Governor noticed deadly 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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top attorneys gathered in a state police convention 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 a crucial body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers 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 primarily based on interviews and data 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 fingers of these with the power 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 till practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, 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 is 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 automobile crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be known as within weeks to testify underneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential 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 point out seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective discovered it virtually accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officials refused to comment, the pinnacle 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 an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not 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 never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff also careworn that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was performed,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it might be, then, in fact, the district attorney ought to have all the proof within the case. In fact.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is 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 automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, 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.

However Clary’s video is perhaps even more vital to the investigations because it is the solely footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his hands and toes restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes 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 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 knowledgeable highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony during which he characterised 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 begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his death. The identical thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focal point within the federal probe, which is looking not only on the actions of the troopers but whether 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 instead gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “awful but lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to rely 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 as the company’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, prevented discipline and remains within 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 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 discuss the movies with John Belton, the Union Parish district legal professional leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door event the next day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That agreement falls aside 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 others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact shown.

But 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 acquired once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, however determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among at least a dozen circumstances 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 mentioned the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race at the time, kept quiet about the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

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

After the videos had been printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions criminal. In latest months, as his role in the Greene case has come below 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 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 facts are clear that the evidence of what happened that night was introduced to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news conference.

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

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