Governor noticed deadly 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 high legal professionals gathered in a state police conference 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 a vital body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed 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 one more 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 on interviews and information 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 these with the ability to cost 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 practically two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, 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,” stated Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who's 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify underneath 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 identified 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 workers to withhold evidence.

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 until a detective found it virtually accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his information present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a protracted 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 evidence to be available to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally stressed that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was executed,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a chunk of proof, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, in fact, the district attorney should have all of the evidence within the case. In fact.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond 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 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. 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 even more significant to the investigations as a result of it is the solely footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom with his palms and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway 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------ 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 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 urgent on his back at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The identical factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the moment of his loss of life. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. Nevertheless it 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 within the federal probe, which is wanting not only on 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 a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based evidence storage system and the then-head of the company, 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 demise as “awful however lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated he didn’t study the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a dialog.

An inner 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, prevented self-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 high attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace said.

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 lawyer leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the following day wherein Greene’s family would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about exhibiting 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 while prosecutors have been at midnight.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton said, adding he solely knew at the time of the DeMoss video.

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

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 declare Belton and a number of other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was the truth is proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained when they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, data present, but determined towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among not less than a dozen circumstances over the previous decade through which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed 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 deadly arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. But the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, stored quiet about the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

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

After the videos were published, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his role in the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as recently as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the proof of what occurred that night time was offered to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information convention.

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

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