Governor saw lethal 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 still 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 prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: troopers’ lethal 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 final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for one more 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 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 palms of these with the power to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed essential moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still no one 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's 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have grow to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be known as within weeks to testify beneath 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 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 proof.

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 till a detective discovered it almost by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the head 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 same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not 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 obtainable to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally careworn that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was executed,” Block said. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a bit of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it may be, then, after all, the district legal professional should have all the proof within the case. Of course.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's one in all two movies 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 maybe much more significant to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom together with his hands and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes silent midway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ stomach 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 professional highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony in which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

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 told lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the moment of his loss of life. The same thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s death when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was long unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the initial 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 looking not solely at the actions of the troopers however 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 as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet 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 assume that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s dying as “terrible however lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they have been 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, said he didn’t learn the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An internal affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details 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 revealed audio of Trooper Chris Hollingsworth bragging that he had “beat the ever-living f--- out of” Greene, Edwards and his prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day through which Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about showing video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at the hours of darkness.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton mentioned, adding he solely knew at the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That agreement falls aside over what happened the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and a number of other 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 actual fact proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The fact is we by no means noticed it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have complete control of the narrative.”

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, data show, however determined against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was among at the very least a dozen instances over the past decade during which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. But the governor, who was within the midst of a decent 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 stated he first realized of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the movies have been printed, 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 underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as recently as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors prior 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 was offered to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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