Governor saw 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 lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer 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 showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his closing breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for another six months.

While 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 based on interviews and data discovered 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 arms 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 different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till practically 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 nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on this, in delaying justice,” stated 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no means for the governor to have known 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 proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective found it nearly accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officials refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his data 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, didn't make himself obtainable 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 officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was executed,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it could be, then, of course, the district attorney should have all of the proof within the case. Of course.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's certainly one of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s car 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.

But Clary’s video is probably even more significant to the investigations because it is the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his palms and feet restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

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 on your f------ belly like I told you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s own use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony by 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 informed lawmakers in March. “The identical thing occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his demise. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s demise when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has change into a focus within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely on the actions of the troopers however whether or not state police brass obstructed justice to protect 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 different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s loss of life as “terrible but lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they had been locked out of the video storage system on the time and had to depend on Clary to supply the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t study the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inside 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 self-discipline and stays in 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 high attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and different police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the next day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been in the dark.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting 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 workplace, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been instructed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, however decided towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was among at least a dozen cases over the previous decade by 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 were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race on the time, kept 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 said he first realized of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s death in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the videos had been printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions legal. In latest months, as his role 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 didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as not too long ago as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the proof of what occurred that night time was offered to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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