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

There, they privately watched an important body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed 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 another six months.

Whereas 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 primarily based 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 crucial footage into the palms of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed critical moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be called inside 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 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 meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it virtually accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his data 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, did not make himself accessible for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be accessible to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was done,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a chunk of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it is perhaps, then, in fact, the district attorney should have all the proof within the case. In fact.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is one in every of two movies of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows troopers swarming Greene’s automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, 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.

But Clary’s video is probably even more vital to the investigations because it is the solely footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his fingers and feet restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in 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 knowledgeable highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony wherein he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The identical thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his death. The identical factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s death 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 lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focus in the federal probe, which is trying not only on the actions of the troopers but 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 an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet proof storage system and the then-head of the company, 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 death as “awful but lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they have been locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to rely on Clary to supply the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated he didn’t study the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force professional, 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 respond to requests for remark, prevented discipline and stays in 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 top 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 workplace stated.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the movies 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 wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and look at 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 whereas prosecutors have been at nighttime.

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

Block agreed, saying, “We didn’t undergo what happened on the movies.”

That agreement falls aside over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown 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, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was the truth is proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he received once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were instructed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, records show, but decided against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and printed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst at the least a dozen instances over the previous decade by 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 have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he acquired a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race at the time, saved quiet about the case publicly for two 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 household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the videos had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions legal. In recent months, as his function within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But 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 proof of what happened that evening was offered to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news conference.

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

___

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