♪ >> at tonight on "cnn presents" narco wars. it's been called the most dangerous place in the world. violence fueled by drug cartels. >> there's an airplane karkus right there below me. >> can the violence be spopd?

>> you must have been crushed, crushed when they told you you had to go back. >> revealing investigations, fascinating characters, stories with impact. this is "cnn present ous "with your host brooke baldwin and dr. sanjay gupta. >> good evening. the bloody drug war in mexico has gripped the world's attention. >> but way off the radar south of mexico is a region that's even more violent. >> in fact, it's been called the deadliest place in the world. >> the homicide rate in honduras alone has more than do you believed in five years. kaj larsen journeyed to the heart of the violence. >> reporter: in the past year over 17,000 people have been murdered in guatemala, el salvador and honduras.

in honduras, over 90% of crimes like murder are never solved. they call it the impunity rate. i asked the chief of police in san pedro, the second biggest city here, if they would take us along with a call came in on a crime. ament later we got our wish. so we jumped in the trucks and we're headed there right now to see what's going on. >> it's completely real. we're not making up how violent this place is. we've been here four hours and our first body's turned up. he's been shot. the impact wound appears to be right here on the right side of his head. the police commissioner told us as is very typical in these situations, nobody saw anything,

nobody heard anything and nobody knows this guy. >> nobody wants to talk, which suggests that people are definitely afraid in this neighborhood. as they should be. >> for years the region has been plague wd violent gangs started by gang members deported from california. but in the last few years it's also become the main corridor for narcotics coming up from south america. as the big mexican cartels have looked for stages areas here, murder rates have skyrocketed. >> so this is the entrance to the morgue. there must be 15 bodies here. yesterday they received seven bodies and this morning five more. they get new bodies every day. 80% of them are from violence, usually shot with either a pistol or a rifle.

there's not much to say. this woman and her mother who just lost two sons, two of the bodies i just saw inside the morgue, the son and brothers of these two women, there's a human cost to the drug war and the hondurans are paying it in blood. i just came from the morgue and there's literally bodies piling up in the hallway. why is this country so violent? >> well, the violence is not actually traditional in honduras and it has increased as the drug traffic through honduras as increased. and so i think a lot of it has to do with drugs. >> the murder rate here is 16 times the u.s. rate. murder has become so normal here that there are some hondurans who doesn't seem to spend a lot of time agonizing over it.

outside the morgue i met darwin, who led me to his place around the corner. he's telling me this is a king sized one for a fat person. darwin's probably the happiest, go luckiest coffin builder that i've ever met in my whole life so he speaks really fast so i didn't understand everything but the one take away i got from being here is that the coffin business is booming here. insecurity pervades every aspect of life here. even to advice eight violence reduction program backed by the u.s. government we had to have heavily armed policemen patrol the front. >> yeah, it violent but that's what we're working on. >> can you ask them how many of them have seen violence? how many of them have seen somebody killed or somebody shot?

>> raise your hand. >> it hard to get a sense of what it like to live here when you have a heavy police escort everywhere you go. so we found someone who moves freely through the neighborhoods and let us come along. so we should leave our phone, money, everything? >> yes. >> but first we were warned, no valuables, no phones, no passports, nothing that could get us killed. >> passport. this is a piece of document for the borders. so if you want to come with me. >> lauren moved from the congo to honduras early in 2011 to head the office here of doctors without borders. >> we are trying to tackle the violence and tackling the violence is a big challenge. >> were you surprised at the level of violence when you got here? >> i was struck, i was struck. i didn't know. when i was reached here i was it's united states, we can go to

mcdonald's, burger king, you have access to everything. but in fact you meet exactly the same problems as you can meet in congo and in the capital city. >> lawrence helped doctors without borders meet their mission. every day they walk. you're not scared? >> we have to be scared to protect ourselves. just going and thinking that it will be easy, we will be very at risk. >> what goes hand in hand with the violence here is extreme poverty. the doctors without border street team was giving medical and psychological care here. if we hadn't been told, we wouldn't have guessed it was so violent.

