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 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 organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer to dwelling: troopers’ deadly 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 ultimate breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers wouldn’t even know existed for one more six months.

While 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 Associated Press investigation based on interviews and records found 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 crucial footage into the hands of those with the power 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 till almost two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, dying on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after prolonged, ongoing federal and state probes, nonetheless no one 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's president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 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 automotive crash have turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be known as inside weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner for the governor to have known 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 workers to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage till a detective found it virtually by chance six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officials refused to remark, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his data 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, did not make himself obtainable for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be accessible to the governor and never the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also burdened that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t go back and repair what was executed,” Block stated. “All people would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer did not have a piece of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it could be, then, after all, the district attorney ought to have all the evidence in the case. In fact.”

At issue 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 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 guns, beating him in 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 perhaps even more vital to the investigations as a result of it's the only footage that exhibits the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the load of two troopers, twitches and then goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom together with his fingers and feet restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which works silent halfway via 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 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 by which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re urgent on his again at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot begins kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The identical thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who stated that’s the second of his demise. The same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inside affairs officers greater than a yr after Greene’s demise when 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 initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focal point in the federal probe, which is wanting 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as a substitute gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ movies.

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 think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s death as “awful but lawful,” mentioned in current legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s dying say they have been locked out of the video storage system at the time and had 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 till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force professional, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An internal affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t reply to requests for comment, avoided discipline and remains within the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP revealed 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 office mentioned.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was intended to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the assembly was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders have been all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors have been at the hours of darkness.

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

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

That settlement falls aside over what occurred the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and several 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 shown.

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

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

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had thought-about making the Greene arrest videos public, records present, however determined against 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 both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst at least a dozen circumstances over the previous decade by 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 stated the beatings had been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

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

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

After the movies had been printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions felony. In recent months, as his role in the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to describe 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 till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as lately as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The facts are clear that the evidence of what happened that night time was offered to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news convention.

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

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