Governor saw lethal 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 legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to home: troopers’ deadly 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 closing 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 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 crucial footage into the fingers of those with the facility to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed critical moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still nobody 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'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 automotive crash have turn out to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify below oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential 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 employees to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it almost by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his information 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 available to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally careworn that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair 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 piece of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it could be, then, in fact, the district legal professional ought to have all the proof in the case. In fact.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is one in all two movies 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 perhaps much more important to the investigations because it is the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his arms and toes restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ belly 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 during testimony during which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s demise when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking 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 trying 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 as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly 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 dying as “terrible but lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

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

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

An inside affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, averted self-discipline and remains in 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district legal professional main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door event the next day in which Greene’s family 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 lawyers and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been at nighttime.

“It didn’t come up at all,” Belton mentioned, adding 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 following day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown 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 workplace, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact proven.

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

“The fact is we by no means saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have whole control of the narrative.”

All through this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, records show, however decided in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and printed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

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

Edwards was informed 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 struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race at the time, stored quiet concerning the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first discovered of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise 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 videos had been printed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions prison. In current months, as his function in the Greene case has come below 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 recently as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the proof of what happened that night time was introduced to prosecutors effectively before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news conference.

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

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