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 prime lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to house: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial 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 health workers 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 Associated 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 ability to charge the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed critical moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still no one 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's president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash have develop into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method 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 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 till a detective found it nearly accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his records present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended 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 employees also burdened that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was done,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a chunk of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it is perhaps, then, after all, the district legal professional ought to have all of the proof within the case. After all.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is one among 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 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 probably much more important to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground along with his palms and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ stomach like I instructed 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 during testimony wherein he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his again at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The identical thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his loss of life. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s dying once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the prison case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focus within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely at the actions of the troopers but 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 other troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary properly 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 handling 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 “terrible however lawful,” said in current legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t be taught the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force professional, 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 details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, prevented self-discipline and remains in the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP revealed 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, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and other 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 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been in the dark.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton stated, adding he only knew on the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That settlement falls aside over what happened the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare 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 the truth is proven.

However state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale acknowledged, “The division has no proof of what was proven to the family that day.”

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

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, information show, but determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

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

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” 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 stated he first realized of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s death 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 movies have been printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his role within the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

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

“The information are clear that the evidence of what occurred that evening was presented to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news conference.

“So obviously that isn't a part of a cover-up.”

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