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 nonetheless 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 prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched an important body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that confirmed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for another 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 primarily based on interviews and records 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 these with the power to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which confirmed critical moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors until practically two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless nobody has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable on this, in delaying justice,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who's 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 automobile crash have turn into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be called within 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 means for the governor to have known 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 workers 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 receive the footage till a detective discovered it nearly accidentally six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, advised the AP that his information present 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, did not make himself obtainable 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 staff also harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was finished,” Block said. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a piece of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is likely to be, then, of course, the district attorney should have all of the evidence in the case. In fact.”

At difficulty is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is considered one of two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s car 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 much more vital to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground along with his palms and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which works silent midway by way of 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 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 expert highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony wherein he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his again at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The identical factor happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the moment of his loss of life. The same thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. Nevertheless it was long unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focus in the federal probe, which is wanting not solely 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 own from Greene’s arrest and instead gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an internet evidence storage system and the then-head of the company, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s dealing with 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 “awful but lawful,” stated in latest legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they had been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to depend on Clary to offer the footage.

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

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, prevented self-discipline and remains 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 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 workplace said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and think about footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been in the dead of night.

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

Block agreed, saying, “We didn’t go through what happened 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 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, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually proven.

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

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired after they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been advised it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The fact is we by no means noticed it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have complete management of the narrative.”

Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, however decided towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and printed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was among at least a dozen circumstances over the previous decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings have been countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he obtained a textual content 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 decent reelection race at the time, stored quiet about 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 “severe allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life in September 2020, months after Greene’s household filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for proof to state police.

After the movies had been printed, the governor broke his silence and referred to as the troopers’ actions felony. In latest months, as his role within the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The info are clear that the evidence of what occurred that night was introduced to prosecutors well earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a information convention.

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

___

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