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 top attorneys gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer 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 confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his closing breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts wouldn’t even know existed for an additional six months.

While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up within the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based on interviews and records found 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 essential footage into the hands of those with the power to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed essential moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, 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 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have develop into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be referred to as inside weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

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

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective discovered it virtually by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his records 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 available 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 officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back 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 chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it might be, then, after all, the district lawyer should have all the evidence within the case. In fact.”

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 considered one of 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 weapons, beating him within the head and dragging him by his ankle shackles. All through 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 probably much more vital to the investigations because it is the only footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath 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 with his arms and toes restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly like I instructed you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s personal use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony through 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 level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins 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 moment of his demise. The same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not solely on 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based evidence 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 assume that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s dying as “terrible but lawful,” said in latest legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t be taught the video existed till 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 dialog.

An inner affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details 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 published 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals 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 leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the next day by which Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been in the dead of night.

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

Block agreed, saying, “We didn’t undergo what occurred on the videos.”

That agreement falls aside over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several 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 shown.

However 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 household, recalled the response he acquired after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, information present, but decided against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst at the least a dozen instances over the past decade through which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid 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 tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, 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, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, saved quiet in regards to the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first learned of the “critical 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 evidence to state police.

After the movies were printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his function in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But 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 info are clear that the proof of what happened that evening was presented to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information conference.

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

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