Governor noticed 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 high lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to dwelling: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial 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 health workers wouldn’t even know existed for another 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 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 arms of those with the power to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed important moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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,” mentioned Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 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 automobile crash have turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be called within weeks to testify under oath before 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 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 proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it virtually accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told 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 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 officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was completed,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a bit of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it might be, then, after all, the district legal professional should have all the evidence in the case. In fact.”

At subject is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is one among two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits 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 maybe much more significant to the investigations because it is the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom together with his fingers and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting 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 expert highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony wherein he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his again at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his demise. The identical thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s loss of life 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 become a focus in the federal probe, which is looking not solely at the actions of the troopers but whether 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 correctly 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “awful however lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life 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 study the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry 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 stays 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 high attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the movies with John Belton, the Union Parish district legal professional leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at midnight.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what occurred the next day.

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

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene household, recalled the response he acquired when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The actual fact is we by no means noticed it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mom. “They’ve tried to have complete control of the narrative.”

All through this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, however decided towards it on 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 Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among at the very least a dozen cases over the past decade wherein state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence 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 circumstances, 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, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, saved quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first realized of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s death 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 had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In current months, as his role in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe 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 till 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 information are clear that the evidence of what happened that evening was presented to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news convention.

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

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