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 nonetheless simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top attorneys gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to organize for the fallout from a troubling case closer 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 remaining 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 in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based mostly 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 arms of these with the power to cost the white troopers seen beautiful, punching and dragging Greene.

That video, which showed important moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until almost two years after Greene’s Could 10, 2019, death 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 on this, in delaying justice,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who's 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 automotive crash have change into questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his workers are anticipated to be referred to as inside weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a doable cover-up.

Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way 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 employees to withhold evidence.

Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the video in a gathering simply days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective found it almost by accident six months later. Whereas U.S. Justice Department officers refused to comment, the pinnacle of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his data show 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, didn't make himself accessible for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for proof to be obtainable to the governor and not the officers investigating the case. The governor’s workers additionally careworn that state police, not Edwards’ workplace, actually possessed the video.

“I can’t return and fix what was executed,” Block mentioned. “Everyone would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district legal professional didn't have a piece of proof, whether or not it was a video or no matter it is perhaps, then, in fact, the district legal professional should have all the evidence within the case. After all.”

At situation is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to reply to Greene’s arrest. It is one among 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 automobile after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, 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 maybe much more important to the investigations as a result of it's the solely footage that shows the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans below the weight of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It also reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the bottom together with his arms and toes restrained for greater than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his breathing.

And unlike the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway by way of when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound all through, choosing up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay in 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 own use-of-force knowledgeable highlighted the significance of the Clary footage throughout testimony during which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and homicide.”

Lt. John Clary's body-camera video.

“They’re pressing on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis informed lawmakers in March. “The identical thing happened within the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who mentioned that’s the moment of his loss of life. The identical thing happened with Ronald Greene.”

Clary’s video reached state police inner affairs officers more than a yr after Greene’s loss of life after they opened a probe and later confirmed it to the governor. But it surely was lengthy unknown to detectives working the legal case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has turn out to be a focus in the federal probe, which is wanting not solely on the actions of the troopers but whether or not 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 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 agency, 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 “terrible however lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony.

However the detectives investigating Greene’s loss of life say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to depend on Clary to provide the footage.

Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, mentioned he didn’t learn the video existed till April 2021 when Davis, who had broad entry 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 details of the probe stay secret. Clary, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, prevented 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 prime 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 office mentioned.

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 attorney leading the state investigation.

The Oct. 13 assembly was meant to plan a closed-door occasion the subsequent day by 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 legal professionals and police commanders have been all conscious of the Clary footage while prosecutors were at the hours of darkness.

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

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

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 others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s workplace, nevertheless, 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 lawyer for the Greene family, recalled the response he acquired after they asked if there was a Clary video: “We have been informed it was of no evidentiary value.”

“The actual fact is we never saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mom. “They’ve tried to have complete management of the narrative.”

Throughout this process, Edwards had thought of making the Greene arrest videos public, data show, but determined towards it on the request of federal prosecutors. After they had been withheld from the general public more than two years, the AP obtained and published each the DeMoss and Clary videos in Might 2021.

An AP investigation that adopted found Greene’s was among at the very least a dozen instances over the past decade by which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence 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 circumstances, outright racism.

Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest inside hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his loss of life. However the governor, who was in the midst of a decent reelection race at 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 mentioned he first discovered of the “critical allegations” surrounding Greene’s demise 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 have been printed, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers’ actions legal. In recent months, as his role within the Greene case has come below 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 didn't have the Clary video till spring of 2021. However Edwards insisted as not too long ago as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors previous to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up.

“The information are clear that the proof of what happened that night was offered to prosecutors nicely before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards stated in a information convention.

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

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