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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his prime attorneys gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to dwelling: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched an important body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his final 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 within the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information found 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 hands of these with the power to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed crucial moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, 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 in this, in delaying justice,” stated Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who's president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have grow to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify below oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no means for the governor to have identified 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 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. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the top 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 accessible for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be out there to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was done,” Block said. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a bit of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it might be, then, of course, the district legal professional ought to have all the evidence in the case. Of course.”

At issue is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's one in every of two movies of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals 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 perhaps much more significant to the investigations because it is the solely footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his arms and toes restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, 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 professional highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony through which he characterised 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 informed lawmakers in March. “The identical thing occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his dying. The same factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s demise after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the criminal case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focus within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely at the actions of the troopers but 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 different 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s death as “awful however lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they have been locked out of the video storage system on the time and had to depend on Clary to supply the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned 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 conversation.

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, prevented 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 top 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 workplace said.

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 lawyer leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door event the following day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been in the dead of night.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and a number of 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 in truth proven.

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

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

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, information 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 published both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among not less than a dozen cases over the previous decade during which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers stated the beatings had been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. But the governor, who was in the midst of a decent 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 mentioned he first discovered of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the videos had been published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions felony. In current months, as his function within the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as recently as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the proof of what occurred that night time was offered to prosecutors effectively before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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