Governor noticed deadly 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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his prime lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital 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 proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation primarily based on interviews and records 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 ability to charge 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 May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near 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 on this, in delaying justice,” mentioned 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 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 automobile crash have develop into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach for the governor to have identified 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 proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective discovered it nearly 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 an extended 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 evidence to be available to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally burdened that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was carried out,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a bit of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is perhaps, then, of course, the district legal professional 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's one in every of two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s automotive 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.

However Clary’s video is perhaps even more vital to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground together with his arms and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on 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 personal use-of-force professional highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony wherein he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his back at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told 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 factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s demise when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it 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 turn out to be a focal point within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely at 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 other troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based proof storage system and the then-head of the company, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s handling 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 dying as “terrible but lawful,” stated in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they were locked out of the video storage system on the time and needed to depend on Clary to provide 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 as the agency’s use-of-force expert, 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 particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, prevented 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 top attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders had been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were in the dead of night.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and a number of other 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 fact shown.

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 family, recalled the response he acquired once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, information show, but decided in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and printed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst a minimum of a dozen cases 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 mentioned the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he acquired a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race at 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 stated he first realized of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the movies had been published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions felony. In current months, as his function within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist whereas 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 lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the proof of what happened that night was presented to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news convention.

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

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