Louisiana governor agrees to testify in Ronald Greene probe

Gov. John Bel Edwards agreed on Wednesday to a request from Louisiana lawmakers that he and his high attorneys testify earlier than a bipartisan committee investigating allegations of a cover-up within the lethal 2019 arrest of Black motorist Ronald Greene.

The request got here simply days after The Related Press reported that Edwards and his attorneys privately watched a long-withheld video displaying Greene taking his remaining breaths throughout his deadly arrest — but didn’t act urgently to get the essential footage into the arms of these with the ability to cost the white Louisiana State Police troopers seen gorgeous, punching and dragging the person.

The video, which confirmed essential moments and audio absent from different footage that was turned over, didn’t attain prosecutors till almost two years after Greene’s Might 10, 2019, demise on a rural roadside close to Monroe. Prosecutors and detectives have stated they weren’t even conscious the 30-minute clip existed till six months after the governor seen it in October 2020.

State Rep. Clay Schexnayder, the Republican Home speaker, cited “severe questions that may solely be answered by” the Democratic governor and his workers.

“This committee will do its job and see this by irrespective of the place the proof leads,” Schexnayder stated in an announcement asking the governor to seem earlier than the committee June 16.

Edwards’ high lawyer, Matthew Block, wrote in a public letter to the committee that he, one other lawyer and the governor will all seem to testify.

“We’re assured that this testimony will exhibit that neither the governor nor anybody on his workers had any function in any try to cowl up the info associated to Mr. Greene’s demise,” Block wrote to Rep. Tanner Magee, the Republican who chairs the panel.

Block beforehand had advised the AP that there was no manner for the governor to have recognized on the time that the video he watched had not already been turned over to prosecutors, and there was no effort by the governor or his workers to withhold proof.

The legislative committee for weeks has sought to reconstruct the state’s response to Greene’s demise, interviewing a protracted checklist of regulation enforcement officers and even subpoenaing the handwritten journals of a former state police superintendent.

Lawmakers at the moment are pivoting to what the governor knew, when he knew it and what he did about an in-custody demise that troopers initially blamed on a automotive crash. The legislative inquiry comes amid ongoing federal and state investigations that haven’t resulted in any costs.

At concern 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 movies of the incident, and captured occasions not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that reveals troopers swarming Greene’s automotive after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun weapons, beating him within the head and dragging him by his ankle shackles.

Clary’s video is probably much more vital to the investigations as a result of it’s the solely footage that reveals the second a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans beneath the load of two troopers, twitches after which goes nonetheless. It additionally reveals troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to stay face down on the bottom together with his arms and ft restrained for greater than 9 minutes — a tactic use-of-force consultants criticized as harmful and prone to have restricted his respiratory.

The governor’s attorneys didn’t point out seeing the Clary video in a gathering days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t obtain the footage till a detective found it nearly by chance six months later. However state police say they confirmed the Clary video to Greene’s household days after the governor seen it.

A number of members of Greene’s household denied that they had seen the video, however one in every of their attorneys wrote lawmakers an e-mail this week confirming that they had, in truth, seen Clary’s video, citing contemporaneous notes.

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Mustian reported from Los Angeles, Bleiberg from Dallas.

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