Governor noticed lethal 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 prime lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: troopers’ deadly 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 health workers wouldn’t even know existed for another six months.

While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information found 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 arms of those with the ability to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed critical moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, death 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,” 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 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have turn out to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be known as within weeks to testify beneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way 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 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 receive the footage till a detective found it almost by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his records present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself out there for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be obtainable to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

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

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is certainly one of two movies of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, 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 is the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his fingers and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ belly like I instructed you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s personal use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony wherein he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his again at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The identical factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his loss of life. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was long unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focus 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 protect 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’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online evidence 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 assume that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s loss of life as “awful but lawful,” stated in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they have been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to rely on Clary to supply the footage.

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

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, avoided 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace mentioned.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at midnight.

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

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

That agreement falls apart 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 several others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene household, 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 actual fact is we by no means saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have whole management of the narrative.”

All through this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, data show, but determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst at the least a dozen cases over the past decade in 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 said the beatings have been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race on 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 said he first realized 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 videos have been printed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions felony. In recent months, as his position within 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 lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the evidence of what occurred that evening was offered to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information conference.

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

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