Governor saw deadly 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 convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to house: 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 remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for an additional six months.

Whereas 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 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 essential footage into the arms of those with the ability to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed critical moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near 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 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have turn into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

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

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective found it virtually by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed 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 available for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be obtainable to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally burdened that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was accomplished,” Block stated. “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 no matter it is perhaps, then, after all, the district legal professional should have all of the evidence within the case. After all.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is considered one of two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows troopers swarming Greene’s automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, beating him within 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 maybe much more significant to the investigations because it's the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his fingers and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ stomach like I advised you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s own use-of-force skilled highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony by which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s dying after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focal point in the federal probe, which is wanting not only on the actions of the troopers however whether 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 as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based 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 assume that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “terrible but lawful,” stated in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they have been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to rely on Clary to offer the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said he didn’t be taught the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force knowledgeable, 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 stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, averted self-discipline and stays in 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 movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

Days later, the governor’s attorneys 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 meant to plan a closed-door event the following day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been at nighttime.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, nonetheless, 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 shown to the household that day.”

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

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, data show, however decided towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among at the very least a dozen circumstances over the past 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 present and former troopers stated the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, 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 struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race on 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 stated he first discovered of the “critical 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 proof to state police.

After the videos have been published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions felony. In recent months, as his position in the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as recently 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 evidence of what occurred that evening was offered to prosecutors effectively before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information conference.

“So clearly that isn't part of a cover-up.”

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Contact AP’s world investigative workforce at Investigative@ap.org.