Governor saw lethal 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 nonetheless 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 arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer 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 showed 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 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 Related Press investigation based on interviews and records 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 hands of these with the facility to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed critical moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain 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 lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless 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's president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be known as within weeks to testify beneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable 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 proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective found it nearly accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his records 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, didn't 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 out there to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees also burdened that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was completed,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a bit of proof, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is likely to be, then, after all, the district attorney should have all of the evidence in the case. After all.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is one in every of two movies of the incident, and captured occasions 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 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.

But Clary’s video is probably much more vital to the investigations because it is the solely footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom with his fingers and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in 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 throughout testimony through which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his again at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The same factor occurred within 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 internal affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s death after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy 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 grow to be a focus within the federal probe, which is wanting not only on the actions of the troopers however whether or not state police brass obstructed justice to protect 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’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based proof 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 death as “terrible but lawful,” said in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life 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, mentioned he didn’t study the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force professional, 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 remark, 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door occasion the following day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been in the dark.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim 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 in reality shown.

However 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 family, recalled the response he acquired once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, information show, but decided towards 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 each the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among at the very least a dozen instances over the previous 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 said the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. But the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race at the time, saved 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 discovered 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 published, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions legal. In recent months, as his role in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional 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 just lately as February that proof 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 occurred that night was introduced to prosecutors nicely before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

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

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