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 top lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to arrange 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 showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for an additional six months.

While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based on interviews and data discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his employees nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the essential footage into the fingers of these with the ability to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed essential moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on this, in delaying justice,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is president of the Metropolitan Crime Fee, 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be known as inside weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way 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 point out seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective found it virtually by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his data show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself obtainable for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be obtainable to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally burdened that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was accomplished,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a bit of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it could be, then, after all, the district legal professional ought to have all of the evidence in the case. In fact.”

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is one in every of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, 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 perhaps even more significant to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom with his arms and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ stomach like I told you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s personal use-of-force professional highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony in which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his again at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the moment of his dying. The same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not only on the actions of the troopers however whether state police brass obstructed justice to guard them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In early October 2020, days after AP revealed audio of Trooper Chris Hollingsworth bragging that he had “beat the ever-living f--- out of” Greene, Edwards and his prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

Days later, the governor’s attorneys flew with Reeves and different police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the movies with John Belton, the Union Parish district legal professional leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door event the next day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been at midnight.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton mentioned, adding he only knew on the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That settlement falls aside over what happened the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality proven.

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

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

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, records show, but decided against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

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

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race on 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 stated he first realized of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s death in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the movies had been published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In recent months, as his role within the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

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

“The information are clear that the evidence of what occurred that night was offered to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news convention.

“So clearly that is not a part of a cover-up.”

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Contact AP’s international investigative staff at Investigative@ap.org.