Governor noticed deadly 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 top attorneys gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange 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 examiners wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

Whereas the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based mostly on interviews and records 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 these with the facility to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed crucial moments and audio absent from different 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 lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless no one has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on 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 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 car crash have grow to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible 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 staff 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 receive the footage until a detective discovered it nearly accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his information present 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 obtainable 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 not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was done,” Block said. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a bit of proof, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is perhaps, then, in fact, the district attorney ought to have all the proof in the case. Of course.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's certainly one of two movies of the incident, and captured events 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. 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 probably even more vital to the investigations because it is the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom with his fingers and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent midway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting 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 skilled highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony in which he characterised 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 identical factor happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his loss of life. The same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s dying after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focus within the federal probe, which is wanting not only 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online 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 death as “awful but lawful,” said in latest legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated he didn’t be taught the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, avoided 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 prime 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 said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors were at nighttime.

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

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

That agreement falls apart over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly 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 workplace, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually 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 family, recalled the response he acquired once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been told it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, data show, but determined towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among no less than a dozen instances over the previous decade by 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 said the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he acquired a text 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 within the midst of a decent reelection race on 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 said he first learned of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s death in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the videos have been published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions legal. In current months, as his role within the Greene case has come under 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 until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The details are clear that the evidence of what happened that night was presented to prosecutors effectively before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news convention.

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

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