what he's telling me is that this is where he lives under this tarp. these are his spare clothes and he's got -- and this is his kitchen where you see these three fish being cooked right here. and they cook for all of the street children here is one of the other things that he's saying. the other thing you in the when you're speaking to edwin is there's all these kid around here. but even in plain view of the cameras, all of them are sniffing glue. because we are the first foreigners, let alone journalists that the doctors without borders street team had ever taken with them, they were extra alert to security. >> the security driver just said it was it was time to go so we should go. >> as we headed back to the van, the market started to close down, night was falling and the city now getting more dangerous

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it's a small area of central america where our kaj larsen met one man who is fighting a war against a tidal wave of drugs and murder. >> a police surveillance camera in guatemala city captures a scene that has become common. a car stops at an intersense at midnight. a man is forced out in shot. it was more than 6 million murder in guatemala in 2011, eight times the u.s. homicide rate. fueling the violence, narco trafficking as mexico's cartels, including the el have a violent zetas move south. we are briefed by a dea agent who asked us not to reveal his face. >> the machine gun fires a 762 round.

we need it up country where we're going. dodging storms we flew with the dea in two huey helicopter gun ships into a no man's land in guatemala, land that soon bbs uninhabited stretches of jungle, much of it flooded because of the rainy season. soon we were flying offer clandestine landing slips, hundreds of them, used for struggling drugs coming up from venezuela. sometimes the planes crashed but since one load of cocaine more than paid for a plane, often they were just abandoned. there's an airplane carcass right there below me. you can see it's got bird on it, crash landed. it's a little flooded from the rains. but when it's dry there's about 30 to 40 aircraft just laying out here, all that were

abandoned after they brought the drugs in. after the u.s. helped beef up the guatemalan defenses, the traffickers began looking to another place to deal drugs and they chose honduras, the new front line of the narco wars. jim kenny has been fighting that war for more than 12 years. >> that lands your first point either by boat or an atrack, an illicit airplane coming in. the best opportunity to stop the drugs is at that point. >> as head of the u.s. drug enforcement office in honduras, jim kenny runs america's first line of defense with the support of only two other dea agents. if jim's small team can't intercept the drug when is they land, the likelihood is that they'll make it all the way to the u.s.-mexico border.

it's highly unusual for a dea agent in overseas operations to be seen on camera, but i was allowed to follow jim around honduras. i mean, we're out there now, right? this is the wild west. >> as close as you go get to it, yes. they're saying 75 to 80% of the 25 plus tons that come through here a month is maritime. >> the boat we were riding on was one of the interceptor boats the honduran navy uses to try to stop smuggling boats any time the dea gets intelligence about a load coming in from south america. when we got to the naval base and saw some the go-fast confiscated from smugglers it's easy to see how outmatched the deas. >> last night we had pretty good information about a go-fast that was coming up that was off the

rotan island. unfortunately we were not able to find them. very difficult. very difficult. you're going out in a very vast, wide area. >> it's a need until a haystack, right? >> right. >> jim says in the last two and a half years in honduras, he feels like he's aged ten years. >> it's frustrating at times because we a lot of times have the knowledge and the intelligence to be able to respond and do things but because of the fact of lack of resources, it's difficult. >> put some gray in the old beard? but jim has been making progress, changing a crucial piece of the puzzle here. this is your piece right here, these guys coming out. >> these guys are the vetted team that we trust, that we can pass very sensitive intelligence to.

>> this is jim's vetted unit, specially selected honduran police officers chosen for their skills and their honesty. >> corruption's an issue here as it is in central america and other countries, south america. they've all been polygraphed, all drug tested, all interviewed and they all get trained. we train each one from evidence handling up to the tactics. >> when jim gets a tip about an illicit aircraft headed to honduras with a load of cocaine, it the vetted team's mission to fly to that landing site and intercept it. there's a high likelihood they could get in a fire fight on one of these mission, right? >> yes, yes, and very this been in fire fight. very dangerous and very brave temperature. they know there's a highs possibility there's going to be a confrontation. >> when jim arrived in honduras in 2009, the vetted unit had 7 officers.

now it has 41. and of the planes that landed, the government of honduras was able to intercept 7, five of which were intercepted by jim's unit. that doesn't sound like a whole lot except the total for the previous year was zero. >> is it exhausting? >> it can be, yes. there's lots of long days. you hope it's fruitful at the end of it.nk y to pick up some accessories. a new belt. some nylons. and what girl wouldn't need new shoes? we talked about getting a diamond. but with all the thank you points i've been earning... ♪ ...i flew us to the rock i really had in mind. ♪ [ male announcer ] the citi thank you card. earn points you can use for travel on any airline,

with no blackout dates. forty years ago, he wasn't looking for financial advice. back then he had something more important to do. he wasn't focused on his future.

