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 still 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 arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: 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 closing breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for one more 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 Related Press investigation based on interviews and data discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his employees nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the crucial footage into the arms of these with the facility to cost 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 May 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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 in this, in delaying justice,” mentioned 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 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have develop into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify underneath 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 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 gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it almost by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his information 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, didn't make himself accessible for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be out there to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff also burdened that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was carried out,” Block said. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a chunk of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it might be, then, of course, the district attorney ought to have all the proof within the case. In fact.”

At situation 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 movies of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automobile 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.

But Clary’s video is maybe even more significant to the investigations because it's the solely footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground with his palms and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly like I advised 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 importance of the Clary footage during testimony in 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 level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same factor occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his dying. The same thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s loss of life when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal 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 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 as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based proof storage system and the then-head of the agency, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s handling 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 loss of life as “awful however lawful,” stated in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s death 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 study the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force expert, 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 particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, prevented 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and different police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the next day by which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s family 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, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually shown.

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

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

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, however decided towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

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

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race at the time, stored quiet in regards to the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

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

After the videos had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions criminal. In latest months, as his function in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist whereas 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 just lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the evidence of what occurred that evening was presented to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information convention.

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

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