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 high attorneys gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to dwelling: 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 remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for an additional 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 primarily based on interviews and information found 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 crucial footage into the palms of those with the facility to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed essential moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless nobody 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's president of the Metropolitan Crime Fee, 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 automobile crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called inside weeks to testify beneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way 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 employees to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective discovered it almost by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his records show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a protracted 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 out there to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers also stressed that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was executed,” Block said. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it could be, then, of course, the district attorney should have all the evidence within the case. After all.”

At issue is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's considered 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 automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, 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 perhaps even more important to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground along with his arms and toes restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway through 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 told 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 by 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 point and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The identical factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his dying. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s demise once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not only at the actions of the troopers but 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 different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “awful however lawful,” said in current legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated 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 expert, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inside affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay 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 printed 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace said.

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 legal professional main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been at the hours of darkness.

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

Block agreed, saying, “We didn’t undergo what occurred 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 declare 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 actually shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, information show, but determined towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was among no less than a dozen circumstances over the previous decade through which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers stated the beatings had been countenanced by a culture 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 loss of life. But 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 realized of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the videos had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In latest months, as his position in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain 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 till spring of 2021. But 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 was offered to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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