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 high legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched an important 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.

Whereas 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 based mostly on interviews and records discovered 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 power to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless 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 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 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 known as inside weeks to testify beneath oath earlier than 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 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 gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till 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, informed the AP that his data present 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, did not make himself obtainable for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be out there to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was achieved,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a piece of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it could be, then, after all, the district legal professional should have all of the evidence in the case. After all.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's one in all two movies 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 weapons, 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 significant to the investigations because it is the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground together with his palms and toes restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on 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 personal use-of-force professional highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony in which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

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 identical factor occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his loss of life. The same thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s dying when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was long unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focus within the federal probe, which is looking not solely at the actions of the troopers but 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 an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different 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 company, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s handling 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 loss of life as “terrible but lawful,” stated in recent legislative testimony.

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

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

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 respond to requests for remark, avoided discipline and remains in 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 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 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 lawyer leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

“It didn’t come up at all,” Belton stated, adding he only knew on the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That agreement falls apart over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and several others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene household, recalled the response he received when they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, data present, but decided in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and printed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was amongst at the very least a dozen instances over the previous decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, kept quiet concerning the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first learned of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the movies were printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions legal. In current months, as his position in the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

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

“The facts are clear that the evidence of what occurred that evening was offered to prosecutors effectively before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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