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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top attorneys gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to dwelling: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial 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 experts 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 workers nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the essential footage into the arms of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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,” mentioned 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 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 automotive crash have grow to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner 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 staff to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective discovered it nearly accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his data show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself available for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be available to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was carried out,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a chunk of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it could be, then, in fact, the district attorney should have all the proof in the case. After all.”

At challenge 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 reveals troopers swarming Greene’s car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him within 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 significant to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground together with his hands and feet restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes silent midway via 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 instructed you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s personal use-of-force skilled highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony by which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his again at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his death. The same thing 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 long unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focal point in the federal probe, which is looking not solely at the actions of the troopers however 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 different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s death as “awful however lawful,” stated in latest legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said he didn’t study the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inner 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 self-discipline and remains in 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate 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 occasion the subsequent day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been at midnight.

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

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

That agreement falls apart over what happened the following 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 actually shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, data present, however decided towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst a minimum of a dozen circumstances 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 said the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, 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, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race at the time, kept quiet in regards to the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first learned 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 evidence to state police.

After the movies have been revealed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions criminal. In current months, as his position within the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous 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 presented to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news convention.

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

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