Governor noticed lethal 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 nonetheless 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 prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched an important body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his ultimate 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 within the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based mostly 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 fingers of these with the ability to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed critical moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, still no one 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 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have change into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be known as within weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way for the governor to have known 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 employees to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective discovered it nearly by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his information 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 never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff also confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was finished,” Block said. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a piece of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it could be, then, in fact, the district legal professional ought to have all of the evidence within the case. Of course.”

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is one in all 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 car 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 even more vital to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom along with his palms and feet restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway via 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 told 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 significance of the Clary footage during testimony wherein he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inside 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 long unknown to detectives working the felony case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focus in the federal probe, which is wanting not only 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 different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s dying as “awful but lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they have been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to rely on Clary to provide the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said he didn’t study the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force professional, 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 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in truth shown.

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

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

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, information show, however decided in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

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

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. But the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race at the time, kept quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first realized 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 evidence to state police.

After the videos have been published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions prison. In latest months, as his role within the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as just lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior 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 nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news conference.

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

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