Governor saw deadly 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 high legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his closing 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 in the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based on interviews and data 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 beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed crucial moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, still nobody 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 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be known as within weeks to testify beneath oath earlier than 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 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 workers to withhold evidence.

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 until a detective found it almost by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his records 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, didn't make himself accessible for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be obtainable to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally stressed that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was done,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a piece of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it could be, then, of course, the district attorney should have all the proof within the case. In fact.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's one in every of two videos 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 guns, beating him in 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 probably much more significant to the investigations because it's the solely footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground together with his arms and toes restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his breathing.

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

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has develop into a focus within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely 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 other troopers’ videos.

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 demise as “awful but lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s dying 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 until 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 internal 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, prevented self-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 top 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 workplace said.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and other 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 supposed to plan a closed-door event the next day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers 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, adding he solely 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 occurred the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim 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 truth shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene household, recalled the response he received once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, records present, however determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among at the least a dozen circumstances over the previous decade during which 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 cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race on 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 realized of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life 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 were revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In recent months, as his function within the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist while 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. However Edwards insisted as lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the proof of what happened that night was presented to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information convention.

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

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