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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high legal professionals gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to residence: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched an important body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for one more 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 mostly on interviews and information discovered that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his workers nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the essential footage into the fingers of those with the power to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed crucial moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, 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 on 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 demise that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have change into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are expected to be known as within weeks to testify below 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 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 workers to withhold evidence.

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 until a detective discovered it virtually by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his information present 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, 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 available to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was achieved,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney didn't have a piece of proof, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is likely to be, then, in fact, the district attorney should have all the evidence in the case. After all.”

At issue is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's certainly 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 car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him in 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 maybe even more significant to the investigations because it's the only footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom along with his fingers and ft restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on 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 personal use-of-force skilled highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony by which he characterised the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his again at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same factor happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his dying. The same factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s loss of life when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focus within the federal probe, which is wanting not solely on the actions of the troopers but 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 instead gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly 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 dealing with 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 dying as “awful however lawful,” said in current legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they were 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, mentioned 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 inner affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, prevented discipline and stays in 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 videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace said.

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 attorney main the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the following day by which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been at the hours of darkness.

“It didn’t come up at all,” Belton mentioned, adding he only knew on the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That settlement falls aside over what happened the following day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and several 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 fact shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were told it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this course of, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, information present, but determined against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and printed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst at least a dozen circumstances over the previous decade during 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 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 received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. However the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race at the time, kept quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first realized of the “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the movies have been published, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In current months, as his function in the Greene case has come beneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain 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 until 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 facts are clear that the proof of what happened that evening was introduced to prosecutors properly before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

“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.