Governor saw deadly arrest video months before prosecutors

By JIM MUSTIAN and JAKE BLEIBERG

https://apnews.com/article/death-of-ronald-greene-politics-arrests-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-599fae0d1018e0632554043f4e5b8fd3

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — With racial tensions nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to residence: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based mostly on interviews and information discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his workers nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the essential footage into the palms of these with the power to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, still nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable in this, in delaying justice,” stated Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a New Orleans-based watchdog group.

“All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing,” Goyeneche added. “And that’s what the governor did, nothing.”

What the governor knew, when he knew it and what he did about an in-custody demise that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have grow to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called inside weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach for the governor to have recognized on the time that the video he watched had not already been turned over to prosecutors, and there was no effort to by the governor or his staff to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective discovered it almost by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his data present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself available for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be out there to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also careworn that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was completed,” Block said. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a bit of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it is perhaps, then, of course, the district attorney ought to have all the evidence in the case. In fact.”

At subject is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's one among two movies of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him within the head and dragging him by his ankle shackles. All through the frantic scene, Greene is barely resisting, pleading for mercy and wailing, “I’m your brother! I’m scared! I’m scared!”

Trooper Dakota DeMoss' body-camera video.

However Clary’s video is probably even more important to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground along with his fingers and toes restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ stomach like I advised you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s own use-of-force professional highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony by which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his again at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his death. The identical factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s dying once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it was long unknown to detectives working the legal case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focus in the federal probe, which is looking not solely at the actions of the troopers however whether or not state police brass obstructed justice to protect them.

Detectives say Clary falsely claimed he didn’t have any body-camera footage of his personal from Greene’s arrest and instead gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online evidence storage system and the then-head of the agency, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s handling of the Greene case.

“I don’t suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s dying as “awful however lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they had been locked out of the video storage system on the time and had to depend on Clary to offer the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said he didn’t be taught the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An internal affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, avoided discipline and stays within the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP printed audio of Trooper Chris Hollingsworth bragging that he had “beat the ever-living f--- out of” Greene, Edwards and his high attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace said.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district legal professional leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day wherein Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been at midnight.

“It didn’t come up at all,” Belton said, including he solely knew on the time of the DeMoss video.

Block agreed, saying, “We didn’t go through what happened on the movies.”

That agreement falls apart over what happened the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and several others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in truth shown.

However state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale acknowledged, “The department has no proof of what was shown to the household that day.”

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene household, recalled the response he acquired once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been told it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The actual fact is we never saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have total management of the narrative.”

All through this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, information show, but determined in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among not less than a dozen instances over the past decade wherein state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers mentioned the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. But the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race at the time, stored quiet about the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first learned of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the movies have been printed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In latest months, as his function within the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as just lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the proof of what happened that night time was offered to prosecutors nicely before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

“So clearly that isn't part of a cover-up.”

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.