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Governor saw lethal arrest video months earlier than prosecutors


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Governor saw deadly arrest video months before prosecutors
2022-05-28 09:20:17
#Governor #deadly #arrest #video #months #prosecutors

By JIM MUSTIAN and JAKE BLEIBERG

Could 27, 2022 GMT

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 organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer to house: 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 final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for another 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 primarily based on interviews and records 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 hands of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed crucial moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until almost 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 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'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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have grow to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be called within weeks to testify beneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way 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 staff to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective discovered it virtually accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his records present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself accessible for an interview. But 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 officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees also confused that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was performed,” Block stated. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a bit of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it might be, then, after all, the district attorney should have all the evidence in the case. After all.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's one in every of two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, beating him in 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!”

However Clary’s video is maybe even more significant to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that exhibits 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 together with his fingers and ft restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ stomach like I advised 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 characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

“They’re pressing on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The identical factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his loss of life. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s demise after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focus in the federal probe, which is trying 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 personal from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different 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 dealing with 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 loss of life as “terrible however lawful,” stated in recent legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t learn the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the agency’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 particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, prevented self-discipline and stays 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 workplace mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the movies 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 subsequent day through which Greene’s household would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown 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 actual fact proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained when they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were instructed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, data show, but decided in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was among at the very least a dozen circumstances over the past decade during 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 mentioned the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, kept quiet about the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first discovered of the “critical 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 evidence to state police.

After the movies had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In latest months, as his role within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe 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 till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as just 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 proof of what occurred that night was introduced to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

___

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


Quelle: apnews.com

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