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 legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer 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 showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for another six months.

While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based mostly 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 arms of those with the facility to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death 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,” said 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way for the governor to have known 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 proof.

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 till a detective discovered it almost by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his records show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't 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 available to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff also careworn that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was performed,” Block stated. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a chunk of proof, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is perhaps, then, after all, the district attorney ought to have all of the evidence in the case. Of course.”

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 one in every 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 maybe even more significant to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom with his palms and ft restrained for greater 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 works silent midway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on 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 expert highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony during which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

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 factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his death. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a yr 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 criminal case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focus in the federal probe, which is trying not solely at the actions of the troopers however whether 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’ videos.

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 demise as “awful but lawful,” mentioned in current legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they have been locked out of the video storage system on 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 learn the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inside 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 remark, avoided self-discipline and remains 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, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

Days later, the governor’s attorneys flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district legal professional main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the next day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at nighttime.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what occurred the subsequent day.

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

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

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

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, data present, but decided in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and printed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was amongst at least a dozen instances over the past decade wherein state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers stated the beatings were 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 acquired a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race at the time, saved 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 “severe 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 videos had been printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions prison. In latest months, as his role in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain 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 till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as just lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The details are clear that the evidence of what happened that night time was introduced to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news convention.

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

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