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 top legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to organize 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 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 within the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based on interviews and records 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 arms of those with the ability to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed critical moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, 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,” said 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 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 automotive crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees 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 approach for the governor to have recognized 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 just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective discovered it nearly by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed 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 a protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself obtainable 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 officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally pressured that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was accomplished,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a piece of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it may be, then, after all, the district attorney ought to have all of the proof in the case. Of course.”

At issue is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's one among two movies of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, beating him within 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 perhaps much more important to the investigations because it's the only footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his hands and toes restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiration.

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

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The identical thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his loss of life. The identical factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s demise when 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 preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focal point within the federal probe, which is trying 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 other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet proof storage system and the then-head of the company, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s handling 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 loss of life as “awful but lawful,” said in latest legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they were locked out of the video storage system on the time and had to depend on Clary to provide the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t be taught the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force professional, 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 details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, avoided 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was intended 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. Although the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the following 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 the truth is proven.

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 received once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, records show, however determined towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among at least a dozen cases over the past 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 tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, stored quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has stated he first realized of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s death 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 have been published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions legal. In recent months, as his position within 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 lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The details are clear that the proof of what occurred that night was offered to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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