Governor saw 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 legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: 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 last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

Whereas 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 mostly on interviews and data discovered 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 essential footage into the fingers of those with the ability to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method 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 proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective found it nearly accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, 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, did not make himself out there for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be obtainable to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers also careworn that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was carried out,” Block said. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a piece of proof, whether or not it was a video or no matter it might be, then, in fact, the district legal professional should have all of the proof within the case. In fact.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is one 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 within 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 much more vital to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his hands and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes 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 on your f------ stomach like I advised you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s own use-of-force professional highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout 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 begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same factor occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his loss of life. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s death when they opened a probe and later showed 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 turn out to be a focus in the federal probe, which is wanting not solely at 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 own from Greene’s arrest and instead gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based proof 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s loss of life as “awful however lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to rely 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 until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inside 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 remark, averted 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 videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace said.

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 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the next day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton stated, adding he solely 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 occurred the following day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and several other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in truth shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were instructed it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The actual fact is we never saw 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 videos public, information present, but decided towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst at least a dozen circumstances over the previous 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 present and former troopers said the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight 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 “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the movies were revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In current months, as his position within the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as recently 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 occurred that evening was introduced to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news conference.

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

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