Tense: Joe Scarborough vs. Lawrence O'Donnell on Discredited 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' Claim

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough and Lawrence O’Donnell clashed Friday on “Morning Joe” over whether the Justice Department report on the fatal police-involved shooting of Michael Brown discredits the “hands up, don’t shoot” claim.

“Eric Holder doesn’t agree with the officer’s side of the story. Eric Holder’s report says they didn’t see that they could make a case beyond a reasonable doubt that they could get a conviction of the police officer,” O’Donnell argued.

(MSNBC's "Morning Joe")

“Actually, what they said was that…the testimony that said he had his hands up was not credible, and also that the forensic evidence did not show that he had his hands up in the air,” Scarborough said, speaking over O’Donnell at times.

The DOJ report states:

Witness accounts suggesting that Brown was standing still with his hands raised in an unambiguous signal of surrender when Wilson shot Brown are inconsistent with the physical evidence, are otherwise not credible because of internal inconsistencies, or are not credible because of inconsistencies with other credible evidence. In contrast, Wilson’s account of Brown’s actions, if true, would establish that the shootings were not objectively unreasonable under the relevant Constitutional standards governing an officer’s use of deadly force. Multiple credible witnesses corroborate virtually every material aspect of Wilson’s account and are consistent with the physical evidence.

O’Donnell repeated his claim that the DOJ report merely means that investigators couldn’t “prove” Brown had his hands up. He then told Scarborough to “understand what reasonable doubt is.”

“Here we go,” Scarborough added. “Thank you so much for giving me a lecture on the law.”

Watch the exchange starting at around 10:40 below:

(H/T: Mediaite)

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