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 still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his high attorneys gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case closer 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 showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his last breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and health workers 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 proof was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based on interviews and data 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 crucial footage into the hands of these with the ability to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed vital moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until almost 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 prolonged, 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,” said 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 car crash have develop into questions which have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are expected to be known as inside weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a potential cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no manner for the governor to have recognized 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 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 obtain the footage until a detective found it virtually by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the top of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, instructed 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, didn't 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 not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers also harassed that state police, not Edwards’ office, truly possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was done,” Block mentioned. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district lawyer didn't have a bit of proof, whether it was a video or whatever it might be, then, of course, the district attorney ought to have all of the evidence within the case. Of course.”

At challenge is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to 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 reveals troopers swarming Greene’s car 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 probably even more important to the investigations because it is the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the burden 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 hands and ft restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway by means of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in your f------ belly like I informed 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 during testimony in which he characterised 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 starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The same thing occurred within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his loss of life. The same factor occurred with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s demise once they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. However it was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn into a focus within 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 own from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of different troopers’ movies.

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

However the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they have been locked out of the video storage system at the time and needed to depend on Clary to provide 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 entry to body-camera video as the company’s use-of-force skilled, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inside affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, avoided self-discipline and stays 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 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 workplace mentioned.

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

The Oct. 13 assembly was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the following day wherein Greene’s household would meet the governor and examine footage of the arrest. Though the meeting was about displaying video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders had been all conscious of the Clary footage whereas prosecutors were at nighttime.

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

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

That agreement falls apart over what happened the following day.

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

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

Lee Merritt, an legal professional for the Greene household, recalled the response he obtained after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We had been informed 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 whole management of the narrative.”

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest movies public, records present, however decided in opposition to it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they have been withheld from the general public greater than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted discovered Greene’s was amongst a minimum of a dozen cases 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 culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he obtained a textual content message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. But the governor, who was in the midst of a good reelection race on the time, saved quiet concerning the case publicly for 2 years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash.

Edwards has mentioned he first learned of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s death in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI despatched a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the movies have been published, the governor broke his silence and known as the troopers’ actions felony. In recent months, as his position within the Greene case has come underneath 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 did not have the Clary video till 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 evidence of what happened that night time was introduced to prosecutors properly earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a news convention.

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

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