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 top legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: troopers’ deadly 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 one more six months.

While 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 primarily based on interviews and data found 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 fingers of those with the facility to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important 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, loss of life on a rural roadside near 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,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who's 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have change into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no means 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 employees to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective discovered it virtually by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed 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 protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself out there for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be out there to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was finished,” Block said. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a chunk of evidence, whether it was a video or no matter it might be, then, after all, the district legal professional ought to have all of the proof in the case. After all.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply 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 reveals troopers swarming Greene’s automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him in 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.

But Clary’s video is maybe even more important to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground together with his arms and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway 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 instructed 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 characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The same factor happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his dying. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s death after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the prison case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has develop into a focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not only 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 as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “awful however lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s demise 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 be taught the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An internal affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, averted discipline and remains within 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals 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 main 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 displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been in the dark.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several 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 in fact proven.

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 lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were told it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, information present, however determined in opposition to 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 each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was amongst at the very least 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 current and former troopers mentioned the beatings have been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was in the midst of a decent 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 stated he first realized of the “severe 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 were published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions legal. In current months, as his role within the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as not too long ago as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

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

“So clearly that isn't part of a cover-up.”

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