Governor saw 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 prime legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to home: troopers’ lethal 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 remaining 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 in the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based on interviews and information 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 these with the ability to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, 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,” stated Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who's president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have grow to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be known as within weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method 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 employees to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective found it nearly accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his data show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long 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 additionally careworn that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was achieved,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a piece of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it may be, then, after all, the district lawyer ought to have all the proof in the case. In fact.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is certainly one of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions 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 guns, beating him within 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.

But Clary’s video is perhaps even more important to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom together with his hands and ft restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ stomach 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 expert highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony through which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s demise once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. However it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has develop into a focus within the federal probe, which is looking 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 instead gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

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 dealing with 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 dying as “terrible but lawful,” said in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they had 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, said he didn’t learn 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 conversation.

An internal 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, avoided self-discipline and stays within 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 videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s attorneys flew with Reeves and other 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 in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders had been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors were at midnight.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton mentioned, adding he only knew at the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s family 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 workplace, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually proven.

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 attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired when they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The very 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 process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, however determined in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater 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 not less than a dozen cases over the past 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 stated the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest inside 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 death. But the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race on the time, stored quiet about the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first learned of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s death 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 were revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions felony. In recent months, as his function in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist while 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. But Edwards insisted as lately as February that proof 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 occurred that evening was introduced to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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