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 prime legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: 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 ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

Whereas 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 Related Press investigation based mostly on interviews and data 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 fingers of those with the power to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, still nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable in this, in delaying justice,” mentioned Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have turn into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called inside weeks to testify underneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no means for the governor to have identified 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 point out seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective discovered it nearly accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told 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, did not make himself available 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 officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff also stressed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was carried out,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a piece of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it could be, then, in fact, the district attorney ought to have all the evidence within the case. Of course.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is one among two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, 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 perhaps much more significant to the investigations because it is the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground together with his palms and toes restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches 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------ belly like I advised you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s personal use-of-force skilled highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony by 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 level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his demise. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s demise after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was long unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focus within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely 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’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based 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 assume that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s loss of life as “awful but lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they were locked out of the video storage system on 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 learn the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force professional, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, prevented 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 top 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 said.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and different police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district legal professional leading the state investigation.

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

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s household 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 workplace, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact shown.

However 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 after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The very fact is we never 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 considered making the Greene arrest videos public, information present, however determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was amongst at the least a dozen instances over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers stated the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, 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 struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. But the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race at the time, kept quiet concerning the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has stated he first discovered of the “critical 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 evidence to state police.

After the videos have been revealed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his function within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as not too long ago as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the proof of what happened that night time was presented to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news conference.

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

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