Governor saw 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 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 organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: 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 examiners 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 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 hands of those with the ability to charge 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 until practically two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on 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 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 become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be known as inside weeks to testify below oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way 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 evidence.

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 till a detective found it nearly by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his information present 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 available for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be available to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was achieved,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a chunk of proof, whether or not it was a video or whatever it could be, then, of course, the district attorney ought to have all of the proof in the case. Of course.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's certainly one of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him in the head and dragging him by his ankle shackles. All through 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 because it's the solely footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom together with his arms and ft restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which goes silent midway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ stomach like I told 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 significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony during 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 point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The identical factor occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his dying. The identical factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s death after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking 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 trying not solely on the actions of the troopers but 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 a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of different 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 handling 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 demise as “awful however lawful,” stated in recent legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they had been locked out of the video storage system on the time and had to depend on Clary to offer 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 access to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

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 comment, avoided discipline and remains in 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 constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about showing video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what happened the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several 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 the truth is proven.

However state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale acknowledged, “The department has no proof of what was shown to the household that day.”

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene household, recalled the response he acquired once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been instructed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, records show, however determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among at the very least a dozen circumstances over the previous decade through 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 said the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. But the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race at the time, saved quiet concerning the case publicly for two 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 family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the videos had been published, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions felony. In recent months, as his position in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as 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 evidence of what happened that night time was presented to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

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