individuals who have to stick with these events because they can't turn the page. >> we begin this half hour with more protest in baltimore and demands for answers in the death of a young black man named freddie gray. what we know is that gray suffered a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody and that he decide a week later. how he got that life-ending injury remains an mystery. one that the justice department plans to investigate. [ protesting ] >> officials concede they still have few answers about the death of a black man in police custody. a death that has brought demonstrators into the streets of baltimore for days. 25-year-old freddie gray died after suffering a severe spinal cord injury. >> we had no evidence, physical, video or statements of any use of force. there was no physical bodily injury that we saw nor was it evident in the autopsy of mr. gray. >> police released this surveillance video of where gray was arrested, but it sheds no light on what actually happened to him. >> what we don't know, and what we need to get to is how that injury occurred. >> on april 12th at 8:39 a.m. freddie gray makes eye contact with a police officer. gray runs. at 8:40 a.m. an officer catches up to gray. a police report note that gray was arrested without force or incident. at 8:42 the police request a van. gray asks for an inhale. the driver believes that gray is acting irate. the police stop the van and put gray in leg irons and then move on. 8:49 the driver picks up another prisoner. 9:24 with the van at a police station, an ambulance arrives to take gray to the hospital. he was treated for what his lawyer describes as a nearly severed spine. he indicted seven days later. what is missing from the mrs. account what happened inside the van. >> i know when mr. gray was placed inside that van he was able to talk. he was upset and with mr. gray was taken out of that van he could not talk, he could not breathe. >> they're responsible for what happened to him because it happened in their custody. under extraordinarily suspicious circumstances. >> glen martin is the founder of just leadership usa a criminal justice advocacy group and he's back in our studio. welcome. >> glad to be back. >> you see this case as a case about race? >> i see this case as a case about a system that is systemically racist. i don't know if these officers are racist. i don't know these officers, this investigation needs to play out, but we have an entire system of policing that does not value the lives of young men of color. >> you're not suggesting that all police officers are racists. >> i'm not suggesting that all police officers are racists but i'm suggesting that simms change people before people change systems. and this system has devalued the lives of men. >> how did the system fail this young man. >> the question was why was he even pulled into the system in the first place. that has not been answered yet. secondly he asked for help prior to being put in the van. why weren't the police officers responsive to that? what is it about people in poor communities, people of color suggest that they shouldn't have responded quickly seeing this person as a human being and gotten him the help that he needed. >> the mayor of the town suggested that this happened in the ambulance or happened while he was being transported. dubai that?do you buy that? >> we do know that when he got into the van he was fine. when he got out of the van he was not fine. >> he does not look fine in that video when he's getting dragged across the sidewalk and screaming. >> he's asking for help at that point. >> could he have been injured before then? >> they say that his spinal column was severed 80%. i would argue that that happened after the van. that does not look like a person with a severed spine getting into that van. but this is more than this incident. >> what is it about? >> this is about the militarization of the police department. this is about very distinct decisions made by our government to fight a war on crime and a war on drugs. when you fight a war you go to where the enemy is. and they go into poor communities and communities of collar and every time they go into these communities they treat these people as if they're combatants. >> you have a black mayor. you have african-americans in position of power. how does that happen? >> i happen to know commissioner watts in baltimore and i think he's a good buy and i appreciate the transparency that is being shown at this point. i don't think we've seen this level of transparency anywhere else in recent cases. >> and you attribute that to what? >> i think he's really a person who understands the values a police department should have. now can he change the department overnight? i don't know about that. it will take time to change the culture. it will take time to shift culture in there. at the same time, i don't think it has to do with race. i'm a man of color there are many times that i've been pulled over by police officers of color and had a worse way to go than if i was pulled over by white officers. >> it's good to have you on the program. we should talk about this more because this is an issue that has not gone away, and i don't think it's going to go away in the future. >> unfortunately not. >> fairfax country county, virginia, has agreed to pay money to the family of a man who was shot by an