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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his prime legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare 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 showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners 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 proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation 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 essential footage into the fingers 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 other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near 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,” 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have become questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called inside weeks to testify below oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method 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 employees to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till 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 data present 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 obtainable for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be available to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff also harassed that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was performed,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a bit of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it could be, then, after all, the district attorney should have all the proof in the case. After all.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's certainly one of two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, 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 perhaps even more important to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground with his arms and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly 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 importance of the Clary footage during testimony during which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s dying when they opened a probe and later showed 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 change into a focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not only at the actions of the troopers however 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online 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 loss of life as “terrible but lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they have been locked out of the video storage system on the time and needed to rely on Clary to offer 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 entry to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force skilled, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An internal affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, 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, including the Clary video, the governor’s office mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers 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 intended to plan a closed-door occasion the following day wherein Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been in the dark.

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

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

That agreement falls apart over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact proven.

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 lawyer for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, but determined against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and printed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was amongst at the least a dozen cases over the previous decade during 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 stated the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, 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, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, kept quiet in regards to the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first learned of the “serious 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 proof to state police.

After the videos had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his role in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as not too long ago as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the proof of what happened that evening was presented to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news conference.

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

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