Governor noticed 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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: 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 closing breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for an additional six months.

While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up within the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based mostly on interviews and records found 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 crucial footage into the fingers of those with the facility to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed essential moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have turn out to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be known as inside weeks to testify beneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no means for the governor to have recognized at 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 evidence.

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 found it almost by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his information show 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 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 officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was carried out,” Block mentioned. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a piece of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it may be, then, in fact, the district attorney ought to have all of the proof within the case. After all.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is considered one of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him within the head and dragging him by his ankle shackles. Throughout 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 maybe even more vital to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom together with his palms and feet restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

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 all through, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ belly 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 expert highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony in which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s dying when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the felony case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focal point within the federal probe, which is trying not solely at the actions of the troopers however whether or not state police brass obstructed justice to guard them.

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

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

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

However the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they had been locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to rely on Clary to supply the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t study the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force skilled, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

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

In early October 2020, days after AP published 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 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 legal professionals flew with Reeves and different police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss 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 subsequent day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at the hours of darkness.

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

Block agreed, saying, “We didn’t undergo what occurred on the videos.”

That settlement falls aside over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting 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, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was the truth is 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 when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

“The very fact is we by no means noticed it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mom. “They’ve tried to have complete control of the narrative.”

All through this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, data present, however decided against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst a minimum of a dozen circumstances over the past decade through which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest within 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 death. But the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race at the time, saved quiet concerning the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

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

After the movies were printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions legal. In current months, as his role in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as just lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The details are clear that the evidence of what happened that night was presented to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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