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 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 organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer 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 experts wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based mostly on interviews and data 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 palms of these with the power to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still 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 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 turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be referred to as within 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 method for the governor to have recognized 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 employees 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 obtain the footage till a detective found it nearly by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his records present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself obtainable for an interview. But 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 employees additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was completed,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is perhaps, then, after all, the district attorney ought to have all of the evidence within the case. After all.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's certainly one 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 car 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 probably much more significant to the investigations because it is the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom with his fingers and feet restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, choosing 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 skilled highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony during which he characterised 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 begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The identical thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his dying. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s dying once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the felony case and lacking 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 solely on the actions of the troopers however whether or not 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 correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet 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 demise as “awful but lawful,” mentioned in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they had been locked out of the video storage system on the time and needed to rely on Clary to provide the footage.

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

An internal affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, averted discipline and remains within 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and different police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss 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 following day by which Greene’s household would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Although the meeting 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 while prosecutors have been in the dead of night.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton stated, 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 following day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven 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, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in truth 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 attorney for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, but determined towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

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

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within 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 demise. But the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race at the time, kept quiet about the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

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

After the videos have been revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions prison. In latest months, as his position in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional 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 not too long ago as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the proof of what happened that evening was presented to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news conference.

“So obviously that is not part of a cover-up.”

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