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 still 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 arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to dwelling: 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 remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners 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 Related Press investigation primarily 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 crucial footage into the hands of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed critical moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near 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,” mentioned 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have become questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be called within weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no means 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 employees to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it virtually by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised 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 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 evidence to be accessible to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s employees also careworn that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was done,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a piece of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it could be, then, in fact, the district attorney ought to have all of the proof within the case. In fact.”

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is one in every of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows troopers swarming Greene’s automobile 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.

But Clary’s video is perhaps even more significant to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground along with his fingers and ft restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly 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 expert highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony in 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 informed lawmakers in March. “The same factor happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his loss of life. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s dying when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was lengthy 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 within the federal probe, which is trying not only on the actions of the troopers however whether or not state police brass obstructed justice to guard them.

Detectives say Clary falsely claimed he didn’t have any body-camera footage of his own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online 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 assume that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s loss of life as “terrible however lawful,” stated in recent legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to rely on Clary to offer the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said he didn’t learn the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force skilled, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An internal affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, avoided discipline and remains in 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 high 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 office mentioned.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the following day by which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting 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 have been at nighttime.

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

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

That settlement falls apart 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, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, information present, however determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among at the very least a dozen circumstances over the past decade during which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers stated the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he acquired a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was within the midst of a decent 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 said he first realized of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s death in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the videos had been printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions felony. In current months, as his function within the Greene case has come underneath 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 did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But 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 facts are clear that the evidence of what happened that night time was introduced to prosecutors nicely before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

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

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