Governor noticed 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 still 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 arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

Whereas 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 Associated Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information discovered 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 essential footage into the fingers of those with the ability to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed essential moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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 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 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 car crash have become questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach 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 workers to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective found it almost accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his data show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself out there for an interview. However 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 officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was executed,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a piece of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it may be, then, of course, the district lawyer ought to have all of the proof within the case. In fact.”

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer 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 exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him in 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 perhaps even more significant to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom with his palms and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ stomach like I told you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s own use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony wherein he characterized 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 begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same factor occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his dying. The identical factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s loss of life once 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 preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focus within the federal probe, which is trying not solely 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 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 internet 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “terrible but lawful,” said in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they had been locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to depend on Clary to offer the footage.

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

An inner 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, avoided discipline and remains within 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 movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office 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 legal professional leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door event the next day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been at nighttime.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the subsequent day.

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

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The fact is we never noticed it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have complete control of the narrative.”

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, but decided towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was among at the least a dozen circumstances over the past 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 present and former troopers stated the beatings have been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race on 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 stated he first realized of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the videos had been published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions prison. In recent 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 lawyers 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 information are clear that the proof of what occurred that night time was presented to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

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

___

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