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 high legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer 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 one more six months.

Whereas the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based mostly on interviews and records discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his employees nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the essential footage into the fingers of those with the facility to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed essential moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after prolonged, 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,” 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 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 turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach for the governor to have known 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 gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it almost by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the pinnacle 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. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be out there to the governor and not the officials 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 carried out,” Block mentioned. “Everyone 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 whatever it may be, then, of course, the district attorney should have all the evidence within the case. In fact.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's certainly 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 car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him in 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.

However Clary’s video is perhaps much more vital to the investigations because it's the solely footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom along with his palms and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ belly like I advised you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s personal use-of-force skilled highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony by which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s loss of life once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has develop into a focus in the federal probe, which is wanting not solely at the actions of the troopers but 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative 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 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 demise as “awful but lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated he didn’t be taught the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access 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 remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, averted 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 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 lawyers flew with Reeves and different police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the movies with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day by which Greene’s household would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about showing 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, including he solely knew at the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That agreement falls apart over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven 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 workplace, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact proven.

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 legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he received once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

“The actual fact is we never noticed it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have total management of the narrative.”

All through this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, records show, but determined towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among no less than a dozen instances over the previous decade during which 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 said the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he obtained a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race at the time, saved quiet in regards to 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 “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 evidence to state police.

After the videos were printed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions legal. In current months, as his role in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as just 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 night time was presented to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

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

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