Governor noticed 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 convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to home: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

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

While 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 Related Press investigation based mostly 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 these with the ability to cost the white troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, still nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable in this, in delaying justice,” said 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 car crash have turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be known as inside weeks to testify beneath oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no method 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 evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage until a detective found it almost by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his records present 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, didn't make himself out there for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be obtainable to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally burdened that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was performed,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a piece of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it is likely to be, then, after all, the district attorney should have all the evidence in the case. After all.”

At problem is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It's considered one of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that exhibits troopers swarming Greene’s automotive 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.

However Clary’s video is probably even more significant to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It also exhibits troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground with his fingers and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in 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 knowledgeable highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony during which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The identical thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his death. The same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a 12 months after Greene’s demise after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was long unknown to detectives working the legal case and lacking from the preliminary 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 instead gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online 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 suppose that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s loss of life as “awful however lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

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

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned 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 inside 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 remark, prevented self-discipline and stays within 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 prime 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 workplace mentioned.

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

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

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

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

That settlement falls apart over what occurred the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown the Clary video after assembly 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 in reality shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene family, 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 noticed 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 movies public, data present, however determined in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 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 hid evidence 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 culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest within hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his dying. But the governor, who was within the midst of a decent reelection race at the time, kept quiet concerning the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

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

After the movies had been published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions legal. In latest months, as his position in the Greene case has come below 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 till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as lately 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 introduced to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news convention.

“So clearly that isn't a part of a cover-up.”

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