Governor saw 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 prime lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to residence: 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 remaining breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

Whereas 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 Associated Press investigation primarily based on interviews and information 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 fingers of these with the ability to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless nobody 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'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 car crash have develop into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be called within weeks to testify underneath oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible 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 obtain the footage till a detective found it nearly by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed 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 accessible 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 officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally stressed that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was achieved,” Block mentioned. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a piece of evidence, whether or not it was a video or whatever it is perhaps, then, in fact, the district attorney should have all of the proof within the case. In fact.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to answer Greene’s arrest. It's one in every 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 car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, 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.

However Clary’s video is maybe much more important to the investigations because it is the solely footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom with his palms and feet restrained for more 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 fits 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 on 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 personal use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the importance of the Clary footage throughout testimony in 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 point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis instructed lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his death. The identical factor happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a year after Greene’s dying when they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. However it was lengthy unknown to detectives working the felony case and lacking from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focus within the federal probe, which is wanting not only at the actions of the troopers however 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 as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ videos.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web-based 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 demise as “awful however lawful,” mentioned in latest legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they have been locked out of the video storage system on the time and needed to depend on Clary to provide the footage.

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

An inner affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, 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 workplace stated.

Days later, the governor’s attorneys 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 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door event the subsequent day wherein Greene’s family would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it by no means emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders were all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors had been in the dark.

“It didn’t come up in any respect,” Belton stated, including he only knew on the time of the DeMoss video.

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

That settlement falls apart over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a declare Belton and a number of other others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was the truth is shown.

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

Lee Merritt, an lawyer for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained once they requested if there was a Clary video: “We had been instructed it was of no evidentiary worth.”

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

All through this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, data present, but determined in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed each the DeMoss and Clary movies in Could 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among a minimum of a dozen circumstances over the past 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 current and former troopers stated the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he acquired a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his demise. But the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race on the time, saved quiet in regards to the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has said he first realized 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 had been published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions felony. In latest months, as his role within 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 legal professionals now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video until spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as lately as February that proof turned over to prosecutors prior 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 presented to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information conference.

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

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