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they are outmanned and outgunned.

in order to win the war against drugs in central america, authority there l have to fight against the odds. >> kaj larsen concludes his report from the front lines of the narco war. >> it's saturday night in the capital of honduras, the most violent nation on earth. police here may look tough, but in fact they're outmanned and outgunned. their control over many parts of the city is virtually nonexistent. the police just stopped our caravan to bring us up to this little bluff here to point out this piece a graffiti on the side of the building here that says "if you touch us, we will kill you." for them that's an indicateor of what they're facing. it took 30 police officers with assault weapon for us to visit

this neighborhood. it's one of the most neighborhoods in the world. not just in the city but in the world. the police, while their tactics seem heavy handed, it's their only ability to wrestle control back. >> there doesn't seem to be much hope. the murder rate keeps rising. in government, there are signs of progress. i met the interior minister. carlos is is a crusader who is shaking up the system. >> translator: in central america, the six out of ten murder are drug related. >> $10.5 million in four years. >> he says this past year his government seized about $3 billion worth of drugs.

the entire budget of the government is only about $5 billion. he says anti-narcotics operations alone won't bring down the horrific murder rate. to do that, he had to convince the public that murders would actually be solved. step one, create a team of trained detectives. in the basement of the ministry of justice, i visited the barracks of guatemala city's csi unit. here investigators take timelying in shifts, like in a fire house. here when a crime is committed, radios start going off and they launch the investigators to the scene of the crime. in the last week how many times have you gone out on calls to investigate crime scenes or murders? >> six. >> six times? wow. the minister says it's already paying off.

>> translator: in the past couple of years after they began making the police more professional, the murder rate has begun to decline. >> but it takes more than training investigators. radical surgery had to be performed to fight one of the region's biggest and oldest problems, corruption. this is the large suburb, population 1 million. it used to be one of the more violent areas in metropolitan guatemala city. then two crime fighting pilot programs were introduced with aid from the u.s. state department. what's unique about this police station is that they actually fired 100% of the police officers here and they took all rookies out of the academy. the reason of course is because corruption is so endemic that they had to start with fresh officers who had never been on the street. the place say the conviction rate has gone from practically

zero to 98%. this camera system has had a big impact. in one neighborhood, 53 cameras have been installed and crime has dropped by 90%. >> translator: crime throughout the entire city is down 28% to 30%. >> this is one of the murders that the cameras were able to solve. >> this guy just jumped out of a van right here, white sweat shirt, pulled out a gun. now he's shooting. what this is is they took a green grab of prior to the murder that we just saw up on the big screen and it allowed them to identify the guy who committed the murder as well as that you have this guy in this purple sweat shirt who actually handed the guy who committed the

shooting the gun. >> in addition to watching the criminals, the cameras are also a way for the mayor to observe his own police force. whens officers so up on scene, they're required to salute the cameras to show they're on the job. >> for him to see them saluting the cameras on the job is a huge, huge improvement. the murder right in guatemala has just begun to decline slightly. still it's eight time the rate in the united states. the minister has a message for people in america, the largest consumers of drugs. >> translator: consuming drugs has consequences. every kilo, every gram is paid for in blood in latin america and central america. >> and kaj larsen joins us safe

and sound in the studio, all cleaned up. >> no flak jacket. >> we see so many narco stories out of new mexico. but to see these images out of guatemala and honduras, what led to you this story? >> there has ban lot of focus on mexico in the news. and the violence there has been very disturbing and very visible because they're our nearest enable. increasingly the corridor has become an increasing path for narcotics. today over 60% are moving via land. with that has become an exponential increase in violence in places like honduras and guatemala. so much so that even this month the peace corps is pulling out of their operations in honduras. >> the peace corps is leaving. >> you got the demand as you pointed out in the piece and supply. but sort of stopping the drugs moving along that route, what's

