BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana lawmakers who last year demanded answers from Gov. John Bel Edwards about whether he was complicit in covering up the fatal arrest of a black motorist by State troopers quietly abandoned their jobs without hearing from the governor or issuing any findings.
Lawmakers involved in the special committee investigating Ronald Greene’s 2019 death have offered a range of explanations, including election-year politics, fear the state police investigation won’t work well with Louisiana’s predominantly conservative voters and even a lack of resources in the legislature.
“We only make $17,000 a year, and while I want to get to the heart of the Ronald Greene case for justice, I also want my kids to have dinner tonight,” State Rep. Tanner Magee said. , a Republican who chaired the bipartisan panel and ran unsuccessfully last year for a state judgeship.
“We are not federal authorities with unlimited resources,” Magee said. “Behind the facade is a Mickey Mouse organization trying to do its best.”
Republican House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, who started the panel and is currently running for secretary of state, said lawmakers have finally decided to back out of a US Justice Department investigation that had preceded the formation of the committee by two years. And he accused the second-term Democratic governor of refusing to participate.
Edwards recently told reporters he would still be willing to testify about his handling of the Greene case, but added “there’s nothing new to be gained.”
For Greene’s mother, Mona Hardin, who last month marked the fourth anniversary of her son’s death on May 10, 2019, it’s another disappointment in a long wait for justice.
A state grand jury late last year brought the first charges in the case, indicting five law enforcement officers on charges ranging from negligent homicide to obstruction. . But the Justice Department has yet to say whether it will pursue federal charges following a year-long civil rights investigation. Hardin says the dropped legislative inquiry goes further because of the hope and spotlight it promised.
“No matter where you turn, there’s no one to trust,” she said. “I’m more bothered than everyone that everyone can go on their merry way.”
Greene’s death at the end of a high-speed chase in rural northeast Louisiana has been shrouded in secrecy from the start, when soldiers told grieving relatives and released initial reports that the he 49-year-old had died in a car accident – an account questioned by his family and an emergency doctor. But it took 464 days for the Louisiana State Police to open an internal investigation, and Edwards officials refused for more than two years to release body camera video of the soldiers.
That all changed in May 2021 when The Associated Press obtained and published the footage that showed soldiers knocking out, beating and dragging Greene by the ankle shackles as he moaned, “I’m your brother!” I am scared! I’m scared!” It showed the heavy Greene being forced to lie face down for nine minutes before finally going limp. A soldier was later captured on video, admitting in a phone call to a colleague that he “l ‘had beaten to death’.
Lawmakers began looking into Edwards’ role early last year after an AP investigation found he was told in a state police text hours after the Greene’s death that the soldiers were engaged in a “long and violent struggle”, but the Governor remained mostly silent. the case for more than two years as the state police he oversees continued to press the car crash theory.
Another AP report found Edwards privately watched key video of Greene’s fatal arrest in 2020 six months before state prosecutors said they even knew it existed, and neither the governor, his staff, nor the state police acted urgently to obtain the footage. in the hands of those who have the power to indict.
Fellow Democrats in the Legislative Black Caucus berated Edwards behind closed doors for his handling of the case, and GOP leader Schexnayder invoked impeachment language early on in the inquiry, saying the governor’s actions “demonstrate serious misconduct”.
But Edwards has repeatedly said he did nothing to influence or hinder the Greene investigation and ultimately described the soldiers’ actions on video as both criminal and racist. He also said there was no way he knew that the footage he viewed privately in 2020 had not already been turned over to prosecutors.
After initially dismissing the legislative inquiry as a “witch hunt”, Edwards agreed to cooperate and testify. Lawmakers postponed his scheduled first testimony last June due to a special legislative session. When the committee invited the governor to testify again at its last meeting in November, it gave him only a few days’ notice and Edwards instead attended an out-of-town dedication ceremony.
Since then, Edwards has not received another invitation, his spokesperson told AP, and the committee “has never made any request for documents from us.”
Schexnayder acknowledged that the committee was not scheduled to meet again and he seemed resigned to moving on. “Our role was to be a voice for people who demanded a fair and impartial investigation into the case,” he said. “I believe the mission has been accomplished.”
Lost in the committee’s demise is that its handful of hearings prompted testimony that revealed several new details and expanded ongoing criminal investigations.
A state police supervisor told the committee that he was instructed by his superiors not to hand over body camera footage to prosecutors, the agency’s own expert on the use of force described Greene’s death as “torture and murder” and detectives testified that they were pressured. commanders to delay the arrest of the soldier who bragged about beating Greene and was seen on body camera video punching him in the head.
But perhaps the biggest revelation came when a state police official admitted he had ‘sanitized’ the cellphones of former state police superintendent Kevin Reeves and two others. senior commanders who retired amid the FBI’s investigation into Greene’s death. That testimony prompted the state’s internal watchdog to subpoena information about the three officials’ iCloud accounts, according to court documents. Federal authorities are also looking into the cellphone wipe as part of their investigation into whether state police brass obstructed justice, according to law enforcement officials who spoke under cover of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
“We found out a lot that the general public didn’t know, but there has to be some accountability,” said State Rep. C. Denise Marcelle, a Baton Rouge Democrat who served on the committee. “I don’t know if we got to the bottom of what happened and I don’t think the mother got the answers she was looking for. I think there’s been a cover-up, and the question becomes, who’s going to investigate this further? »
The committee’s “legislative negligence death” is particularly troubling for people of color, whose faith in the state police has been shattered by Greene’s death and years of delays in holding anyone accountable, said Silas Lee, political analyst at Xavier University of Louisiana.
Even if Edwards has escaped the spotlight, Lee said, the governor can hardly claim a political victory because there are so many unanswered questions about his handling of the case.
“It’s not going to go away just because it’s not happening now,” he said. “This chapter may be coming to an end, but there are still a few more that are beyond the control and influence of state and local governments.”
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.