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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his prime legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: troopers’ lethal 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 an additional 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 primarily based 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 palms of these with the power to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed important 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, loss of life on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless 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 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 develop into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be called within weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no means 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 staff to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it almost accidentally six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his data show 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, didn't make himself available for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be accessible to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers also stressed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, 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 lawyer did not have a piece of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it is perhaps, then, in fact, the district legal professional ought to have all the proof 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 in every of two movies of the incident, and captured events 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 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.

However Clary’s video is maybe even more vital to the investigations because it is the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his arms and ft restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on 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 personal use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony wherein he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his again at one point 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 mentioned that’s the moment of his loss of life. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focal point in the federal probe, which is trying 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 instead gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “terrible but lawful,” mentioned in current legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, stated he didn’t be taught the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force expert, 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, averted self-discipline and remains 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 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 workplace stated.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the following day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors were in the dark.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the following day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting 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 office, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in actual fact shown.

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

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

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

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

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst at the very least 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 stated the beatings had been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside 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 death. However 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 stated he first learned of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s death in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the videos were revealed, 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 whereas 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 proof turned over to prosecutors previous 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 offered to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

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