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 top 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 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 experts wouldn’t even know existed for another 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 primarily based on interviews and records 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 crucial footage into the hands of these with the ability to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed essential moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to 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,” 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have grow to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called inside weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way for the governor to have identified 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 evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective found it almost by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his data present 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. 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 officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees also stressed that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was performed,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a bit of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, of course, the district lawyer should have all the proof within the case. In fact.”

At subject is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer 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 automobile 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 maybe even more significant to the investigations because it's the only footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground along with his arms and toes restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway 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 instructed you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s own use-of-force professional highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony during 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 same thing happened within 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 demise after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it 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 focal point within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely at 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 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 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “terrible but lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t study the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force knowledgeable, 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 details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, averted self-discipline and stays in the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP revealed 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 office mentioned.

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

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

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting 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 office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, records show, but determined towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed 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 hid evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race on the time, kept quiet about the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has stated he first discovered of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise 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 videos have been revealed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions criminal. In current months, as his position in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain 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 till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as just lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The details are clear that the evidence of what happened that evening was introduced to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

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

___

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