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 prime lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: troopers’ deadly 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 ultimate 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 evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based on interviews and records discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his workers nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the essential footage into the fingers of these with the facility to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed crucial moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless 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 Fee, 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have turn into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be known as within weeks to testify below oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner for the governor to have recognized 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 mention seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective found it almost by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to remark, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed 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 protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself obtainable 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 not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers also burdened that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was done,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a chunk of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it may be, then, after all, the district lawyer ought to have all the evidence in the case. After all.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is one in all two movies of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automobile 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.

But Clary’s video is probably much more significant to the investigations because it's the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground with his fingers and toes restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing 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 skilled highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony in 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 identical thing occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his dying. The identical thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focal point 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 personal from Greene’s arrest and instead 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 company, 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 but lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

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

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

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, prevented self-discipline and stays within the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP printed 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, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace mentioned.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door event the following day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors were at midnight.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been told it was of no evidentiary worth.”

“The very fact is we never noticed it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mom. “They’ve tried to have whole management of the narrative.”

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, data show, however decided towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and printed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst at least a dozen circumstances over the past decade during 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 mentioned the beatings were 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 textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. But the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, saved quiet in regards to 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 “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the videos were revealed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions felony. In current months, as his position 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 did not have the Clary video until 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 information are clear that the evidence of what happened that night was presented to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news conference.

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

___

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