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 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 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 in the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his workers nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the crucial footage into the arms of those with the ability to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed crucial moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have turn out to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be known as inside 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 manner for the governor to have known 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 staff 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 obtain the footage until a detective found it virtually by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his data present 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 out there 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, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was performed,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether it was a video or no matter it may be, then, of course, the district legal professional should have all of the evidence within the case. In fact.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is one of two videos of the incident, and captured events 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.

But Clary’s video is maybe even more important to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It also 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 nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiration.

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

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 within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his death. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s dying when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the felony case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focal point within the federal probe, which is trying not solely at 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’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s death as “terrible however lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t learn the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force skilled, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inner 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 comment, avoided discipline and remains within the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP printed 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

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 attorney leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the next day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at midnight.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the subsequent 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 the truth is proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he received after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, records show, however decided in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among at the least a dozen cases over the past 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 present and former troopers stated the beatings had been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race at the time, stored 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 stated he first discovered of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the movies had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions prison. In current months, as his role in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However 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 info are clear that the proof of what happened that night was introduced to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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