The Last Word   |  March 20, 2012

Perceived racial overtones in Trayvon Martin case

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell gets analysis on the case from executive director of the Florida Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Arthur Hayhoe, Florida attorney Jasmine Rand and former DNC communications director Karen Finney.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> treyvon martin case after this break.

>>> good to see you, thank you.

>> there is mitt romney literally walk ago way from the treyvon martin case . back with me now, karen finney and attorney rand. i want us to see this video i'm about to show. it's about the beating of a homeless man in florida . the interesting thing about this case is this crime scene was supervised by the very same officer who supervised the scene of the noninvestigation of the killing of treyvon martin. let's look at this video of what happens to this homeless man.

>> whoa!

>> 21-year-old justin collison is the son of a police officer and was never charged. the man he struck first who was homeless had to be hospitalized.

>> now, jasmine rand, that video has been making the rounds now in florida because the interesting thing is that that crime scene was supervised by the same officer who supervised the scene of the killing of treyvon martin. and he did not move for any charges against the person who we saw do that in that video.

>> right. i actually got a call from my office while we were on break and there is something in the story that we need to correct. my office has been analyzing the tapes even as i've been on air. and i know that the version that we heard tonight, it appears that the words f-ing coon were used. the official version that we have from the police department , you don't hear those explitives. so where the version stating f-ing coons came from we don't know. at this time until we can verify that is an original copy from the sanford police department , the family cannot stand by those terms because we don't know where that version came from.

>> okay. let's dig into. that that's important. so just so we understand, the version that you've heard or your office has heard from the police department , the official version doesn't have a blank there? does it have something inaudible?

>> i don't believe that it has a blank there. i can't recall exactly from memory. but as stated earlier, first couple times i didn't hear or notice. that i have heard versions since then where i do hear that. but we went back and analyzed the original version that we received from the sanford police department and it does not appear to us that based upon the original version that our office received that explitives were included there. i can't say where that version where we can clearly hear the explitive there's came from.

>> okay. that version came from a local television station in florida and that's what we've been using. and that's all the time we have for this tonight. i want to thank karen finney , jasmine finney ,