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

There, they privately watched a vital body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers 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 evidence 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 staff nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the essential footage into the palms of those with the power to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed essential moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still no one has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on this, in delaying justice,” mentioned Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who's president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have turn into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify beneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method for the governor to have known 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 proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective discovered it virtually by chance 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 information present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself out there 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 officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally stressed that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was done,” Block said. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, in fact, the district lawyer should have all the proof within the case. After all.”

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 in all two movies of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s automotive 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 maybe even more significant to the investigations because it is the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom with his arms and ft restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent midway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in 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 importance of the Clary footage during testimony during 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 starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The identical factor occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his loss of life. The identical thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s demise when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was long unknown to detectives working the prison 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 focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not only on the actions of the troopers but 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online 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 death as “awful but lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they had been locked out of the video storage system at 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 study the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inner affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, avoided self-discipline and stays in 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been at nighttime.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what happened the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven 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 in reality shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been told it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, information present, but decided towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and printed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

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

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside 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 death. However the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race at the time, kept quiet about 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 proof to state police.

After the videos have been published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions felony. In latest months, as his role within 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. However Edwards insisted as not too long ago as February that evidence 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 occurred that night time was introduced to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

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