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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to dwelling: troopers’ deadly 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 closing breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for one more 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 Associated 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 essential footage into the arms of those with the power to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have develop into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be referred to as inside weeks to testify beneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach for the governor to have known 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 workers 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 found it almost by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed 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, did not make himself out there for an interview. But 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 officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was performed,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a piece of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it might be, then, in fact, the district lawyer should have all the proof in the case. In fact.”

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's 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 car 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's the only footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden 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 along with his palms and toes restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking 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 personal 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 urgent on his again at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The identical factor occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his dying. The same factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s demise once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focus in the federal probe, which is trying not solely 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of other 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 demise say they had been locked out of the video storage system on the time and needed to rely on Clary to offer the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t study 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 conversation.

An internal 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, avoided 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door event the following day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at nighttime.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven 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 office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact proven.

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 family, recalled the response he obtained after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, data show, but decided against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have 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 followed discovered Greene’s was amongst no less than a dozen circumstances over the previous decade wherein state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers said the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. But the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, stored quiet in regards to the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first realized of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the videos had been printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions legal. In current months, as his position in the Greene case has come underneath 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 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 information are clear that the evidence of what occurred that night was offered to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news convention.

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

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