Governor noticed deadly arrest video months before 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 arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: troopers’ lethal 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 ultimate 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 in 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 workers nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the crucial footage into the arms of those with the power to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital 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, loss of life on a rural roadside close to 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 on 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 men 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 grow to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify beneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

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

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective discovered it almost by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told 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 an extended line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself out there for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be obtainable to the governor and never 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 fix what was completed,” Block mentioned. “Everybody 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 no matter it could be, then, after all, the district attorney should have all of the proof in the case. In fact.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's one 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 car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, 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.

However Clary’s video is perhaps much more vital to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground together with his palms and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force specialists criticized as harmful and more likely to have restricted his respiration.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent midway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly like I advised you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s own use-of-force professional highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony during 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 informed lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the second of his loss of life. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s death after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has develop into a focus within the federal probe, which is looking not only on the actions of the troopers however whether or not state police brass obstructed justice to protect them.

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

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based 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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s demise as “terrible however lawful,” said in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to rely on Clary to supply the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t learn the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry 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 details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, avoided self-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 prime attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s workplace stated.

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 legal professional leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the next day wherein Greene’s family would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors had been in the dead of night.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven 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 office, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained once they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been informed 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 total control of the narrative.”

All through this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, information present, but decided against it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was amongst no less than a dozen circumstances over the previous decade by 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 stated the beatings had been countenanced by a culture 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 dying. But the governor, who was within the midst of a good reelection race on 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 learned of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

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

The governor’s legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as not too long ago as February that proof turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the evidence of what happened that night time was introduced to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information convention.

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

___

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