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 top attorneys gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to home: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed 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 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 Associated Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information 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 palms of those with the ability to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed crucial moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside near 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 on this, in delaying justice,” mentioned Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be called inside weeks to testify underneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way 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 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 obtain the footage till a detective found it nearly by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the pinnacle 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 same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself accessible for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be available to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff additionally harassed that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

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

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's considered one 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 automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, beating him in 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 probably even more vital to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. 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 greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking 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 personal use-of-force skilled highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during 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 level and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his dying. The same thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a year after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focus 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 guard them.

Detectives say Clary falsely claimed he didn’t have any body-camera footage of his personal from Greene’s arrest and as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based 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 “awful however lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they have been locked out of the video storage system on the time and had to depend on Clary to provide the footage.

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

An inside affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, prevented self-discipline and stays in the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP printed 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, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was meant to plan a closed-door event the following day through which Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been at midnight.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s family 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 workplace, nonetheless, 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 shown to the family that day.”

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been informed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

“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 thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, information show, however determined in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was amongst no less than a dozen cases over the past 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 have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, 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 demise. But the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race at the time, stored 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 demise in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the videos were printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In recent months, as his role in the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors didn't 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 said in a news conference.

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

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