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 prime legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to dwelling: troopers’ lethal 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 ultimate 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 within the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based mostly on interviews and information 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 arms of those with the facility to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, 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,” stated 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 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 become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify beneath 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 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 virtually accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officials 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 same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself accessible for an interview. But 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 staff additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually 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 legal professional didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it could be, then, after all, the district legal professional ought to have all the proof within the case. Of course.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's certainly one of two videos 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 significant to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom together with his hands and feet restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent midway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly like I advised 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 during testimony in which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

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 told lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his dying. The identical thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However 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 turn out to be a focus in the federal probe, which is trying not only at 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 personal from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based 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 demise as “terrible but lawful,” said in latest legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they had 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 study the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inside affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, averted 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 high attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door event the next day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been in the dead of night.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton said, including he only knew on the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That agreement falls apart over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually shown.

But 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 household, recalled the response he acquired when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were told it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, information present, but decided in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and printed each the DeMoss and Clary videos in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst no less than a dozen instances over the past 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 have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, stored quiet in regards to the case publicly for two 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 demise in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the videos were published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his role in the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further 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. But Edwards insisted as recently 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 evidence of what happened that evening was presented to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

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