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 attorneys gathered in a state police convention room in October 2020 to arrange for the fallout from a troubling case nearer to house: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene.

There, they privately watched a vital body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his closing breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical experts 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 evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Related Press investigation based mostly 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 fingers of those with the power to cost 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 attain prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have handed, and after lengthy, 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 is president of the Metropolitan Crime Fee, 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 car crash have turn into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify under oath earlier than a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no approach for the governor to have identified 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 mention seeing the video in a meeting simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective found it virtually by chance six months later. While U.S. Justice Division officials refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told 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 a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself out there for an interview. However his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be accessible to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally harassed that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, really possessed the video.

“I can’t return and repair what was accomplished,” Block mentioned. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional did not have a chunk of evidence, whether or not it was a video or no matter it may be, then, in fact, the district attorney ought to have all of the proof in the case. After all.”

At subject is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is certainly 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 automobile 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.

However Clary’s video is maybe even more important to the investigations as a result of it is the only footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans underneath the burden of two troopers, twitches after which goes still. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the ground along with his palms and feet restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and more likely to have restricted his breathing.

And in contrast to the DeMoss video, which fits silent halfway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking 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 knowledgeable highlighted the significance of the Clary footage during testimony in which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

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

Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s demise once they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it surely was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and missing from the preliminary investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has change into a focus within the federal probe, which is trying not only 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 personal from Greene’s arrest and as an alternative gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers’ movies.

State police say Clary correctly uploaded his body-camera footage to a web based proof 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 dying as “awful but lawful,” mentioned in current legislative testimony.

But the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to rely 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 till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry to body-camera video because the agency’s use-of-force knowledgeable, made a passing reference to it in a conversation.

An inside affairs investigation into whether or not Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and particulars of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for remark, prevented discipline and stays within the state police.

In early October 2020, days after AP published 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 building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s workplace said.

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

The Oct. 13 meeting was supposed to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day through which Greene’s family would meet the governor and consider footage of the arrest. Though the assembly was about exhibiting video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s legal professionals and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors were in the dead of night.

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

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

That agreement falls aside over what happened the subsequent day.

Greene’s family says it was not proven the Clary video after assembly 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 workplace, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was actually proven.

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

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

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

Throughout this course of, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest movies public, data present, but decided in opposition to it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and revealed both the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was amongst no less than 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 said the beatings had been countenanced by a tradition of impunity, nepotism and, in some instances, outright racism.

Edwards was knowledgeable of Greene’s lethal arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, prolonged battle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was within the midst of a tight reelection race on the time, saved quiet about 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 “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s loss of life in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police.

After the movies were revealed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions prison. In latest months, as his role in the Greene case has come underneath scrutiny, Edwards has gone additional to explain them as racist while denying he’s interfered with or delayed investigations.

The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as just 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 occurred that night time was introduced to prosecutors effectively earlier than my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards mentioned in a news conference.

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

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