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 top lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to residence: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial 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 experts 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 proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based on interviews and information found 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 essential footage into the arms of these with the power to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed important moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still no one has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable in 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have become questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be known as inside weeks to testify below oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach 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 proof.

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. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told 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 out there for an interview. But 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 officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers also careworn that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was finished,” Block stated. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, of course, the district legal professional should have all the proof within 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's certainly 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 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.

But Clary’s video is perhaps even more significant to the investigations because it is the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his fingers and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on 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 skilled highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony by which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his again 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 stated that’s the moment of his death. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s dying once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. However it 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 into a focus 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 protect 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 correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet proof storage system and the then-head of the company, 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 death as “terrible however lawful,” stated in current 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, mentioned he didn’t be taught the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force professional, 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, averted self-discipline and remains 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 prime 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 workplace stated.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been at nighttime.

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

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

That agreement falls apart over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and several other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was the truth is shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, however decided against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and printed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst at the least a dozen cases over the previous decade by 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 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 inside hours, when he acquired a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. But the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race on the time, kept 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 mentioned 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 sent a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the videos were revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions legal. In latest months, as his function 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 lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till 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 evening was introduced to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

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

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