Governor noticed 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 high legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: 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 ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for another six months.

Whereas the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up within 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 employees nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the essential footage into the hands of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, dying 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 on 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 males 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 automotive crash have become questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify beneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner for the governor to have known 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 workers to withhold evidence.

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 discovered it virtually by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to remark, the top 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 same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself out there for an interview. But 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 officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff also stressed that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was carried out,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a piece of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is likely to be, then, in fact, the district legal professional should have all of the proof within the case. In fact.”

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's 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 guns, 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 vital to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below 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 ground with his hands and ft 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 fits silent halfway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ stomach 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 knowledgeable highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony wherein he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his back at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same factor happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his loss of life. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s dying after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the criminal case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has change into a focal point within the federal probe, which is wanting 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s loss of life as “terrible however lawful,” stated in recent legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated he didn’t be taught 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 inner 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, averted self-discipline and remains 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 high 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 said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day during which Greene’s household would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been at midnight.

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

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

That settlement 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 declare 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 actually proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, information show, however decided against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was amongst a minimum of a dozen cases over the previous decade by which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers stated the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” 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 said he first realized 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 proof to state police.

After the movies were revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions legal. In latest months, as his role within the Greene case has come under 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. But Edwards insisted as lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The facts are clear that the proof of what happened that night was introduced to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information convention.

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

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