Governor saw 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 prime legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to house: troopers’ lethal 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 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 in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information discovered 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 fingers of those with the facility to cost 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 attain prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still no one has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner for the governor to have recognized 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 employees to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective discovered it nearly by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed the AP that his information 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 accessible for an interview. However 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 staff additionally careworn that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was achieved,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a chunk of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, in fact, the district legal professional ought to have all the proof in the case. Of course.”

At challenge 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 videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automotive 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.

However Clary’s video is maybe much more significant to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his palms and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ stomach like I instructed you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s personal use-of-force expert highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony by which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

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 informed lawmakers in March. “The identical factor occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his dying. The same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s dying when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the initial 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 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 different 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 agency, 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 dying as “terrible however lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

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

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

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

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 lawyer main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about showing video of the arrest, it by no means 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 said, adding he only knew on the time of the DeMoss video.

Block agreed, saying, “We didn’t undergo what happened on the videos.”

That agreement falls apart over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually 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 lawyer for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been told it was of no evidentiary worth.”

“The actual fact is we by no means saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have total management of the narrative.”

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

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among a minimum of a dozen circumstances over the past decade by which 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 mentioned the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, stored quiet about the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has stated he first learned of the “serious 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 had been printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions criminal. In latest months, as his function in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as lately as February that evidence 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 was presented to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news convention.

“So clearly that isn't part of a cover-up.”

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