Governor saw 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 legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize 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 ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for another 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 records discovered 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 these with the ability to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s Might 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 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 automobile crash have change into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

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

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective discovered it almost by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his data 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 available for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be available to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also burdened that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was completed,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a piece of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it may be, then, in fact, the district attorney should have all of 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 is certainly one of 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 automotive 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 maybe even more important to the investigations because it is the only footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom along with his fingers and ft restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing 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 during 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 point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The identical factor occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his loss of life. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a year 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 missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focus within the federal probe, which is looking not only at the actions of the troopers however whether state police brass obstructed justice to guard 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’ movies.

State police say Clary properly 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 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 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 at the time and needed to rely on Clary to offer the footage.

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

An internal affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, prevented self-discipline and stays in 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, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and different police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the movies with John Belton, the Union Parish district lawyer main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door event the next day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

“It didn’t come up at all,” Belton stated, adding he only knew at 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 subsequent day.

Greene’s household 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 office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene household, recalled the response he acquired once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, however decided towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and printed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst at the least a dozen circumstances over the previous decade during which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers stated 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 inside hours, when he acquired a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race at the time, saved quiet about the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned 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 videos had been printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions felony. In recent months, as his role within the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as just lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the proof of what happened that night time was introduced to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

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