'Where's Ronald Greene's justice?': 5 years on, feds still silent on Black motorist's deadly arrest

FARMERVILLE, La. (AP) — Mona Hardin has been waiting five long years for any resolution to the federal investigation into her son’s deadly arrest by Louisiana State Police troopers, an anguish only compounded by the fact that nearly every other major civil rights case during that time has passed her by.

It took just months for Tyre Nichols ’ beating death last year to result in federal charges against five Memphis police officers. A half-dozen white lawmen in Mississippi have been federally sentenced in last year's torture of two Black suspects. And federal prosecutors long ago brought swift charges in the slayings of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.

Every one of those cases happened months or years after the death of Ronald Greene in northern Louisiana on May 10, 2019, which sparked national outrage after The Associated Press published long-suppressed body-camera video showing white troopers converging on the Black motorist before stunning, beating and dragging him as he wailed, “I’m scared!”

Yet half a decade after Greene’s violent death, the federal investigation remains open and unresolved with no end in sight. And Hardin says she feels ghosted and forgotten by a Justice Department that no longer even returns her calls.

“Where’s Ronald Greene’s justice?” asked Hardin, who refuses to bury her son's cremated remains until she gets some measure of accountability. “I still have my boy in that urn, and that hurts me more than anything. We haven’t grieved the loss of Ronnie because we’ve been in battle.”

Justice Department spokesperson Aryele Bradford said the investigation remains ongoing and declined to provide further details.

Under federal law, no statute of limitations applies to potential civil rights charges in the case because Greene’s arrest was fatal. But prosecutors have wavered for years on whether to bring an indictment, having all but assured Greene’s family initially that an exhaustive FBI investigation would produce charges of some kind.

A federal prosecution seemed so imminent in 2022 that one state police supervisor told AP he expected to be indicted. The FBI had shifted its focus in those days from the troopers who left Greene handcuffed and facedown for more than nine minutes to state police brass suspected of obstructing justice by suppressing video evidence, quashing a detective’s recommendation to arrest a trooper and pressuring a state prosecutor.

All the while, federal prosecutors asked local District Attorney John Belton to hold off on bringing state charges until the federal investigation was complete. They later reversed course, and in late 2022 a state grand jury indicted five officers on counts ranging from negligent homicide to malfeasance. Charges remain against only two, with a trial scheduled for later this year for a senior trooper seen on video dragging Greene facedown by his ankle shackles.

State police initially blamed the 49-year-old's death north of Monroe on a crash following a high-speed chase over a traffic violation. But that explanation was called into question by photos of Greene’s body on a gurney showing his bruised and battered face, a hospital report noting he had two stun gun prongs in his back and the fact that his SUV had only minor damage. Even the emergency room doctor questioned the troopers’ initial account of a crash, writing in his notes: “Does not add up.”

All that changed two years later when AP published graphic body-camera video of Greene’s final moments, showing him being swarmed by troopers even as he appeared to raise his hands, plead for mercy and wail, “I’m your brother! I’m scared! I’m scared!” Troopers repeatedly jolted Greene with stun guns before he could even get out of the car, with one of them wrestling him to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and punching him in the face, Another called him a “stupid motherf---—.” They then ordered a shackled Greene to remain facedown on the ground, even as he struggled to prop himself up on his side.

A reexamined autopsy ordered by the FBI ultimately debunked the crash narrative and listed “prone restraint” among other contributing factors in Greene’s death, including neck compression, physical struggle and cocaine use.

Greene’s family members weren’t the only ones baffled by the pace of the federal inquiry. Then-Gov. John Bel Edwards expressed private frustration with the lack of answers in a closed-door meeting with state lawmakers, saying he believed from the first time he saw the video, in late 2020, that Greene’s treatment was criminal and racist.

“Are they ever going to come out and have a charge?” the Democratic governor asked amid reporting by AP that he had been notified within hours of Greene’s death that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle.”

“This was a cover-up of the highest order,” Michael McClanahan, president of the NAACP’s Louisiana state conference, told sign-toting demonstrators Friday outside the Union Parish Courthouse in Farmerville.

“Why call the police when they’re the very ones that might kill you?" McClanahan said. "It was Ronald Greene then but it’s been a whole lot since Ronald Greene. Enough is enough.”

Perhaps the most significant hurdle to federal charges was the untimely death of Chris Hollingsworth, the trooper who was seen on the video repeatedly bashing Greene in the head with a flashlight and was later recorded by his own body camera calling a fellow officer and saying, “I beat the ever-living f--- out of him.” Hollingsworth died in a high-speed, single-vehicle crash in 2020 hours after he was told he would be fired over his actions in Greene’s death.

Another major sticking point has been whether prosecutors could prove the troopers acted “willfully” in abusing Greene — a key component of civil rights charges that has complicated such prosecutions around the country. The FBI even enhanced the video of the arrest in an ultimately inconclusive attempt to determine whether he had been pepper-sprayed after he was in custody, focusing on an exchange in which a deputy jeeringly said, “S--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The Justice Department has also been conducting a sweeping investigation into use of force by the Louisiana State Police and whether it engages in “ racially discriminatory policing.” The department began that “pattern-or-practice” inquiry nearly two years ago following an AP investigation that found Greene’s arrest was among at least a dozen cases in which troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct.

Also still pending is the federal wrongful death lawsuit Greene’s family filed four years ago seeking damages from the officers, who have denied wrongdoing. The civil case has been put on hold as the criminal proceedings play out.

Hardin said it's long past time for the state of Louisiana to make amends.

“It started with a lie — we were told Ronnie was killed in a car crash,” she said. “That was wrong, and it has to be addressed. I will go to my grave knowing I did everything I could to get justice for Ronnie.”