being done for that? >> it's the right question because it's such a critical choke point for narcotics. 90% of cocaine is making its first stop in honduras. law enforcement is increasingly paying attention to this area but it's a difficult battle. there's a u.s. joint task force run by the military there that's supporting the hondurans with air assets and intelligence. i embedded myself with the dea. >> the dea is fighting an uphill battle. how do they feel about it in terms of resources? >> obviously they'd like to bring more resources tos fight. it's a very tough, very professional organization but the power of these cartels which are effectively operating as multi-national corporations with supply chains and distributio centers, the head of the cartel was on the forbes list.

these are very, very powerful organizations and they're very hard to combat. >> that's frightening. i learned a lot, though. i'm glad you're back safe and sound. >> great to see you guys. >> up next, was it murder or miscarriage of justice? the story of two families torn apart by a deadly shooting.a g . ...'scuse me... g . ...or a big steak... ...or big hair... i think we have our answer. geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. your doctor will say get smart about your weight. i tried weight loss plans... but their shakes aren't always made for people with diabetes. that's why there's new glucerna hunger smart shakes.

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our criminal justice system is based upon the promise of a fair trial. >> but what if a trial isn't fair? what if the prosecution has

stacked the deck against you unfairly? >> we bring you the story of a man who is now sitting in prison, maybe for life, even after the trial that put him there was found by a judge to be full of holes. >> i was convicted of second degree murder with depraved indifference in 1997 and i was sentenced to 20 years to life. >> new york city police officer richard served 11 years in prison before a judge tossed out his conviction and he was sent home. his friends and family celebrating his release. >> when you walked out -- >> it was surreal. i couldn't believe it. my ankles weren't shackled and i was like, wow, this is real. >> a free man, he spent two years rebuilding his life.

he got a job, an apartment, a wife. then just as suddenly in a twist of the criminal justice system, it was all taken away. >> i still cannot adjust being back here. it is difficult. it is difficult. >> richard's bizarre journey began here, dobbs ferry, a charming village 30 minutes outside new york city. on october 3rd, 1996 the small community was rocked by a deadly shooting, triggered over this parking space. the shooter was off duty new york city transit officers richard, the victim, charles cam beshlgs an amateur boxer who worked with underprivileged kids. his older brother called him chaz. >> he was a wonderful athlete, wonderful person, he was a christian. loved kids. loved people. all people. >> is it started around 5:00 on a clear autumn day.

richard was working behind the count irv his family owned deli. he stopped by to help his brother-in-law and father, richard, sr., who suffered a heart attack. they owned the building and say tenant himself been withholding rent to protest the lack of open spaces. wells, charles didn't know about the issue when he pulled into open spot and went across the street to get a piece of pizza. richie's father remembers that day. >> i asked if i am if he could please move to the other lot. he refused to do it. >> so the deli own did what the police told him to do, put a sticker on the wind. here what's they say happened when campbell saw the sticker on his new car. >> listen, i need a cop over here.

a fight just broke out. >> he was in the store. he saw him come running across the street. i was like this, he came behind me and he stepped like this and heap put his hands up like this and heap said there's no need for this. >> and then -- >> he hit richie in the face. >> it was like getting hit with a hammer. they were hammer blows. he just was out of control. he was somebody who didn't want to listen to reason or anything like that at the time. >> the fight spilled into the middle of the parking lot as father, son and brother-in-law wrestled campbell to the ground. >> when i went to put my hand underneath his head, he said that's it, i've had enough. so i said to richie, i said it's over. we let him up, now whenever i had a fight when i was a kid, it was over, it was over. >> but the fight wasn't over.

and what happened next changed everything. charles campbell outnumbered three to one went to his car, but rather than leave he pulled out a bat. this man with a bat in his hands, how much more of a threat did that make him to your father? >> it made him a deadly threat. >> back in the store rich said he saw campbell strike his father not once but twice with a metal bat. >> i just saw him up with the bat and he started to swing. that's when i reached for the gun. >> the off-duty officer grabbed the gun from under the cash register and raced outside, firing three times, hitting charles campbell in the middle of his chest. >> somebody was shot. >> from the time that bat came out until the time the incident was over, it was a matter of four seconds, five seconds. and my training just kicked in.

