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 attorneys gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer to dwelling: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched an important 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 health workers 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 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 essential footage into the palms of these with the facility 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 reach prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to 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's 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have develop into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be referred to as inside weeks to testify below oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way for the governor to have known 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 point out seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective discovered it virtually accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to comment, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his information show 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 available 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 workers additionally burdened that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was done,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is likely to be, then, in fact, the district lawyer should have all the evidence in the case. After all.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to 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 shows 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 because it is the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his palms and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ stomach like I told you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s personal use-of-force expert highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony in which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his again at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his death. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s dying after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focal point 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 instead gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based 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 dying as “awful but lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise 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, said 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 skilled, 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 comment, avoided 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district lawyer main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and examine 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 aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were in the dark.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what happened the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven 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 office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality proven.

But state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale acknowledged, “The division has no proof of what was proven to the family 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 have been told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, but determined against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was amongst no less than a dozen cases over the past decade during which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he obtained a text 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, stored 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 mentioned 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 proof to state police.

After the movies were published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions legal. In current months, as his position in the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as just lately 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 evidence of what occurred that night was presented to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news conference.

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

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