Governor saw 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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to dwelling: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital 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 examiners wouldn’t even know existed for one more 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 information 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 hands of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital 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 close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have change into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be known as within weeks to testify underneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach 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 mention seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective found it virtually by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised 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, didn't make himself accessible for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be accessible to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was achieved,” Block mentioned. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it could be, then, after all, the district lawyer should have all the proof in the case. In fact.”

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's considered one 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 car 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 much more vital to the investigations because it's the solely footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom with his hands and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly 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 characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s demise after 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 preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focal point within the federal probe, which is trying not solely 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’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based evidence storage system and the then-head of the agency, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s dealing with 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 loss of life as “awful but lawful,” stated in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they had 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 learn the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force professional, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inner affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars 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 high attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and other 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 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That agreement 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 several other 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 shown to the household that day.”

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

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

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

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among a minimum of a dozen circumstances over the past decade wherein 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 said the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he acquired a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. But the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race at the time, saved quiet about 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 “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 were revealed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions felony. In current months, as his position in the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as recently as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the evidence of what occurred that night time was introduced to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information convention.

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

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