Governor saw deadly 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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to dwelling: troopers’ deadly 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 closing breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers 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 Related Press investigation 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 those with the facility to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, still 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's 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 automobile crash have grow to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be known 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 identified at 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 mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective found it nearly accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised 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 a protracted 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 proof to be out there to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was performed,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a bit of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it could be, then, of course, the district attorney ought to have all of the evidence within the case. Of course.”

At subject is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is one in all two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s automobile 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.

But Clary’s video is probably much more important to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom with his palms and ft restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly like I informed 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 importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony through which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing 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 in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his death. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has change into a focal point in the federal probe, which is wanting not only on 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 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 death as “awful however lawful,” said in current legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to depend on Clary to provide the footage.

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

An internal affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, averted discipline and remains in the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP revealed 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the movies with John Belton, the Union Parish district lawyer main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day by which Greene’s household would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been at the hours of darkness.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton stated, adding he only knew at the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the following day.

Greene’s household 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 office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually 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 legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he received after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, records show, but decided against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was amongst at the very least a dozen instances over the past decade during 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 tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he obtained a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. 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 two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said 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 despatched a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the movies were published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions felony. In recent months, as his function within the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

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

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

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