Governor saw 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 lawyers gathered in a state police convention 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 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 in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based mostly on interviews and information 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 hands of these with the power to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed essential moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be referred to as within weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way for the governor to have recognized 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 employees to withhold evidence.

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. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, 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 a protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself obtainable for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be out there to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was performed,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a piece of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, in fact, the district legal professional should have all the evidence within the case. After all.”

At subject 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 videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, 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.

But Clary’s video is maybe much more significant to the investigations because it is the only footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground with his fingers and ft restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ belly 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 during testimony during 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 begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his death. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s dying after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. However it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has change into a focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not only at the actions of the troopers however whether state police brass obstructed justice to protect 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 different 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 agency, 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 loss of life as “awful but lawful,” stated in recent legislative testimony.

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

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

An inner affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, averted discipline and stays 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That agreement falls apart over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and a number of other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality shown.

However state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale acknowledged, “The department 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 after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been told it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

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

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among no less than a dozen circumstances over the past decade by 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 stated the beatings have been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest within 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 demise. But the governor, who was in the midst of a decent 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 said 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 called the troopers’ actions prison. In latest months, as his role in the Greene case has come underneath 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 didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as not too long ago 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 evening was presented to prosecutors nicely before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

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

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