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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his prime lawyers gathered in a state police convention 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 ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

Whereas the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based mostly on interviews and data 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 essential footage into the palms of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed crucial moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless no one 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 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have become questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way 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 workers to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective discovered it almost accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to remark, the top 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 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 obtainable to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally stressed that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was carried out,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a bit of proof, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is perhaps, then, after all, the district attorney ought to have all the proof 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 among two movies of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, 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 maybe even more significant to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the load 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 along with his hands and ft restrained for greater than 9 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 matches 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 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 expert highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony in which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his again at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the moment of his demise. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s death when they opened a probe and later showed 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 turn out to be a focal point within the federal probe, which is wanting not only 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 personal 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 an online proof 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 assume that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s loss of life as “terrible however lawful,” said in current 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, stated he didn’t learn the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

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 self-discipline and stays 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 high 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 mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s attorneys 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 wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton stated, including he solely knew at 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 subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and a number of other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality proven.

However 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 family, recalled the response he obtained once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, records present, however determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among not less than a dozen cases over the past decade wherein state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside 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. But the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race on the time, stored quiet about the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first discovered 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 were printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions criminal. In latest months, as his function within the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe 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. But Edwards insisted as recently as February that evidence 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 effectively before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news conference.

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

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