Governor noticed 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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to residence: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched an important 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 health workers wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

Whereas the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based on interviews and records 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 fingers of those with the power to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed critical moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless nobody 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 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 turn out to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify underneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner 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 staff to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective discovered it almost accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his data 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. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be out there to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers also confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was accomplished,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a chunk of proof, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, after all, the district legal professional should have all the evidence within the case. Of course.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is one among two movies of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows 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.

But Clary’s video is probably even more vital to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his fingers and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on 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 professional highlighted the importance 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 urgent on his again at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The identical thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his loss of life. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s dying once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long 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 change into a focal point in 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 a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s death as “awful but lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to depend on Clary to offer 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 knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

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 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day by which Greene’s household would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors were at midnight.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and a number of other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was the truth is proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene household, recalled the response he acquired after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, records show, however decided towards it at 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 movies in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was among at the very 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 current and former troopers mentioned the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he acquired a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was in the midst of a decent 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 learned of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s death in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the videos were revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions criminal. In recent months, as his function within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as 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 proof of what occurred that evening was presented to prosecutors nicely before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news conference.

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

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