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 prime lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to residence: troopers’ lethal 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 remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for an additional 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 Associated Press investigation based mostly on interviews and records 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 hands of those with the facility to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed crucial moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to 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,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is president of the Metropolitan Crime Fee, 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected 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 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 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 discovered it almost accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his data present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself accessible for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be available to the governor and not 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 fix what was executed,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a piece of proof, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is perhaps, then, of course, the district attorney should have all the proof in the case. After all.”

At issue is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's one in every of two movies of the incident, and captured events 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 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 probably much more significant to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom together with his hands and feet restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway by way of 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 instructed 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 wherein he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s demise once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was lengthy 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 grow to be a focal point within the federal probe, which is wanting not only on the actions of the troopers however whether or not 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 an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

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 demise as “awful however lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they have been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to rely 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 entry to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force expert, 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 details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, averted discipline and stays within the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP printed 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 constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with 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 debate the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door event the following day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been in the dark.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what happened the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact shown.

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

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

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, data show, but decided against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

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

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. But the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race on the time, stored quiet concerning 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 “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the videos had been published, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions criminal. In recent months, as his position within the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist whereas 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. But Edwards insisted as not too long ago as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The facts are clear that the evidence of what occurred that night time was introduced to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

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