Governor saw lethal 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 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 arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to home: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital 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 one more 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 primarily based on interviews and information found 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 palms of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on this, in delaying justice,” stated 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have become questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be called within weeks to testify below 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 known 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 staff 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 obtain the footage until a detective found it nearly accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his information show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended 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 proof to be available to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally burdened that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was done,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a chunk of proof, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is likely to be, then, of course, the district attorney ought to have all the evidence within the case. After all.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond 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 reveals troopers swarming Greene’s automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, 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 perhaps even more vital to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his arms and ft restrained for greater 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 matches silent midway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking 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 personal use-of-force skilled highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony by which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his back at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his demise. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has develop into a focus in the federal probe, which is trying not only at the actions of the troopers however 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 different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based 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 loss of life as “awful but lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they were locked out of the video storage system on the time and had to depend on Clary to offer 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 as the company’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inner affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, averted discipline and stays 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including 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 movies with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney leading the state investigation.

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

“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 undergo what happened on the movies.”

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and a number of other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he received when they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

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

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among not less than a dozen cases over the past decade through which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers stated the beatings were 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 acquired a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race at the time, kept quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

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

After the movies have been published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his role within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist while 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 just lately 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 night was offered to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information 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.