Governor noticed lethal 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 nonetheless 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 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 remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts 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 proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation primarily 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 essential footage into the palms of these with the power to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, dying 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,” stated 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 car crash have develop into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method 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 staff to withhold proof.

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 found it nearly by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his records 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, didn't make himself obtainable for an interview. But 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 workers additionally harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was carried out,” Block mentioned. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a chunk of proof, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is perhaps, then, of course, the district legal professional ought to have all the evidence within the case. Of course.”

At issue is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is one in every of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows troopers swarming Greene’s automotive 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 maybe much more important to the investigations because it is the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight 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 fingers and feet restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway by 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 own use-of-force expert highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony in which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

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 same factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his dying. The identical factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s loss of life once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was long unknown to detectives working the felony case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has change into a focal point within 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 a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online 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 but lawful,” mentioned in latest 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 needed to rely on Clary to offer 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 agency’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inside affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, avoided 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day through which Greene’s household would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been in the dark.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what happened the following day.

Greene’s household 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, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality shown.

But state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale acknowledged, “The division 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 acquired once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been instructed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, information present, however determined against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst not less than a dozen circumstances over the past 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 said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

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

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

After the videos were printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions legal. In current months, as his function in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional 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 until 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 evidence of what happened that night time was introduced to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information 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.