Governor noticed 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 top lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to home: troopers’ lethal 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 closing breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for another six months.

While 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 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 employees nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the crucial footage into the hands of these with the power to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed essential moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless nobody 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 Commission, 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have become questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called inside weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach 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 workers to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until 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 data show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a protracted 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 obtainable to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees also careworn that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was performed,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a piece of evidence, whether it was a video or no matter it might be, then, of course, the district lawyer ought to have all of the proof within the case. In fact.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is 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. 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 even more important to the investigations because it's the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom together with his hands and feet restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly like I advised 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 throughout testimony by which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s death when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was lengthy 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 turn into a focal point within the federal probe, which is trying 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based proof storage system and the then-head of the company, 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 demise as “awful however lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t be taught the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force skilled, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An internal affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain 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 published 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 legal professionals flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been at midnight.

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

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

That agreement falls apart over what happened the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting 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 the truth is proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were instructed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, information show, however determined towards it on 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 not less than a dozen circumstances over the previous decade through 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 mentioned 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 textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race on the time, saved quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first learned of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life in September 2020, months after Greene’s family 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 called the troopers’ actions legal. In latest 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 lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But 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 evidence of what occurred that night time was introduced to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news conference.

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

___

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