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 prime legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to dwelling: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital 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 health workers 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 Related Press investigation based on interviews and information 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 essential footage into the palms of these with the facility to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed essential moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless 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 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 automobile crash have develop into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify underneath 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 known 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 staff 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 receive the footage until a detective found it almost by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his information show 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, didn't 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 obtainable to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers also harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was carried out,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is perhaps, then, after all, the district attorney should have all the evidence in the case. Of course.”

At issue is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is one of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s car 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 perhaps even more significant to the investigations because it's the solely footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground along with his hands and feet restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which goes silent midway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly like I advised 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 during testimony during which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s demise after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the legal case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focus within the federal probe, which is wanting not only 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 instead gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet 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 loss of life as “terrible but lawful,” mentioned in latest 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 had to depend on Clary to supply the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t study the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inner 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 self-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 prime 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 office mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the movies with John Belton, the Union Parish district legal professional main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the next day during which Greene’s household would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were in the dead of night.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton stated, adding he solely knew on the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That agreement falls aside over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and several 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 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 lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been told it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, information show, however decided in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was amongst no less than a dozen cases over the previous decade during which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed 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 informed of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was in 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 stated he first realized of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the movies have been revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions legal. In latest months, as his function 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 lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as recently as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The facts are clear that the evidence of what happened that night was offered to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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