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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his prime attorneys gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer to dwelling: troopers’ lethal 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 last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts wouldn’t even know existed for an additional six months.

While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up within the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation 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 palms of these with the power to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, 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 almost two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, 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,” 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have grow to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be known as inside weeks to testify underneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method 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 employees 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 obtain the footage till a detective found it almost by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his data show 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 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 officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was done,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a chunk of proof, whether or not it was a video or whatever it could be, then, after all, the district attorney should have all of the evidence in the case. After all.”

At problem 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 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 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 vital to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground together with his palms and feet 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 fits silent halfway via 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 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 skilled highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony by which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

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 informed lawmakers in March. “The same factor occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his loss of life. The identical thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s loss of life once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focus in the federal probe, which is trying 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 as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly 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 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 dying as “awful but lawful,” stated in recent legislative testimony.

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

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

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, avoided self-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 workplace mentioned.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door event the following day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been in the dead of night.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly 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, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality shown.

But 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 family, recalled the response he received after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The fact is we by no means saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “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, but determined against 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 Might 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was amongst at least a dozen circumstances over the past decade by which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers mentioned the beatings have been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he acquired a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. But the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race at 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 stated he first discovered 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 videos had been published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions prison. In current months, as his position in the Greene case has come under 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 did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But 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 facts are clear that the proof of what happened that night time was presented to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

“So clearly that's not a part of a cover-up.”

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