New Ronald Greene autopsy dumps crash theory in fatal arrest

After officials refused for more than two years to release the troopers’ body camera video, the AP obtained and published it this spring, showing white troopers converging on Greene before he can even get out of his car, repeatedly stunning and punching him as he appears to surrender and repeatedly wails, “I’m your brother! I’m scared! I’m scared!” A trooper can later be seen dragging the heavyset Greene by his ankle shackles and he is left prone and face down in the dirt for more than nine minutes before he eventually goes limp.

Yet even after AP published video of Greene’s violent arrest, state officials and advocates for the troopers repeated the crash theory, with Gov. John Bel Edwards floating it as recently as September.

“The issue would be did he die from injuries sustained in the accident?” Edwards, a Democrat, said on a radio program. “Obviously, he didn’t die in the accident itself because he was still alive when the troopers were engaging with him. But what was the cause of death? I don’t know that that was falsely portrayed.”

Edwards went on to say troopers' actions were “criminal” but that whether they caused Greene’s death was the subject of an investigation and “I’m not going to get in front of that.”

A lawyer for the troopers involved in Greene’s arrest told a court in July that the crash killed him.

“At trial, defendants will present scientific evidence that Mr. Greene’s death was caused by a crash-related blunt force chest trauma resulting in a fractured sternum and ruptured aorta,” P. Scott Wolleson wrote in a filing in a civil lawsuit brought by Greene’s family.

Greene’s was among a dozen cases over the past decade in which an AP investigation found troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said they occurred in an agency with a culture of impunity, nepotism and in some cases outright racism.

Federal investigators are also examining the actions of police commanders, which included pressuring their own detectives to hold off on arresting the trooper who acknowledged hitting Greene in the head with a flashlight and was overheard on his body camera video boasting to a colleague that he “beat the ever-living f--- out of him.”

That trooper, Chris Hollingsworth, died last year in a single-vehicle crash hours after he learned he would be fired for his role in the Greene case.

Speaking to investigators shortly before his death, Hollingsworth sought to justify his flashlight strikes on Greene in part because the man “didn't have any apparent injuries” after the crash and "could have done anything once my hold was broke off him.”