Governor saw lethal 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 prime attorneys gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange 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 last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for an additional six months.

While 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 mostly on interviews and data 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 palms of these with the power to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, loss of life 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'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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have turn into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be known as inside weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no means 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 employees to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective found it nearly 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 data show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself out there 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 not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff also pressured that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was performed,” Block mentioned. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a piece of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it could be, then, in fact, the district legal professional ought to have all of the proof in the case. Of course.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is one in all two movies of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, 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 important to the investigations because it's the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom together with his fingers and ft restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ stomach 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 expert highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony wherein 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 starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The identical factor happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his demise. The same factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal 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 focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not only at the actions of the troopers however whether or not state police brass obstructed justice to guard them.

Detectives say Clary falsely claimed he didn’t have any body-camera footage of his personal 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 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 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 current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they have been locked out of the video storage system on the time and needed to depend on Clary to provide the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated he didn’t be taught the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force expert, 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 remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, prevented self-discipline and remains within 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at nighttime.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what happened the next 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 office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he received once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been instructed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, data show, but determined towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among at least a dozen instances over the previous decade by 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 mentioned the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. But the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, stored quiet about the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first learned of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying 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 had been printed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his function in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone further 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 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 occurred that night time was offered to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information convention.

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

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