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 high legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: troopers’ lethal 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 remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts wouldn’t even know existed for one more 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 based mostly 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 essential footage into the palms of these with the facility to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, still nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable in this, in delaying justice,” stated 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be known as within weeks to testify below oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach 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 workers to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective found it nearly by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to remark, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed 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 protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself available for an interview. However 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 officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally careworn that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was achieved,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a chunk of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it may be, then, in fact, the district attorney ought to 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 reply to Greene’s arrest. It is 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 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.

But Clary’s video is probably even more important to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom with his fingers and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway by way of 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 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 skilled highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony through which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s demise once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focus in the federal probe, which is looking not only on the actions of the troopers but 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’ movies.

State police say Clary properly 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 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 dying as “terrible but lawful,” said in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they were 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 access 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 remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, averted discipline and remains 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

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

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

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

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

That agreement 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 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.

But 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 household, recalled the response he received after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were instructed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

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

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst at the very least a dozen circumstances over the previous decade in 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 stated the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, saved quiet about 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 dying 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 had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In current months, as his function within the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However 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 facts are clear that the evidence of what happened that evening was presented to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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