Governor noticed 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 high lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to home: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched an important body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his closing 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 in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based mostly on interviews and data 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 crucial footage into the hands of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed essential 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 near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, still no one 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 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have grow to be questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be known as inside weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach for the governor to have recognized 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 staff to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective discovered it almost accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed 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 evidence to be accessible to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s employees also confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was accomplished,” Block said. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a bit of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, after all, the district lawyer ought to have all the evidence within the case. Of course.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's considered one of two videos 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 in 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 maybe even more important to the investigations because it's the only footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom with his fingers and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent midway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking 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 professional highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony by 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 level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The identical thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his death. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s loss of life when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focus in the federal probe, which is trying not solely on 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 other 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 agency, 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 but lawful,” said in latest legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they had been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to rely on Clary to supply the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said 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 expert, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inner affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, averted discipline and remains within the state police.

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

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door event the following day by which Greene’s family would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been in the dark.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what occurred the next 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 workplace, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in truth proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he received once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been 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 complete control of the narrative.”

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, data present, however determined towards 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 both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst at the least a dozen cases 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 were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, kept 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 learned of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying 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 known as the troopers’ actions criminal. In recent months, as his function within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain 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 until spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as recently as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the evidence of what occurred that night was introduced to prosecutors effectively before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news conference.

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

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