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 house: troopers’ deadly 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 final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts 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 crucial footage into the palms of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed crucial moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until nearly 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, nonetheless nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable in this, in delaying justice,” mentioned 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be known as inside 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 approach for the governor to have identified 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 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 until a detective found it almost by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his information present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended 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 evidence to be obtainable to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was achieved,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it may be, then, after all, the district attorney ought to have all of the evidence within the case. After all.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's one of two movies of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automotive 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 perhaps much more vital to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his palms and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, choosing 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 expert highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony by which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his again at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The identical factor happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his dying. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s demise when 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 change into a focus within the federal probe, which is trying not only on 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’ videos.

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 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 demise as “terrible but lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to rely on Clary to supply the footage.

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

An inner 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 comment, 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 top attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

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 event the next day during which Greene’s household would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly 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 were in the dead of night.

“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 agreement falls aside over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and several other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually 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 lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, information show, however decided 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 revealed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was amongst no less than a dozen instances over the previous 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 stated the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside 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 death. But the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race at the time, stored quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has stated 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 movies had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions legal. In recent months, as his role in 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 legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But 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 details are clear that the evidence of what occurred that night time was presented to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information convention.

“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.