The mother of a Black man beaten to death during an encounter with Louisiana State Police in 2019 is calling for the governor to be punished after new reports show he saw the video of the man’s violent arrest months before it was shown to detectives or prosecutors.
Mona Hardin said the new detail is another piece in the string of cover-ups in her son Ronald Greene’s death. Police officials initially said Greene died from a car crash. However, two years later, leaked video footage made public showed he was punched, tased, and dragged by troopers before he died.
Gov. John Bel Edwards reportedly received a text message from a top state police official within hours of Greene’s death telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle.” Facing upcoming reelection, the governor shied away from publicly commenting on the case for two years, according to reports..
“Eventually, they are throwing some people who they think is going to be a sacrificial lamb, but it ain’t gonna be Edwards,” said Hardin. “He needs to be fired. Criminally charged. He needs to be fired. I have said that before. Resign.”
According to The Associated Press, in October 2020 after seeing the more incriminating video of two showing the violent arrest, the Democratic governor and his staff remained mum.
The state and the federal government have launched investigations into the incident and possible cover-up, but no one has been criminally charged. Edwards and his staff are expected to go before a legislative committee on Greene’s murder in the coming weeks.
“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 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.”
According to reports, Edwards saw the video six months before a detective accidentally discovered it. His attorneys and staff said the governor did not know that a criminal investigation had not been launched into the incident when he saw it.
It shows when the troopers restrained Greene face down on the ground with his hands and feet bound for more than nine minutes and the moment his body goes limp.
“I can’t go back and fix what was done,” Edwards’ chief counsel, Matthew Block, said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a piece of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it might be, then, of course, the district attorney should have all the evidence in the case. Of course.”
The footage, which was retrieved from Lt. John Clary’s body-worn camera, has been pivotal in the investigations into Greene’s arrest. The lead detective on the case said he didn’t know the video existed until April 2021, when the agency’s use-of-force expert, who reportedly had broad access to body-camera footage, mentioned it to him in passing.
In March, the expert, Scott Davis, told lawmakers that Greene’s encounter with troopers was “torture and murder.”
“They’re pressing on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Davis told the legislative panel. “The same thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his death. The same thing happened with Ronald Greene.”
Clary uploaded the video to an online storage system that detectives did not have access to. He told detectives he did not capture any body-camera footage of his own and instead gave them a thumb drive of other troopers’ videos.
Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a year after Greene was killed. They opened an investigation and later showed it to the governor, the AP reports.
Edwards and his staff and other top officials went to the state police headquarters to watch the two videos in October 2020, but Union Parish District Attorney John Belton said the governor never mentioned that he saw the Clary video.
“It didn’t come up at all,” Belton said.
Edwards said in February that evidence received by prosecutors before the November 2019 election was proof there was no cover-up. However, the governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until the spring of 2021.
Greene’s family also did not see the Clary video during their October meeting at the headquarters. Attorneys for Greene’s family said they were told later that the video had no “evidentiary value.”
“For Edwards to say that we saw the Clary video, he is a liar,” Hardin said. “He is a liar. Clary was definitely not on there. We did not see the video until the end.”
“I don’t know how much more I can spell out the word liar,” Hardin said.
