Governor saw lethal 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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to residence: troopers’ lethal arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a crucial 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 examiners wouldn’t even know existed for another six months.

Whereas the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up within the explosive case by contending proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information 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 arms of those with the facility to cost the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed crucial moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t attain prosecutors till nearly two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, loss of life on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, still no one has been criminally charged.

“The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable in 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 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 dying that troopers initially blamed on a automobile crash have grow to be questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his employees are anticipated to be referred to as within weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a attainable cover-up.

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

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a gathering just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it virtually by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials 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 same time, mid-April 2021.

Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, didn't make himself available for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be available to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s staff also pressured that state police, not Edwards’ office, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was completed,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a bit of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it could be, then, in fact, the district lawyer should have all the evidence in the case. After all.”

At concern is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It is one among two movies 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 in the head and dragging him by his ankle shackles. All through 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 probably even more important to the investigations because it is the only footage that exhibits the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground together with his hands and ft restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which matches silent halfway by when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, selecting up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f------ belly like I told you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The state police’s personal use-of-force skilled 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 pressing on his again at one level and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the second of his dying. The same thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers greater than a 12 months after Greene’s dying after they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the prison case and lacking from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has grow to be a focal point within the federal probe, which is trying not solely at the actions of the troopers however 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 instead gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly 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 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 loss of life as “awful however lawful,” mentioned in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying 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, stated he didn’t study the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force professional, 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 particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, averted 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 office stated.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the following day during which Greene’s family would meet the governor and look at footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s attorneys and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at midnight.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly 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, nonetheless, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact shown.

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 legal professional for the Greene family, recalled the response he obtained when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were instructed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, records present, however determined in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and printed both the DeMoss and Clary movies in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among at the very least a dozen instances 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 present and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s lethal arrest inside 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. But the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, stored quiet concerning the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has stated he first learned 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 evidence to state police.

After the movies were revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions criminal. In recent months, as his function 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 did not have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as just lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the proof of what occurred that evening was introduced to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news conference.

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

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