Fizzled probe spares governor scrutiny over Ronald Greene's deadly arrest

Lawmakers involved in the special committee probing the 2019 killing of Ronald Greene offered an array of explanations, including election-year politics, concern the probe of state police wasn't playing well with Louisiana's mostly conservative voters and even a lack of resources in the legislature.

"We only make $17,000 a year, and as much as I want to get to the heart of the Ronald Greene matter for justice, I also want my kids to have dinner tonight," said state Rep. Tanner Magee, a Republican who chaired the bipartisan panel and ran unsuccessfully last year for a state judgeship.

"We're not the feds with unlimited resources," Magee said. "Behind the facade, it's a Mickey Mouse organization trying to do its best."

Republican House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, who launched the panel and is now running for secretary of state, said lawmakers decided to take a back seat to a U.S. Justice Department investigation that predated the committee's formation by two years. He accused the second-term Democratic governor of declining to participate.

Edwards recently told reporters he would still be willing to testify about his handling of the Greene case but added "there wouldn't be anything new to be gained."

For Greene's mother, Mona Hardin, who last month marked the fourth anniversary of her son's May 10, 2019, death, 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 counts ranging from negligent homicide to obstruction. But the Justice Department still has not indicated whether it will bring federal charges following a yearslong civil rights investigation. Hardin says the abandoned legislative inquiry cuts deeper because of the hope and spotlight it promised.

"No matter where you turn there's nobody who can be trusted," she said. "I'm bothered more than anything that everyone can just continue on their merry way."

Greene's killing at the end of a high-speed chase in rural northeast Louisiana was shrouded in secrecy from the beginning, when troopers told grieving relatives and put in initial reports that the 49-year-old died in a car crash — an account questioned by both his family and an emergency room doctor who examined his battered body.

It would take 464 days before the Louisiana State Police opened an internal probe, and officials from Edwards on down refused for more than two years to release the troopers' body-camera video.

That changed in May 2021 when The Associated Press obtained and published the footage that showed troopers stunning, punching and dragging Greene by his ankle shackles as he wailed, "I'm your brother! I'm scared! I'm scared!"

It showed the heavyset Greene forced to stay face-down on the ground for nine minutes before he eventually went limp. One trooper was later captured on video admitting in a phone call to a colleague that he "beat the ever-living f--- out of him."

Lawmakers began looking into Edwards' role early last year after an AP investigation found he was informed in a text from the state police within hours of Greene's death that troopers engaged in a "violent, lengthy struggle," yet the governor stayed mostly silent on the case for more than two years as the state police he oversees continued to press the car crash theory.

Another AP report found that Edwards in 2020 privately watched a key body-camera video of Greene's deadly arrest six months before state prosecutors say they knew it even existed, and neither the governor, his staff nor the state police acted urgently to get the footage into the hands of those with the power to bring charges.

Fellow Democrats on the Legislative Black Caucus berated Edwards behind closed doors over his handling of the case, and GOP leader Schexnayder invoked the language of impeachment from the outset of the probe, saying the governor's actions "would demonstrate gross misconduct."

Edwards repeatedly said he did nothing to influence or hinder the Greene investigation and eventually described the troopers' actions on the video as both criminal and racist. He also said there was no way he could have known that the footage he privately watched 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 first scheduled 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 ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Since then, Edwards hasn't received another invitation, his spokesman told AP, and the committee "never made any requests for documents from us."