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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high attorneys gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer to dwelling: troopers’ deadly 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 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 within the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information found that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his employees nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the essential footage into the fingers of those with the facility to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed essential moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until almost 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 on this, in delaying justice,” stated 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have turn out to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be known as within weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner for the governor to have identified 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 proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective discovered it nearly accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to remark, the head 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 a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself accessible for an interview. However 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 officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally careworn that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was done,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a bit of proof, whether or not it was a video or no matter it may be, then, of course, the district lawyer should have all of the proof within the case. Of course.”

At subject is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is one among two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals 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. 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 perhaps even more vital to the investigations because it's the solely footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom along with his palms and feet restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which works silent midway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing 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 knowledgeable 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 level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same factor happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his dying. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s death when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has develop into a focus within the federal probe, which is trying not solely on the actions of the troopers but 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 instead gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly 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 suppose 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,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they have been locked out of the video storage system on the time and needed to rely on Clary to provide 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 because the company’s use-of-force skilled, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inner affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, avoided self-discipline and remains 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 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 workplace mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and different 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 supposed to plan a closed-door event the next day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors were at midnight.

“It didn’t come up at all,” Belton mentioned, adding 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 next day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting 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, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been advised 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 complete control of the narrative.”

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, however determined in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among at the least a dozen cases over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers stated the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

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

Edwards has stated he first learned of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life 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 videos have been revealed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions legal. In recent months, as his role within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

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

“The info are clear that the proof of what occurred that night time was offered to prosecutors nicely 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.