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 top lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for another 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 Associated Press investigation primarily based on interviews and records found 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 crucial footage into the fingers of those with the facility to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed essential moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, 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 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 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have develop into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way 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 employees to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective found it almost by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, 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 available for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be accessible to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees also burdened that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was performed,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a bit of proof, whether or not it was a video or no matter it could be, then, in fact, the district legal professional ought to have all of the proof in 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 among two movies of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automotive 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 perhaps even more vital to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground together with his palms and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his breathing.

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

The state police’s own use-of-force professional highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony wherein he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

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 same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s loss of life once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely 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 focus 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 correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “terrible however lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said he didn’t learn the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as 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 details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, avoided self-discipline and stays within 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 top 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 workplace mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals 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 meant to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day by which Greene’s household would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though 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 were in the dark.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown 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 office, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired when they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, however determined in opposition to 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 Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst at least a dozen instances over the previous decade during which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers mentioned the beatings had been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, 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 dying. But the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, saved quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

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

After the movies have been revealed, 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 further to describe them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as not too long ago as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous 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 was offered to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information convention.

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

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