Governor noticed 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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his prime lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to residence: 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 last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for another 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 Related Press investigation based 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 palms of these with the ability to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless 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 Commission, 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 automotive crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be referred to as inside weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method 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 proof.

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 till a detective found it virtually by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his data present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

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

“I can’t go back and fix what was done,” Block mentioned. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a piece of proof, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is perhaps, then, in fact, the district legal professional ought to have all the evidence in the case. Of course.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is certainly 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.

But Clary’s video is maybe even more important to the investigations because it's the only footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom with his arms and ft restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway via 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 instructed 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 significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony by which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

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 instructed lawmakers in March. “The identical factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his dying. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s loss of life once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. However it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the felony case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focal point within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely at the actions of the troopers but whether 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 other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly 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 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 demise as “awful however lawful,” mentioned 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 needed to depend on Clary to offer the footage.

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

An inside affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, prevented self-discipline and remains in 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 legal professionals flew with Reeves and different police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day wherein Greene’s family would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been in the dead of night.

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

Block agreed, saying, “We didn’t go through what occurred on the movies.”

That settlement falls aside over what happened the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly 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 workplace, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact proven.

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 attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he received after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, data show, but determined in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary videos in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst not less than a dozen instances over the past 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 current and former troopers stated the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he obtained a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. However the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race on 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 mentioned he first realized of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise 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 videos were revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In current months, as his role in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe 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. But Edwards insisted as recently as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The details are clear that the proof of what occurred that night was offered to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information convention.

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

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