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 attorneys gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to dwelling: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

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

Whereas 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 mostly on interviews and information 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 essential footage into the palms of these with the ability to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed crucial moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside close to 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 in this, in delaying justice,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who's president of the Metropolitan Crime Fee, a New Orleans-based watchdog group.

“All it takes for evil to prevail is for good males 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 turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be referred to as inside weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential 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 employees to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective discovered it nearly by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his data present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself available for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be out there to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff also pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was carried out,” Block said. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a chunk of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, after all, the district lawyer ought to have all of the proof in the case. In fact.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is one in every of two movies of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him in 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.

But Clary’s video is probably much more important to the investigations because it is the solely footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground together with his fingers and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

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

The state police’s own use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the importance 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 back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The identical factor occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his demise. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s loss of life once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely 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 develop into a focal point in the federal probe, which is looking not solely on the actions of the troopers however whether state police brass obstructed justice to protect them.

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

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet proof storage system and the then-head of the agency, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s dealing with 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 death as “terrible however lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they were locked out of the video storage system on the time and needed to depend on Clary to offer the footage.

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

An inner affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, avoided self-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 top attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at nighttime.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what happened the following day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and a number of other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was the truth is shown.

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

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

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, records show, but determined in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was amongst no less than a dozen cases over the previous 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 stated the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he acquired a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race at the time, stored quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has stated he first discovered of the “serious 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 had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In current months, as his position in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe 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. However 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 facts are clear that the evidence of what happened that night time was introduced to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news conference.

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

___

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