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 attorneys gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare 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 showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for an additional 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 Related Press investigation based mostly 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 essential footage into the hands of these with the facility to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed essential moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, 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 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have turn out to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be known as inside weeks to testify beneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner 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 point out seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective discovered it nearly by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised 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 available 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 officers investigating the case. The governor’s employees also harassed that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was executed,” Block stated. “Everybody 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, in fact, the district lawyer should have all the evidence in the case. After all.”

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 every of two videos of the incident, and captured events 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 even more important to the investigations because it's the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom along with his palms and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, choosing 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 professional highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony wherein he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

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 advised lawmakers in March. “The same factor happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his demise. The same factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s demise when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the felony case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not solely at 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 personal from Greene’s arrest and instead gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly 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 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 recent legislative testimony.

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

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

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars 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 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 workplace mentioned.

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 leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the next day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and view 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 have been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been at nighttime.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton mentioned, 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 next day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven 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, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was the truth is 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 attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired when they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been told it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, information show, but determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general 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 instances over the past decade during which 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 cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. But the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, stored 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 learned of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s death 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 videos were published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions prison. In current months, as his role within the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys 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 details are clear that the evidence of what happened that night time was presented to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

___

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