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 prime attorneys gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to dwelling: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched an important 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 medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for an additional six months.

Whereas 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 based mostly on interviews and data 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 essential footage into the fingers of those with the power to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed crucial moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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,” mentioned 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have turn out to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way for the governor to have identified 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 evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective discovered it nearly accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his information show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended 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 proof to be available to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also confused that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was performed,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it could be, then, after all, the district attorney should have all of the proof within the case. In fact.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's considered one of two movies of the incident, and captured occasions 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 guns, 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 even more important to the investigations because it is the only footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground together with his arms and toes restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ stomach like I advised 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 importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony by which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The identical factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his dying. The same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was long unknown to detectives working the felony case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focal point within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely at the actions of the troopers but whether state police brass obstructed justice to protect 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 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s dying as “terrible but lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to depend on Clary to offer the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said he didn’t learn 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 dialog.

An inside 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 discipline and remains 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 top 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 office mentioned.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at midnight.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what happened the following day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in reality shown.

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 attorney for the Greene household, recalled the response he received once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, information present, but decided in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among at least a dozen circumstances over the past decade by which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings had been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. But the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, kept quiet about the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first discovered of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the movies had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In latest months, as his role within the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However 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 facts are clear that the evidence of what happened that night time was presented to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news convention.

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

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