Governor saw deadly arrest video months earlier than 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 lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: troopers’ deadly 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 last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for one more 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 Related Press investigation primarily based on interviews and data 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 palms of those with the ability to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, 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,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who's 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 car crash have turn into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be known as within weeks to testify below oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner 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 employees 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 obtain the footage till a detective discovered it nearly accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his data show 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, did not make himself obtainable for an interview. However 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 officers investigating the case. The governor’s employees also confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was executed,” Block mentioned. “Everyone 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 is likely to be, then, after all, the district attorney should have all the proof within the case. After all.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is one in every 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 automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, 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 perhaps much more significant to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his palms and toes restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in 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 skilled highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony during which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s dying when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the prison case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has change into a focus in the federal probe, which is trying 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 own from Greene’s arrest and instead gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based 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 suppose 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,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they have been locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to depend on Clary to offer the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated he didn’t be taught the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force expert, 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 details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, averted 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 videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

Days later, the governor’s attorneys flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate 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 subsequent day by which Greene’s family would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been in the dead of night.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton mentioned, 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 aside over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim 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 the truth is proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he received when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, however decided towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst a minimum of a dozen circumstances over the past decade by 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 were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he obtained 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 good reelection race on the time, stored quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first realized of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life 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 videos were printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions felony. In current months, as his position in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as recently as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

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

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

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