Governor noticed 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 prime lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to home: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital 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 health workers 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 Related Press investigation primarily based on interviews and records 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 crucial footage into the arms of those with the power to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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,” 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 death 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 known as within weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach 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 point out seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective discovered it nearly accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officials refused to comment, the pinnacle 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 obtainable for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be available to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff also harassed that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was carried out,” Block said. “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 whatever it is perhaps, then, of course, the district legal professional ought to have all the evidence in the case. Of course.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's considered one of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows 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 probably much more significant to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom together with his hands and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in 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 skilled 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 pressing on his back at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The identical factor occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his dying. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a 12 months 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 initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focal point within the federal probe, which is looking not only on 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 as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online evidence 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “awful however lawful,” said in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they have been 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, stated he didn’t be taught the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inner affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, 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 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 office stated.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door event the next day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been in the dead of night.

“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 undergo what happened on the movies.”

That settlement falls apart over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting 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 actual fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he received once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, but determined in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst at least a dozen instances over the past decade by which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race at the time, stored 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 realized of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s death in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the movies were revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions felony. In latest months, as his position within the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional 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 until spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as not too long ago 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 proof of what occurred that night time was offered to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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