Governor noticed 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 convention room in October 2020 to prepare 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 closing breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts 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 evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based mostly on interviews and data found 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 palms of these with the facility to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed crucial moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, demise 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 in this, in delaying justice,” said 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 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 automotive crash have turn into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be called 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 means 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 employees to withhold evidence.

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 till a detective found it nearly accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised 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 a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself out there for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be obtainable to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff also harassed that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was completed,” Block said. “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 whatever it is perhaps, then, of course, the district attorney should have all the proof in the case. In fact.”

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's one among two movies of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s car 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.

But Clary’s video is maybe much more important to the investigations because it's the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground with his hands and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting 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 personal use-of-force professional highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony wherein he characterised 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 begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his dying. The identical factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s dying when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focal point in the federal probe, which is looking not solely on 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s dying as “awful but lawful,” stated in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they were locked out of the video storage system on the time and had to rely on Clary to provide 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 as the company’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An internal 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 remark, averted self-discipline and stays in 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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been at midnight.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what happened the subsequent 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 workplace, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in truth shown.

But state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale acknowledged, “The division has no proof of what was shown to the household that day.”

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he received after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, records show, but decided against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among at the least a dozen circumstances over the past decade wherein state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers mentioned the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight 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 mentioned he first realized of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life 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 known as the troopers’ actions criminal. In current months, as his position in the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s legal professionals 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 details are clear that the evidence of what happened that evening was presented to prosecutors nicely before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information convention.

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

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