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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his prime lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to residence: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched an important body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his last 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 in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based mostly 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 fingers of those with the ability to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on this, in delaying justice,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is 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 turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be referred to as within weeks to testify beneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner for the governor to have known 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 workers to withhold evidence.

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

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself accessible for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be out there to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally stressed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was completed,” Block mentioned. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a bit of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, in fact, the district attorney ought to have all the evidence 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 certainly one of two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s automobile 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 significant to the investigations because it's the solely footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground together with his hands and toes restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway by means of 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 informed 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 during testimony during which he characterized 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 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 moment of his demise. The same thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s demise when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the criminal case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out 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 dealing with 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 “terrible however lawful,” stated in recent legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they were 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 learn the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force skilled, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, prevented self-discipline and remains in 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 office said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door event the following day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at nighttime.

“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 happened on the movies.”

That settlement falls aside over what happened the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting 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 office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was the truth is proven.

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 lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were instructed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, however decided towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was amongst at the least a dozen cases over the past decade through 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 stated the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained 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 within the midst of a decent reelection race at the time, kept quiet concerning 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 “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise 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 movies were printed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In latest months, as his function within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as recently as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The facts are clear that the proof of what happened that night time was offered to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news conference.

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

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