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 top lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to dwelling: 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 last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers 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 evidence 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 workers nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the crucial footage into the hands of these with the power to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till 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,” 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 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 automobile crash have develop into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method 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 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 receive the footage until a detective discovered it nearly by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his information show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended 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 never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff also stressed that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was performed,” Block mentioned. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a chunk of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it may be, then, of course, the district legal professional should have all of the proof within the case. After all.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is one of 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 automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him within 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.

However Clary’s video is probably much more vital to the investigations because it is the solely footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground along with his arms and feet restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, choosing 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 importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony wherein 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 advised lawmakers in March. “The identical thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his loss of life. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s death after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the felony case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focal point in the federal probe, which is looking not solely at the actions of the troopers however 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’ videos.

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 handling 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 “awful but 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 needed to rely on Clary to offer the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t study the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because 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 particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, averted self-discipline and stays within the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP published 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 office stated.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door event the following day by which Greene’s family would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s family 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 fact proven.

However state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale acknowledged, “The division 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 received after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, information present, however determined in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst not less than a dozen instances over the past 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 current and former troopers stated the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. But the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race at the time, saved quiet in regards to the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has stated he first learned of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise 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 printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his role 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 lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as just lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous 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 introduced to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news conference.

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

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