officer. prosecutors have not yet decided whether to file charge criminal charges against officer torres. he remains on paid administrative duties. >> indzhokhar tsarnaev now faces sentencing. >> the judge told the jury to expect that this part of the trial to last a month. the jurors heard graphic and emotional testimony from victims and family members. >> outside of the court in boston people protested against the death penalty while inside the prosecutor opened up the penalty phase with a question and an answer. why is the death penalty the appropriate and just sentence? because dzhokhar tsarnaev planned and plotted to kill. the government called several witnesses to testify mainly victims of the boston marathon bombing and their family members. like survivor celeste cochrane with tissues in her hand she recounted the explosion two years ago. i saw blood. i couldn't sit up. i just remember seeing so much blood where my legs were. this same jury who convicted tsarnaev on all counts in the bombing must now determine if he will live or die. victims like rebecca who lost a leg two years ago spoke out about the penalty. >> part of us getting on with our lives is this ending, and it's not going to end when it's drawn out like this. >> the parents of the youngest victim martin richard agreed. they said they're in favor of taking the death penalty off the table so long as tsarnaev spends the rest of his life in prison, and 31% of the boston area residents are for the death penalty. while 60% want tsarnaev to get life in prison. there is a photo of star and a half giving the middle finger to a camera while in a cell. they say he's unrepentant un uncaring and untouched by the sorrow and suffering he created. dzhokhar wasthe defense side of the story dzhokhar was under the influence of his brother. they do not expect him to take the stand. >> if he's not testifying it's because they worry about the impression he'll make on the jury. they worry he's not remorseful. they worry that it would blow back against their prayers for life in prison rather than death. >> testimony continues this week. as the prosecution builds it's his for the death penalty ander the defense will present its case sometime next week. if the jury decides on a life in prison star and a half will be shipped off to the super maximum prison in colorado to spend the rest of his days in solitary confinement. >> the u.s. senate will make its way to the confirmation vote on loretta lynch. loretta lynch will replace eric holder. mitch mcconnell said that he would block her nomination until a deal was reached on an unrelated human trafficking bill. today that compromise with the democrats were finally reached. lynch is expected to win acceptance in approval and vote in the coming days. a delayed presidential election for the country's largest native american tribe got under way today. it was originally scheduled for last fall, but a leading candidate was removed because he was not fluent in the tribes' language. we have more on the controversy from the navajo nation in the southwest. >> the navajo nation is starkly beautiful and steeped in history and tradition but it faces questions about its heritage and future brought on by an election and presidential candidate. >> i voted for christian but they got him off the ballot. >> he was disqualified why? because he was not fluent in navajo, a deal breaker under navajo presidential election law law. >> lang islanguage is important. we cannot be a nation without language. >> the fluency rule seems straightforward enough. think about it. american voters expect their presidential candidates to speak english. but the navajo language mandate not only the electoral process but brings deep divisions among the citizens about what it means to be navajo. >> they need to take time to learn the language. >> russell begay and jonathan took over the candidates in president. they're both fluent in navajo. >> they might have offered a alternate but greed that the language was unassailable. >> everyone wanted to see a new face but at the end of the day it did not work out for him. god bless him. he had a lot to offer. >> we have been told by western society that your language has no value. so why use it? why keep it, why teach it to your children? just learn english and be done with it. >> we reached out to chris deschene but we did not hear back. nearly all 300 students enroll ready tribal citizens. we came here to ask high school citizen what they think about the fluency requirement. >> by the show of hands how many people are voting? >> it's clear that students are divided over the rule. >> do you think that the language requirement is a good thing? >> yes. >> yes. >> it connects us to the past. i think with chris deshene. he should not have been disqualified. he should have been kept on the ballot because it's so long in the election process. >> but the navajo language is steeped in history and culture. >> if we don't know our language to its maximum then we won't be connected with our teachings as well. >> as fundamental as the students say that language is to their identity it's a difficult language to learn and all the students admit to being less than fluent. is language important to everyone here? do you all speak and a half navajo? somewhat. do you think it disenfranchises voters in your class? >> i think it may have turned off students. i