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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his closing breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

Whereas the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up within the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation 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 hands of those with the facility to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till practically two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, dying 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,” mentioned 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 automobile crash have develop into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify below oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach for the governor to have identified 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 staff to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective found it virtually by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed the AP that his information 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 available for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be out there to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also harassed that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was accomplished,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a bit of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is perhaps, then, of course, the district legal professional ought to have all the evidence in the case. Of course.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's one in every of two movies of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits 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 perhaps much more significant to the investigations because it's the solely footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground along with his palms and ft restrained for more than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ stomach 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 importance 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 again at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The identical thing occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his loss of life. The identical thing occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s dying once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has change into a focal point within the federal probe, which is looking not only 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 personal from Greene’s arrest and as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of other 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 dying as “terrible but lawful,” stated in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to rely on Clary to offer the footage.

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

An inner affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, averted self-discipline and remains 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 high attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police constructing 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 discuss the movies with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door event the next day by which Greene’s household would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors were in the dead of night.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what occurred the following day.

Greene’s family 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 workplace, nevertheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been advised it was of no evidentiary worth.”

“The very fact is we never saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have whole management of the narrative.”

All through this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, however determined towards it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and printed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among a minimum of a dozen instances over the previous decade during which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers stated the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he acquired a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race at the time, saved 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 realized of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s death 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 movies had been revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions legal. In latest months, as his function in the Greene case has come beneath 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 recently as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the evidence of what happened that evening was presented to prosecutors nicely before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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