Governor noticed lethal 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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top attorneys gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts wouldn’t even know existed for an additional six months.

Whereas the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based on interviews and data 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 crucial footage into the hands of these with the power to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed crucial moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless 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 automotive crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be known as within weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable 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 employees to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective found it nearly by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his data 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. However 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 employees additionally careworn that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was done,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a bit of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it might be, then, after all, the district attorney ought to have all of the proof in the case. In fact.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to 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 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 perhaps much more vital to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom together with his hands and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on 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 own use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony in which he characterized 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 begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The identical thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his demise. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s loss of life once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the prison case and missing 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 wanting not only on the actions of the troopers however whether 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’ movies.

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 “awful however lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they had been locked out of the video storage system on the time and had 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 because the company’s use-of-force professional, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inner affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, averted discipline and stays within the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP published audio of Trooper Chris Hollingsworth bragging that he had “beat the ever-living f--- out of” Greene, Edwards and his prime 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 said.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door event the next day through which Greene’s household would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about showing video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been in the dead of night.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton stated, adding he solely knew at the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That agreement falls apart over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting 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, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact shown.

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

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

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

All through this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, records present, but determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among not less than a dozen instances over the previous decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers said the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

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

Edwards has mentioned he first learned of the “critical 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 proof to state police.

After the videos were published, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions legal. In recent months, as his role in the Greene case has come underneath 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 just lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The facts are clear that the proof of what happened that evening was offered to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news conference.

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

___

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