>> he doesn't remember the moments immediately after the shooting. only that one of the responding officers handed him the gun and asked for help removing the bullet clip. then he, his father and brother-in-law were taken to the police station. >> we want what? >> justice! >> rumors spread like wildfire that the shooting was racially motivated, confirmed in part by the district attorney. >> there were racial epithets that the victim was cursed at the time just prior to the shooting. that information has been confirmed. >> did you ever use any racial slurs? >> we never used a curse word, we never used a racial -- any racial word at all. none. >> campbell's brother, william, was not there but describes events as he came to understand them. >> he's going to probably try to work around to get to his car. that's when richie came out and i think he came out from behind the truck and he said die,

nigger die and shot him three times. >> this man said he saw the bat aimed at the elder man. >> full force swings hitting him at least in the legs and almost the head. you could hear the smacks like a block away, that's how hard he hit him. you see your father getting beat with a bat, you're going to do something about it. it self-defense what i saw. >> i remember at one point watching dillan on television saying you see your father getting beat, you got to do something, it was strictly self-defense and i remember saying oh, thank god for this witness. >> we brought murder charges -- >> but that same night district attorney perro charged richard with intentional murder around murder with depraved indifference. >> i was like how is this murder? i don't understand it. >> so this is the first time you killed a man. how heavily does that weigh on

you? >> i don't think about it. i believe i saved my father's life that day. >> coming up, the trial that outraged a judge. >> was this a miscarriage of justice? >> i believe it was a miscarriage of justice.. forty years ago, he wasn't looking for financial advice. back then he had something more important to do. he wasn't focused on his future. but fortunately, somebody else was. at usaa we provide retirement planning for our military, veterans and their families. now more than ever, it's important to get financial advice from people who share your military values. for our free usaa retirement guide, call 877-242-usaa.

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in the case against a former nypd officers, did prosecutors suppress crucial evidence that could have changed the jury's verdict? one judge was convinced that's exactly what happened. >> richard diguglielmo, sr. is consumed by the verdict that sent his son to prison to serve 20 to life. >> i wish my son was never there. whether i got killed or not, it doesn't make any difference to me. what do i have now? my family is torn apart. literally torn apart. where's my son?

>> we wanted to talk about the shooting to both the dobbs ferry police department and the then west chester county district attorney jannine perro. repeated interview requests were denied. in her book she says no question the shooting was racially motivated. race dominated the headlines but never came up at trial. instead prosecutors claimed diguglielmo shot charles campbell in a murderous rage. assistant district attorney patricia murphy telling the jury, quote, this is a case about revenge. had is a case about retribution. this is a case about payback. prosecutors argued the father, son and son-in-law ganged up on campbell so that campbell had no choice but to grab a bat from his car. >> i know chaz. when he grabbed that bat, the idea of getting that bat was to just show, all right, y'all, back on up, you know, i'm not

trying to start nothing here but i will finish it. they kept charging him. so he swung i think once at the father. >> do you think charles campbell could have killed your father had that third hit struck him? >> sure. absolutely. it was a metal baseball bat. >> everyone's saying it's over a parking space -- >> it was about a baseball bat. >> if there wasn't a baseball bat, there wouldn't have been a gun. >> prosecutor, supported by eyewitness testimony, convinced the jury that campbell, despite holding the bat, was backing away. the jury acquitted the diguglielmos of assault. but richie was convicted of murder with depraved indifference. >> i never denied shooting charles campbell. i said i shot charles campbell to stop him from beating my father with a bat. it's not depraved injustice murder. >> i'm happy that it came back

