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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

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

While 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 mostly on interviews and information discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his staff nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the crucial footage into the fingers of those with the power to charge 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 almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, 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,” 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have change into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify under 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 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 staff to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective discovered it almost by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his records present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself obtainable for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be obtainable to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees also burdened that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was completed,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a bit of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it may be, then, after all, the district lawyer ought to have all the evidence in the case. Of course.”

At subject 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 events 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. 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 probably even more important to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground along with his hands and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway 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 instructed you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s personal use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony in which 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 occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his dying. The same factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s dying once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focus in the federal probe, which is wanting 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 a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based evidence 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 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,” said in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they have been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to rely on Clary to supply the footage.

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

An inner affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, prevented 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including 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 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the following day wherein Greene’s family would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at nighttime.

“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 go through what happened on the videos.”

That settlement falls aside over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained when they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been instructed it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The very fact is we by no means saw 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 show, but determined in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was amongst a minimum of a dozen circumstances over the previous decade during which 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 mentioned the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight 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 said he first learned of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise 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 were published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions legal. In recent months, as his function within the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until 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 proof of what happened that night was offered to prosecutors nicely before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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