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 prime legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: 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 ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts wouldn’t even know existed for another 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 Associated Press investigation based on interviews and information found 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 crucial footage into the fingers of those with the ability to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have passed, 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,” 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 loss of life that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have develop into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be called inside weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner 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 point out seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective found it virtually by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the top 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 same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself accessible for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be obtainable to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also careworn that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was accomplished,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a chunk of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it might be, then, of course, the district lawyer should have all of the proof in the case. After all.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is one among two videos of the incident, and captured occasions 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 probably much more significant to the investigations because it's the solely footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his hands and feet restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking 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 professional highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony in 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 starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The identical thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his loss of life. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s dying when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the felony case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focal point within the federal probe, which is trying not solely at the actions of the troopers however 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 personal from Greene’s arrest and instead gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online evidence storage system and the then-head of the agency, 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 “terrible however lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t learn the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

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, averted self-discipline and stays 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

Days later, the governor’s legal professionals flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been in the dead of night.

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

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

That agreement falls apart over what happened the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown 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 reality shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene household, recalled the response he acquired when 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 saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have whole control of the narrative.”

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, records show, but decided against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

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

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he acquired a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race on the time, kept quiet in regards to the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first learned of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise 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 movies were printed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In recent months, as his function in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist while 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. However Edwards insisted as lately 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 evidence of what occurred that night was presented to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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