think when this language fluency situation came up, that put them on the fence as well. it discouraged some of our young people not to vote. [ . >> the students at navajo prep and many tribal youth are eager to learn their language, but fewer and fewer young people across the nation can speak navajo. >> this means a new generation of native youth will have to find ways to define themselves when their language status is unclear. >> we've sustained ourselves through the centuries and we will do so for centuries to come. and that comes by maintaining who we are as a people. >> al jazeera, on the navajo nation. >> you may have heard of poor doors, separate entrances for lower income entrances at luxury new york apartment buildings. they're creating controversy involving race, class and segregation, but the charges are not stopping those in need of a home. consider this, the developer of one highrise today said 88,000 people applied for the 55 affordable apartments mandated by the city. with so many applicants the chances of finding affordable apartments are slim, so the city hold as lottery. as you will see the odds are long but for the lucky ones winning can change everything. morgan radford explains. >> this is a big place. >> this is usual kitchen. >> this is my kitchen. >> annette christopher won the lottery, one of 2500 lucky new yorkers who out won an subsidize the rental apartment. >> this is the bathroom this is kevins room. and this is my master bedroom. >> all of a sudden i have everything that i wanted in my life. >> the market value about $2,100. >> how much money do you pay now? >> $828 a month. >> when she got the news. >> you dropped down to your knees. >> i dropped to my knees and said thank you, jeez i've been waiting for this for a long time. thank you jeez. >> ms. christopher a home health aide had to meet income and credit requirements just to qualify. >> i was making $7.27 an hour. i feel lucky. >> but not everyone is so lucky. >> so we're at a church in brooklyn where people have come to learn exactly how to navigate the new york city lottery process. they've also come to learn how to maximize their chances. tons of people are here tonight. and people are here wait forgive answers. >> i applied for the lottery and i never got the call back. >> i want to live some place better than where i am. >> people are so desperate for affordable housing. >> erica simms is director at mutual housing association of new york which holds seminars like these to help new yorkers fill out their lottery applications. >> the way the city is structured there are a lot of jobs here that don't pay enough money for you to be able to live here. so someone can't work here and live in another state. >> what about critics who say look if you can't afford too live in manhattan why not live in the outer boroughs. >> raise the salaries, and then tell me what you think. >> living in new york is hard, and it has the highest cost of living in the entire country. the median rent rose 10% between 2006 and 2013. that's while the renter's incomes remained stagnant or even declined. it's even harder to rent if you had bad credit especially since new york developers are allowed to set their own credit criteria for affordable housing units. >> they say it's an affordable apartment, a lot of us have had hardship and hard times why should we be crucified for having this hardship. >> a lot of reasons why end up with bad credit has no relationship to whether they'll be a good tenant for you and your building. >> if you can't pay your credit card bill on time, how are you going to pay your landlord on time. >> sometimes the issue is you don't have any credit cards so you have almost no credit. because you have a low income, and you're living paycheck to paycheck. >> and those living paycheck to paycheck the demand for an affordable home is higher. take this brooklyn building, for example. 59 cross street has 38 affordable units and guess how many people applied? over 80,000. >> we should move towards a market-base system, and then we wouldn't have these crazy scenes of people lining up for a lottery. that shouldn't happen in america. >> the vice president for policy research at the manhattan institute. >> so what about those who say a diverse new york is the best new york. >> well look, neighborhoods in new york are kind of organically diverse. they're fancy buildings near less expensive buildings. i don't think we have to choreograph that. >> ms. christopher is grateful for the lottery because it brought her her new home. but a million new yorkers are still holding on to that dream hoping they will be lucky too. >> south african soldiers have done we provide to stop a wave of anti-immigrant violence. >> hundreds of people have been forced into shelters and even more are now returning to their home countries giving up their jobs and hopes of a better life to seek safety. >> i was afraid of being killed. i was also going to schools with my daughter here. they were attacking the foreigners in schools. >> well, coming up in the next hour we'll take a deeper look at the challenges that these refugees are finding as they return home. >> that's a sad story. barbara, thank you. oscar winning screenwriter john ridley talks about race in america. >> from the beginning we asked for the same thing. a review of how the case against my brother has been handled the