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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to residence: troopers’ deadly 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 medical experts 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 information found 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 crucial footage into the hands of those with the facility to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed critical moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, 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 on this, in delaying justice,” mentioned 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 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be called within weeks to testify beneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach for the governor to have recognized 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 evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it virtually by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his information show 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, didn't make himself out there for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be accessible to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also harassed that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was completed,” 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 or not it was a video or whatever it might be, then, in fact, the district lawyer should have all of the proof within the case. Of course.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is certainly 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 weapons, 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.

However Clary’s video is probably even more significant to the investigations because it's the solely footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the load 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 together with his palms and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing 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 knowledgeable highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony wherein he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s death after 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 develop into a focus within the federal probe, which is trying 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 as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online proof 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 demise as “terrible however lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they had been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to depend on Clary to provide the footage.

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

An inner affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, prevented self-discipline and stays in the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP revealed audio of Trooper Chris Hollingsworth bragging that he had “beat the ever-living f--- out of” Greene, Edwards and his top attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been at nighttime.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton mentioned, including he solely knew on 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 office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality shown.

However 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 household, recalled the response he acquired after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, records present, however determined towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst a minimum of a dozen instances over the past 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 mentioned the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. However the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race at 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 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 published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his function in the Greene case has come beneath 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. But Edwards insisted as not too long ago as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the evidence of what occurred that evening was presented to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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