Governor saw lethal 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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to home: 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 remaining 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 evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information found 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 these with the power to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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,” 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 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have grow to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called inside weeks to testify beneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner for the governor to have known 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 workers to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective found it nearly by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his records show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a protracted 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 obtainable to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally stressed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was finished,” Block stated. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a chunk of evidence, whether it was a video or no matter it might be, then, in fact, the district lawyer ought to have all the evidence in the case. Of course.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is considered one of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, 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.

However Clary’s video is perhaps much more vital to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight 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 together with his arms and toes restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which works silent midway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ belly 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 during testimony through which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his again at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The identical factor occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his demise. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s demise once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But 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 out to be a focal point in the federal probe, which is looking not only at 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 a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s death as “awful however lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated he didn’t study the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, avoided self-discipline and stays in the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP printed 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 constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace mentioned.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the following day wherein Greene’s family would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting 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, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact shown.

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 lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

“The fact is we by no means saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have complete management of the narrative.”

All through this course of, Edwards had considered 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 published each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among at least a dozen instances over the previous decade through which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. 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 mentioned he first realized of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s death 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 were published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions legal. In latest months, as his function in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe 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 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 details are clear that the evidence of what occurred that night time was offered to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

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