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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to residence: 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 last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts wouldn’t even know existed for an additional six months.

Whereas 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 Related Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his staff 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 stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed crucial moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until 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, still no one has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on this, in delaying justice,” mentioned 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be referred to as within weeks to testify underneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

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

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 discovered it virtually by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed 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 an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself out there for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be accessible to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also burdened that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was accomplished,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a piece of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is perhaps, then, after all, the district lawyer ought to have all of the evidence within the case. In fact.”

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 among two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits 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. 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 is the only footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his arms and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in 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 knowledgeable highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony during 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 level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his death. The identical factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s death after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focus in the federal probe, which is looking not only at the actions of the troopers but whether 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 as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online proof storage system and the then-head of the company, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s dealing with 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 loss of life as “awful but lawful,” mentioned in current legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said he didn’t learn the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force professional, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

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 reply to requests for remark, avoided discipline and stays within 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and different police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district lawyer leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door event the following day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown 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 fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene household, recalled the response he acquired when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, data present, but determined against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and printed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among at the least a dozen instances over the previous decade by which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers mentioned the beatings had been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. But the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, kept quiet about 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 “severe 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 evidence to state police.

After the videos had been printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions criminal. In latest months, as his role 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 lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as just lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The facts are clear that the evidence of what occurred that evening was presented to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information convention.

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

___

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