Governor noticed lethal 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 prime legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial 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 one more six months.

While 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 Related Press investigation based 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 crucial footage into the fingers of these with the ability to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called within 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 approach 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 evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective found it nearly by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised 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 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 accessible to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally stressed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was achieved,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a bit of proof, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, in fact, the district lawyer ought to have all of the proof within the case. In fact.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is one of two movies 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 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 perhaps much more important to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground with his fingers and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent midway through 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 personal use-of-force professional highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony through 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 point and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his death. The same factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s death after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the felony case and missing 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 trying not solely on the actions of the troopers but whether or not 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 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 handling 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 dying as “awful however lawful,” stated in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they were 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 access to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inner 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 comment, averted discipline and stays 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 movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals 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 next day by which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been in the dead of night.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton mentioned, including he only knew on the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the following day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown 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, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

“The fact is we never noticed it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mom. “They’ve tried to have complete management of the narrative.”

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

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst not less than a dozen cases over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers stated the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race on the time, saved quiet in regards to the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has stated he first realized of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life 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 printed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In recent months, as his position in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist while 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 recently as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the evidence of what happened that evening was offered to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news convention.

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

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