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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital 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 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 evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based mostly 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 fingers of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed critical moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on this, in delaying justice,” mentioned 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 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have turn out to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be known as inside weeks to testify underneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no means for the governor to have known 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 gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective found it almost by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his records show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself accessible for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be available to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees also confused that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was performed,” Block mentioned. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a bit of proof, whether or not it was a video or whatever it could be, then, after all, the district attorney ought to have all the proof within the case. Of course.”

At situation 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 videos 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 weapons, beating him in 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 much more important to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his palms and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

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

The state police’s personal use-of-force expert 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 again at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned 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 12 months after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the felony 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 wanting 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

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

But the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they were locked out of the video storage system on the time and needed to depend on Clary to provide the footage.

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

An inside affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, prevented discipline and remains in 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, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

Days later, the governor’s attorneys flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the movies with John Belton, the Union Parish district lawyer main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door event the following day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at nighttime.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what occurred the next day.

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

But state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale acknowledged, “The division has no proof of what was shown to the family that day.”

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene household, recalled the response he acquired when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The very fact is we never saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mom. “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 decided towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among at the very least a dozen instances over the previous decade during 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 stated the beatings had been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. But the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, stored quiet concerning the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first discovered of the “serious 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 movies have been printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In current months, as his role in the Greene case has come underneath 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. However Edwards insisted as recently 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 evening was presented to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news convention.

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

___

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