in the light that i wanted it to come back in but i can't feel a victim. two families were totally detroited. >> but there was something about the case against richard diguglielmo. two witnesses came forward and said diguglielmo was acting in self-defense and were pressured to chang their stories. bellantoni was an appeals court justice. >> what i dealt with was whether or not certain witnesses were coerced and if so whether the jury was made aware of this coercion. >> although some witnesses from the original trial supported the prosecution's version of the shooting, two who were closest

to the shooting were not. one of those witnesses was michael dillan. >> after giving his original statement on the night of the shooting, he was picked up by police officers night and day until he changes his statement. >> the dobbs ferry detectives just kept asking me the same questions over and over again, night after night. it was like an interrogation. >> here's what dillan originally told police. >> to the best of my recollection, the black guy was swinging the bat at the older guy when the shots were fired. >> but the jury never heard that. dillan testified at trial campbell was not swinging the bat. another key witness who refused to change his story and was not called to testify was james white. >> they were telling me other people said this and other people said that. i said i'm not interested in what other people said. i'm telling what you i saw and this is the truth. >> white was standing inside the

deli and he saw charles campbell not as victim but as aggressor. >> they held him down only as long as it took for him to cease attacking. and once he did that, they would let him up. >> white says that's when campbell got the bat, swinging at the elder diguglielmo. >> i'm looking at him saying, my god, he's going to kill him. >> the jury never heard that version either. bellantoni found the autopsy report sported white's story. >> one of the things the district attorney office couldn't get around at the hearing was that the bat was being held upright. the only way you get five wounds with three bullets is this bullet went in the forearm, out the forearm into the chest. >> in a scathing report, the judge called the district attorney as case a whole sale assault on the justice system and criticized prosecutors for a win at all costs mindset.

he overturned the conviction and sent richie diguglielmo free. >> you had started working, you had moved into your own apartment. tell me what else. >> met a woman, fell in love, got married and then had to come back here. >> but prosecutors appealed, arguing bellantoni overstepped his authority and in a stunning reve reversal, a four-judge panel ruled even if the witnesses hadn't changed their stories, it likely wouldn't have changed the verdict. >> i don't know how they could say that. if 12 people heard he stuck by his story and finally changed it because he didn't want to be harassed by the police department anymore longer, might the verdict had been different? the answer for me was yes. >> was this a miscarriage of justice? >> i believe it was a miscarriage of justice. >> today i'm here of my own free

will to surrender to this court and i will continue to fight this fight. >> on june 3rd, 2010, richie returned to prison to finish his sentence of 20 to life. >> i feel for richy because irregardless of what he was thinking, i forgive him, not his action. >> it's been a tragedy from day one and i won't belittle that in any way. but how does a judge send you home and then another judge say, oh, no, we don't agree with you so we're going to send you back. >> would you have rather stayed in prison knowing what you know now? >> there was a time where i said yes but then i would have never met my wife. that's the sunshine in this dreary world. >> so there's hope? >> there's always hope.

>> deb now joins us. you talk in your piece about a possible miscarriage of justice. the question is has the d.a. at all answered this charge that the jurors never quite heard the full story? >> the former district attorney did give a statement. she never answered any questions as to why race never came up at trial, nor did she explain why these key eyewitness statements were suppressed. sheep does say, however, that she describes charles campbell as an unarmed man and she says, quote, richard diguglielmo's guilt has repeatedly been affirmed by three appellate courts and that is correct. >> what recourse does he have in all this? >> the u.s. supreme court is out. they declined to hear this case. his lawyer is going to appeal to the federal court, present the new evidence hopefully to say these eyewitness statements should have come in. and then but really his legal options are running out. so he may have to wait until

2019, which is when he's up for parole and the court actually said those two years he was out, he's got to serve those in prison. so he gets nothing. >> and he fell in love while he was there as well. >> is she standing by him? >> she's absolutely standing by him. she's got total faith in him, he's got total faith in her but he is losing a little faith in the justice system. >> now it's up to you to decide. was justice served for richard diguglielmo. >> you can go to our blog and let us know what you think. >> that's it for tonight's show. >> we live you for a preview on our special report on the dangers of concussions. >> man, he's laying on the bed and his head is swollen. he's not moving, he's not talking. he needs help breathing from this respirator. i just lost it. >> 10:50 a.m., less than 72