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 top lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: 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 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 evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation primarily based on interviews and records found 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 hands of those with the facility to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless nobody 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 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 automobile crash have turn out to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be referred to as inside 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 way 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 point out seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective discovered it nearly accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to comment, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his information 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, didn't make himself available for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be obtainable to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was performed,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a chunk of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it could be, then, of course, the district lawyer ought to have all the proof in the case. After all.”

At issue is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's considered 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 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 probably even more vital to the investigations because it is the only footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground together with his hands and ft restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which works 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 in your f------ belly like I told 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 through which he characterised 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 begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his dying. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s demise once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the criminal 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 within the federal probe, which is trying not solely 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 internet 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s death as “awful but lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they have been locked out of the video storage system on the time and needed to depend on Clary to offer the footage.

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

An inside affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, avoided self-discipline and remains 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 high attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals 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 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day through which Greene’s family 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 were all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been in the dark.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact shown.

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 attorney for the Greene household, recalled the response he acquired when they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, information present, however determined in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was among a minimum of a dozen circumstances over the past decade wherein state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed proof 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 text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, saved quiet about the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first learned of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying 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 videos were printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions legal. In recent months, as his role within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional 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 until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the proof of what happened that night was offered to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information convention.

“So obviously that isn't part of a cover-up.”

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