Governor noticed lethal 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 high legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to home: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for another six months.

While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending proof 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 employees nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the essential footage into the hands 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 reach prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, dying 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 Commission, 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 death that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have turn out to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be referred to as within weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner 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 employees to withhold proof.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective discovered it nearly by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officials refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, informed 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 protracted 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 not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s workers also stressed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was carried out,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a bit of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it could be, then, of course, the district attorney should have all of the evidence within the case. Of course.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It's one among 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 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 probably much more significant to the investigations because it's the only footage that reveals the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground along with his hands and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway via when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on 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 own use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony during 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 level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The identical factor occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his death. The identical factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s demise when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was long 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 focus within the federal probe, which is trying not only on the actions of the troopers but 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 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 agency, 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 but lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they have 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, stated he didn’t be taught the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An internal affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, averted discipline and stays in 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 workplace mentioned.

Days later, the governor’s attorneys flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to debate the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district legal professional leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion 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 never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders had been all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors have been at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s household says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare 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 the truth is proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene household, recalled the response he acquired once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We have been advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, records show, however determined towards it on 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 videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was among a minimum of a dozen cases over the previous decade through 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 knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he obtained a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However 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 discovered of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s dying 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 have been published, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In latest months, as his role within 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 attorneys now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as just lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous 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 offered to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news convention.

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

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