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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top legal professionals gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: troopers’ deadly 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 remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers 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 evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based mostly on interviews and data discovered 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 crucial footage into the arms of these with the ability to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed critical moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, still 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's 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 car crash have develop into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be known as within weeks to testify below oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up.

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

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it virtually accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Division officers refused to comment, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed 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 a protracted line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself out there for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be out there to the governor and never the officials investigating the case. The governor’s employees additionally harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was performed,” Block stated. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a bit of proof, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is perhaps, then, after all, the district legal professional ought to have all the proof within the case. Of course.”

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is one of two videos of the incident, and captured occasions 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 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.

But Clary’s video is maybe even more vital to the investigations because it's the only footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground along with his fingers and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and likely to have restricted his respiration.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which matches silent midway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ stomach like I instructed 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 throughout testimony wherein he characterised 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 starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis advised lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said 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 year after Greene’s death once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was long unknown to detectives working the felony case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focal point in the federal probe, which is trying not solely at the actions of the troopers but whether 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 different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online proof 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 death as “awful however lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s demise say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to depend 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 because the company’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inner 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 remark, averted 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 constructing in Baton Rouge and watched movies of the arrest, together with the Clary video, the governor’s office stated.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door event the following day in which Greene’s household would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That agreement falls apart over what happened the next day.

Greene’s household says it was not shown 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, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in truth proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene household, recalled the response he received after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We were instructed it was of no evidentiary value.”

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

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest movies public, information present, however decided in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and printed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that followed discovered Greene’s was among no less than a dozen instances over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or hid proof of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of present and former troopers mentioned the beatings have been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he received a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy wrestle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. However the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race on the time, saved quiet about the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first learned 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 videos have been printed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions criminal. In current months, as his function 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 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 facts are clear that the proof of what occurred that night time was introduced to prosecutors nicely earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a information conference.

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

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