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 top legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer to house: troopers’ lethal 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 final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners 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 evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based on interviews and data found 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 crucial footage into the arms of these with the facility to charge the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless 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 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 turn out to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be known as within weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner for the governor to have known 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 simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it virtually by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his records show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the identical time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long 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 proof to be accessible to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally burdened that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return 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 piece of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it could be, then, of course, the district legal professional ought to have all the proof in the case. Of course.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is considered one of two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows troopers swarming Greene’s automotive 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 perhaps even more important to the investigations because it's the solely footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the burden of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground together with his arms and toes restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ belly 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 knowledgeable highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony through which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his back at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same factor happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the moment of his loss of life. The same thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the felony case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focal point in the federal probe, which is looking not only on the actions of the troopers however whether 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’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based proof storage system and the then-head of the agency, 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 “awful but lawful,” mentioned in recent 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 depend on Clary to offer 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 entry to body-camera video because the company’s use-of-force professional, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An internal affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, avoided discipline and remains within 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 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 office said.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and a number of other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in truth proven.

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 lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were told it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The actual fact is we never noticed it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mom. “They’ve tried to have whole control of the narrative.”

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, however decided towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and printed each the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst at least a dozen cases over the past decade in 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 said the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he acquired a textual content 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 decent reelection race on the time, saved 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 death 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 have been published, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions legal. In latest months, as his position in the Greene case has come below scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain 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 not too long ago as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the evidence of what occurred that night time was presented to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news conference.

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

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