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 high 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 a crucial body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts wouldn’t even know existed for another six months.

Whereas the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up within the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation primarily based on interviews and data 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 palms of these with the ability to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have become questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be referred to as within weeks to testify under oath earlier than 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 workers to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective discovered it virtually 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 information show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself available 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 not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was achieved,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it may be, then, of course, the district legal professional should have all of the evidence within the case. Of course.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is one in every of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows troopers swarming Greene’s automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, 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.

However Clary’s video is maybe even more vital to the investigations because it's the only footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground along with his palms and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his breathing.

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

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his back at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The identical thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his demise. The same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s loss of life once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was lengthy 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 change into a focal point within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely on 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based proof storage system and the then-head of the company, 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 death as “terrible but lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they had been locked out of the video storage system on 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 learn the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force professional, 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 remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, avoided self-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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office 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 legal professional leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the next day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at midnight.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton said, adding he solely knew at the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That agreement falls aside 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 others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was the truth is proven.

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 attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

“The fact is we never noticed it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have whole control of the narrative.”

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, information show, however decided towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among no less than a dozen instances over the previous decade by 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 stated the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he obtained a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, kept quiet in regards to the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first realized of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise 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 had been printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions felony. In current months, as his position 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. But Edwards insisted as just lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the evidence of what happened that night was introduced to prosecutors well earlier than 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.