Governor saw deadly 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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top lawyers gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer to house: troopers’ deadly 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 health workers wouldn’t even know existed for another six months.

While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up within the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation primarily based on interviews and data discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his staff 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 gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed critical moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless no one 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 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have become questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method for the governor to have recognized 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 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 till a detective discovered it virtually by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his data present that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical 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 proof to be obtainable to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff also burdened that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and fix what was finished,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a bit of proof, whether it was a video or no matter it is likely to be, then, of course, the district lawyer should have all the proof within the case. After all.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's considered one of two videos 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 weapons, 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.

But Clary’s video is maybe even more important to the investigations because it's the only footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom along with his palms and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ belly 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 expert highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony in which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

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 told lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his dying. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s loss of life once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the legal case and missing from the preliminary 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 solely at the actions of the troopers however whether 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’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet 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 but lawful,” stated in current legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said 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 professional, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, prevented 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 high attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day by which Greene’s household would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

“It didn’t come up at all,” Belton mentioned, including 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 subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and several others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in truth 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 legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he received after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been told it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, information show, however determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and printed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was amongst no less than a dozen cases over the past decade by which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers mentioned the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside 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 demise. But the governor, who was in 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 said he first discovered of the “severe 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 have been printed, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions prison. In current months, as his function in the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist whereas denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However 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 happened that night was offered to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

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