Governor noticed 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 top legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to dwelling: 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 examiners wouldn’t even know existed for another six months.

Whereas 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 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 beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed essential 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, death on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, 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,” 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 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 automobile crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be called inside weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method 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 staff 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 receive the footage till a detective found it virtually by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his information present 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, didn't 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 never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally confused that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was accomplished,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is perhaps, then, of course, the district lawyer ought to have all of the evidence within the case. After all.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is certainly one of two movies of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows troopers swarming Greene’s automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, beating him in 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 maybe even more significant to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom along with his hands and toes restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking 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 professional highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony by which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same factor occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his demise. The same factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s loss of life once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it was long 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 develop into a focal point within the federal probe, which is looking not solely on 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 personal 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 an online evidence storage system and the then-head of the company, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s handling 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 death as “awful but lawful,” stated in latest legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they had been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to depend on Clary to offer the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t study 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 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, avoided self-discipline and remains within 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 high attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace said.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers 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 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day wherein Greene’s family would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the meeting 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 while prosecutors were in the dark.

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

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

That agreement falls apart over what happened the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting 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 the truth is shown.

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

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

“The very fact is we never saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have complete control of the narrative.”

All through this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, but determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst not less than a dozen cases over the past 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 said the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he received 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 within the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, stored quiet about the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has stated he first learned of the “severe 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 evidence to state police.

After the movies had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions legal. In current months, as his role in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as lately as February that evidence 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 evening was introduced to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news convention.

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

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