Governor saw lethal arrest video months earlier than 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 prime attorneys gathered in a state police conference 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 an important 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 experts wouldn’t even know existed for one more 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 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 hands of these with the power to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless no one has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable in this, in delaying justice,” mentioned 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 automotive crash have develop into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be called inside weeks to testify below 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 identified 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 employees to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective discovered it virtually by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised 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 an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself obtainable for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be available to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was finished,” Block mentioned. “Everyone 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 no matter it is perhaps, then, in fact, the district legal professional ought to have all the evidence within the case. Of course.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's one in every of two movies of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows 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 perhaps much more significant to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom along with his hands and toes restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes silent midway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting 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 significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony during which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same factor occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his loss of life. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was lengthy 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 change into a focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not solely at the actions of the troopers but whether 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 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 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 demise as “terrible but lawful,” mentioned in current legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated he didn’t study the video existed until 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 or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, 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 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 said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day through which Greene’s household would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at the hours of darkness.

“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 settlement falls aside over what happened the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several 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 proven to the household that day.”

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

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, but determined towards 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 Could 2021.

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

Edwards was informed 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 battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race at the time, saved quiet about the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first realized of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life 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 have been published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his function in the Greene case has come under 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 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 facts are clear that the proof of what happened that night time was presented to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

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

___

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