prosecutor making this a hate crime with punitive, not real. my brother doesn't hate whites. he has a caucasian girlfriend. >> what does that mean? >> the d.a. has overreached. we want a fair examination. >> that's a scene from "american crime." the shows' creator is john ridley. a novelist, play wright, and oscar winning screenwriter for " "12 years a slave." he talked to me about many things including how the news influences his work, and i asked him how the show "american crime" got started. >> abc approached me about doing "american crime" before "12 years a slave" was released. before the film was widely known. to get a call from a broadcast network, and to say to me that they wanted to tackle subject matter that dealt with race, that dealt with religion, that dealt with socio-economic backgrounds and had wide perspective, it was really unexpected and all the way through the development process i thought well, this is not going to come to fruition. at some point someone is going to say, it was something that we wanted to attempt but we can't talk about these things on broadcast television. that never happened. >> this is a hot topic, a very controversial topic. you have ferguson trayvon martin eric garner. you're right on top of probably the most difficult issue in this country right now. >> i have to say it was a little bit painful. there was a moment when we were putting this show together after the trayvon martin verdicts, and we thought maybe the subject marry matter was a little passe. not that we were naive but maybe that we would react in different ways. and in the middle of the production ferguson happen: we realized that this was even though this is a fictionalized story, that these events are continuing to happen. and that we have a responsibility to have an emotional honesty to what we're doing, both for the audience that's coming to this, and hopefully getting an emotional impact out of this, but those who on a daily basis have to deal with these things. we can't treat it as entertainment purely. >> is there something that you want to say through the program or now about this? >> i can't pretend that there is not some of my opinions in this. i can never separate myself from the work that i do, but one of the things that struck me the most near this process, i have a son now who is 15, and he started asking me about trayvon and about what happened and said things to me that i never expected that i would hear from my son like, cautious to say but there was a certain emotionality that i hoped--that i believed my father hoped that i would never have, and that i hoped that my son would never absorb from an environment. as any parent you hope you raise your children to have a hopeful outlook that many of the issues that all of us deal with will be relegated to the past. and there comes a point where you see in your young man certain feelings, certain emotions that you know is coming from the environment. maybe they're coming from me, maybe from a wider world, but they're rising specifically from an incident. not just saying casualty about this kind of person or that kind of faith but a specific incident that happened where a young man who looked like him ended up dead. and so when your son not a random individual, but when your son start to express things, things i want to say to my son i wouldn't want to say to other children black white what have you that there is hope, there can be resolution. >> yet there are some very direct lines from "12 years a slave" to "american crime" that is--that is not so hopeful. that is from my viewing point it is scary. >> it's very scary. the most recent incident in south carolina, where we see it on tape, and there is in my opinion no par set of this. it is not easy being a police officer. it is not a job that is to be taken casually. but we know one sighs an incident like that in my opinion there is no need for that level of force dispensed in that fashion, and there were things in the memoir "12 years a slave" that comes down that black lives do not matter. to some folks even in 2015 that remains the fact. i cannot pretend there are not direct lines. it pains me when the lines are not so obvious. one of the things about ferguson we made so much attention to this young man who was killed, rightfully so, but we have eric hold who are comes back and says there is not enough evidence here to put the blame been the police officers, but by the way there were all these other daily indignityies heaped upon the populous of this area largely because of their race, that were wrong, that were done because of their race, but by the way none of us would have paid attention to were it not for these outside events. what are painful are these lines that continue that are there that we don't see that are there, buried, very real, and people have to deal with every day and has a major impact on their lives their economy their opportunities to move forward, and engage in the american dream that we're all promised. >> it is terrific to meet you. thank you for stopping by to talk with us. >> thank you for having me. >> you can see more of my conversation with oscar winner john ridley tomorrow night at 8:00 eastern time. that's our broadcast. we thank you for watching. i'm john seigenthaler. i'll see you back here tomorrow night. the news continues next with antonio makers ror mora and barbara serra.