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 top lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for an additional six months.

While 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 primarily based on interviews and records discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his workers 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 confirmed critical moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on this, in delaying justice,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have develop into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be referred to as inside weeks to testify beneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable 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 workers to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective discovered it almost by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised 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 long 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 evidence to be available to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was done,” Block stated. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a piece of evidence, whether it was a video or no matter it is perhaps, then, after all, the district lawyer should have all of the proof in the case. After all.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's one in all 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 automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, 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.

However Clary’s video is perhaps much more vital to the investigations because it's the only footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the weight 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 arms and ft restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway through 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 informed 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 importance of the Clary footage during testimony through which he characterized 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 starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his demise. The same thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s death when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focal point in the federal probe, which is looking not only at the actions of the troopers but whether state police brass obstructed justice to protect 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 other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s death as “awful however lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they had been locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to rely on Clary to provide 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 access to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force skilled, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An internal affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, avoided self-discipline and remains in 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 stated.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the following day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders had been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were in the dead of night.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what occurred the subsequent 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, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in truth proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene household, recalled the response he received after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, data show, however determined towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among not less than a dozen instances 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 said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, stored quiet in regards to the case publicly for two 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 demise 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 had been published, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In latest months, as his function in the Greene case has come below 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 didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as just lately 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 evidence of what occurred that evening was offered to prosecutors effectively before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news convention.

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

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