Governor noticed deadly 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 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 nearer to home: 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 ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

While 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 mostly 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 crucial footage into the fingers of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, 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 is 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method for the governor to have identified 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 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 until a detective discovered it nearly by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, 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 a protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself available for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be accessible to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was finished,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a chunk of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it might be, then, in fact, the district lawyer should have all the proof within 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 one among two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows troopers swarming Greene’s automobile 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!”

Trooper Dakota DeMoss' body-camera video.

However Clary’s video is maybe much more important to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his arms and toes restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes silent midway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on 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 knowledgeable highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony wherein he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

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 told lawmakers in March. “The same factor occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his loss of life. The same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focus in the federal probe, which is looking not only on the actions of the troopers however whether or not 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 as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “terrible but lawful,” mentioned in current 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 depend on Clary to offer the footage.

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

An inner 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, averted 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 movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

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 attorney main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the following day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at midnight.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton mentioned, including 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 household says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and several 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 actual fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been advised 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 whole management of the narrative.”

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, but determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was amongst no less than a dozen instances over the past decade wherein state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, saved 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 realized of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s death in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the videos have been revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions prison. In current months, as his role in the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as recently as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The facts are clear that the evidence of what happened that night time was offered to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

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

___

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