Governor saw deadly 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 attorneys gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to house: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

Whereas 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 mostly 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 crucial footage into the arms of those with the facility to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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 on this, in delaying justice,” stated Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 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 turn out to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way 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 mention seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective discovered it almost by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his information show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself out there for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be out there to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also stressed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

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

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is one among two movies 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 weapons, 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 even more important to the investigations because it is the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground with his arms and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent midway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in 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 personal use-of-force expert highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony wherein 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 advised lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his demise. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s dying 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 change into a focus in the federal probe, which is wanting 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “terrible however lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they were locked out of the video storage system on 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 be taught the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inner affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, prevented self-discipline and stays 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 constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district legal professional main 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 look at 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 were all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been in the dead of night.

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

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

That settlement 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 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 truth shown.

But 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 had been advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, but decided towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among at least a dozen circumstances over the previous decade by which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers said the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within 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 decent reelection race on the time, kept quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first learned of the “severe 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 evidence to state police.

After the movies had been printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In latest months, as his role 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 legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However 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 information are clear that the evidence of what happened that evening was offered to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news convention.

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

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