Governor saw lethal 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 convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: 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 final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts wouldn’t even know existed for one more 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 mostly on interviews and records discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his staff nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the crucial footage into the arms of those with the facility to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death 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 on this, in delaying justice,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who's 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 car crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

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

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective discovered it nearly accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his data show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself out there for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be out there to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff also pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was executed,” Block said. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether it was a video or no matter it could be, then, after all, the district lawyer ought to have all of the proof within the case. Of course.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's one in all two movies of the incident, and captured occasions 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 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 probably even more vital to the investigations because it is the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom with his palms and feet restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in 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 own use-of-force expert highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony during which 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 factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the moment of his death. The identical factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and missing from the initial 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 solely on the actions of the troopers however whether state police brass obstructed justice to guard 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 other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s death as “terrible however lawful,” said in latest legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they have been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to rely on Clary to provide the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said he didn’t be taught the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force professional, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inner affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, prevented self-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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals 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 intended to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at nighttime.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton stated, including he only knew at the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That settlement falls aside over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and a number of other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene household, recalled the response he received after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

“The very fact is we never saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mom. “They’ve tried to have whole control of the narrative.”

All through 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 had 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 discovered Greene’s was among no less than a dozen cases over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current 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 within hours, when he acquired a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race at the time, stored 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 said he first discovered of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s death 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 published, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions criminal. In current months, as his role within the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain 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 until 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 night time was introduced to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news conference.

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

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