Prosecutors last week dropped a negligent homicide charge against a Louisiana State Police trooper, one of the most serious counts remaining against several officers originally charged in the violent death of Black motorist Ronald Greene after a high-speed car chase and crash following an attempted traffic stop in Monroe, Louisiana, five years ago.
After other officers tased Greene, pulled him out of his vehicle, put him in a chokehold, pepper-sprayed and beat him in May 2019, Master Trooper Kory York was seen on bodycam video dragging Greene by the leg shackles and holding him prone on the roadside, stepping on his back as his bloodied face was pressed into the asphalt.
After Greene, a 49-year-old barber, went limp, the officers reportedly failed to render medical aid, and he died on the way to the hospital.
In their initial reports, troopers blamed Greene’s death on the car crash, but emergency room staff said his extensive bodily and facial injuries and the minor damage to his SUV did not “add up” with that explanation.
Law enforcement accounts were further called into question in 2021 when AP News obtained and published the graphic arrest video that officials had refused to release, which showed officers swarming Greene as he appeared to raise his hands, plead for mercy and wail, “I’m your brother! I’m scared!” before he was brutalized.
His death sparked national outrage, among several beatings of Black men by Louisiana troopers that led to an ongoing civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, reported AP.
An indictment by a state jury in December 2022 charged five officers with crimes including negligent homicide, obstruction and malfeasance.
A sixth officer considered the most culpable in the violent incident died before he could face justice. Trooper Chris Hollingsworth allegedly struck Greene multiple times in the head with a flashlight, and could be heard on bodycam video saying that he “beat the ever-living f**k out of” Greene. He told investigators 16 months after the incident that he did so because he was “scared,” according to audio of the police interview. “He could have done anything once my hold was broke off him – and that’s why I struck him,” he told investigators.
Hollingsworth died in a high-speed single-vehicle crash in 2020, hours after he learned that he would be fired for his misconduct.
Only York and a Union Parish sherriff’s deputy, Christopher Harpin, now remain charged in the case, both with multiple felony malfeasance counts, making it unlikely that any law enforcement officers will face significant prison time.
“This whole thing started with a lie and a coverup and it’s going to end the same way,” a furious Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother, said of the latest dropped charge. “You have so much evidence yet no one wants to be the one pointing the finger against killer cops,” she said through tears. “They killed my son and no one give’s a rat’s ass.”
Hardin, whose family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against state police in 2020, has spent the past five years traveling across Louisiana and to Washington, D.C., to advocate for justice in her son’s death, all the while vowing not to bury his ashes until she gets it.
“It has totally gutted my family,” she told Atlanta Black Star in April of 2022, after she appeared at a hearing before a Louisiana legislative committee that was investigating Greene’s death and the alleged suppression of evidence in the case, including the leaked bodycam video, which then-Gov. John Bel Edwards admitted he had seen five months after Greene’s death.
At that time Hardin was hopeful that “the heat” on state police and other officials from an FBI probe into Greene’s death and the civil rights investigation by the Justice Department looking into patterns and practices by the LSP of using excessive force would lead to greater accountability for state police and their supervisors.
Since then, much of the case has unraveled, in part due to the difficulty of determining Greene’s exact cause of death.
Autopsy reports list contributing factors, including the troopers’ repeated use of a stun gun, physical struggle, prone restraint, blunt-force injury and complications of cocaine use. A forensic pathologist declined to identify which factor was the most lethal.
In a statement, Union Parish District Attorney John Belton said that even though a grand jury indicted York for negligent homicide, the evidence “does not meet the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard necessary to secure a conviction at trial.”
Belton also dropped a malfeasance count against York charging him with pepper-spraying Greene after he was handcuffed, an allegation that York’s attorney Mike Small called “unfounded” and unsupported by witnesses or video.
Last October, Belton agreed to drop charges of obstruction of justice and malfeasance against the ranking trooper at the scene, Lt. John Clary, in exchange for his cooperation, reported Nola.com. Clary was accused of keeping the bodycam video of the arrest a secret from investigators for nearly two years after the incident.
And a district judge also tossed charges against former trooper Dakota Demoss and former Capt. John Peters, the troop leader.
“I hate that my son is one of countless others,” Hardin told AP last week after York eluded the homicide charge. “There’s a lot that could be fixed in Louisiana that will never be fixed because of choices like this.”
The Justice Department investigation is ongoing, and the family’s wrongful death lawsuit against the state police is still pending.