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

This image from video from Louisiana state trooper Lt. John Clary's body-worn camera shows troopers holding Ronald Greene on his stomach on May 10, 2019, outside of Monroe, La. The video obtained by The Associated Press shows Louisiana state troopers stunning, punching and dragging the Black man as he apologizes for leading them on a high-speed chase. (Louisiana State Police via AP)

Demonstrators hold a rally for the late Ronald Greene outside the Union Parish Courthouse in Farmerville, La., on Friday, May 10, 2024. Half a decade after Greene’s violent death, the federal investigation remains open and unresolved with no end in sight. Two officers charged in Greene's death are scheduled to be tried here later this year. (AP Photo/Jim Mustian)

FILE — This image taken from video from Louisiana state trooper Lt. John Clary's body-worn camera shows trooper Kory York standing over Ronald Greene on his stomach on May 10, 2019, outside of Monroe, La. The video obtained by The Associated Press shows Louisiana state troopers stunning, punching and dragging the Black man as he apologizes for leading them on a high-speed chase. (Lt. John Clary/Louisiana State Police via AP, File)

FILE - This image from video from Louisiana state police state trooper Dakota DeMoss' body-worn camera, shows troopers holding up Ronald Greene before paramedics arrived on May 10, 2019, outside of Monroe, La. The video obtained by The Associated Press shows Louisiana state troopers stunning, punching and dragging the Black man as he apologizes for leading them on a high-speed chase. (Louisiana State Police via AP)

FILE - Mona Hardin recounts the events surrounding the death of her son, Ronald Greene, as she holds a painting of him in Orlando, Fla., on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021. Hardin has been waiting five long years for any resolution to the federal investigation into her son’s deadly arrest by Louisiana State Police troopers, an anguish only compounded by the fact that nearly every other major civil rights case during that time has passed her by. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)

FILE - Family members of Ronald Greene listen to speakers as demonstrators gather for the March on Washington, in Washington, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 2020. Half a decade after Greene’s violent death after an arrest by Louisiana State Police troopers, the federal investigation remains open and unresolved with no end in sight. (Michael M. Santiago/Pool via AP)

FILE - The families of Michael Corey Jenkins and Damien Cameron sit together prior to interacting with U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, unseen, during the Jackson, Miss., stop on the division's civil rights tour, June 1, 2023. Six former Mississippi law officers, including some who call themselves the "Goon Squad," will plead guilty to state charges, Aug. 14, for their racist assault on the two Black men that ended with an officer shooting one man in the mouth. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

FILE - Activists march towards the Rankin County Sheriff's Office in Brandon, Miss., Wednesday, July 5, 2023, calling for the termination and prosecution of Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey for running a law enforcement department that allegedly terrorizes and brutalizes minorities. Six white former law enforcement officers in Mississippi have pleaded guilty to a racist assault on Michael Corey Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker, who are Black. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

FILE - A crowd gathers under a new sign designating a city roadway as Honorary Ahmaud Arbery Street on Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in Brunswick, Ga. City officials approved the honor for Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was fatally shot in February 2020 after being chased by three white men in pickup trucks who spotted him running in their neighborhood. All three men were later convicted of murder and federal hate crimes. (AP Photo/Russ Bynum, File)

FILE - Civil rights activist Porchse Miller of Atlanta shouts into a megaphone in front of a mural of Ahmaud Arbery during march that followed the Wall of Prayer event outside the Glynn County Courthouse, Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021, in Brunswick, Ga. Three white men were later convicted of murder and federal hate crimes. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton, File)

FILE - The image from video released on Jan. 27, 2023, by the City of Memphis, shows Tyre Nichols leaning against a car after a brutal attack by five Memphis police officers on Jan. 7, 2023, in Memphis, Tenn. Nichols died on Jan. 10. Five officers have since been fired and charged with second-degree murder and other offenses. (City of Memphis via AP, File)

FILE - A crowd gathers to remember Tyre Nicholas during a candlelight vigil on the anniversary of his death Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn. Nichols lost his life following a violent beating by five Memphis Police officers in January 2023. (AP Photo/Karen Pulfer Focht, File)

FILE - President Joe Biden hugs Tamika Palmer, mother of Breonna Taylor, as Rev. Al Sharpton watches after Biden signed an executive order in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, May 25, 2022, in Washington. The order comes on the second anniversary of George Floyd's death, and is focused on policing. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - Demonstrators carry an image of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by police in her Louisville, Ky., apartment, as people march to honor the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington, Saturday, Aug. 26, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, July 22, 2021, file photo, Jonte "Jonoel" Lancaster plays a trombone during a celebration for the refurbished George Floyd statue, after it was vandalized following its Juneteenth installation, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

FILE - In this image from video, former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin, center, is taken into custody as his attorney, Eric Nelson, left, looks on, after the verdicts were read at Chauvin's trial for the 2020 death of George Floyd, Tuesday, April 20, 2021, at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis, Minn. (Court TV via AP, Pool, File)

FILE - This undated photo provided by his family in September 2020 shows Ronald Greene, who died in May 2019. Half a decade after Greene’s violent death after an arrest by Louisiana State Police troopers, the federal investigation remains open and unresolved with no end in sight. (Family photo via AP, File)

FILE - In this image from the body camera of Louisiana State Police Trooper Dakota DeMoss, his colleagues, Kory York, center left, and Chris Hollingsworth, center right, hold up Ronald Greene before paramedics arrived on May 10, 2019, outside of Monroe, La. An autopsy ordered by the FBI listed “prone restraint” among the other contributing factors in Greene’s violent death, including neck compression, physical struggle and cocaine use. (Louisiana State Police via AP, File)

FILE - In this photo provided by Alana Wilson, Mona Hardin looks over the body of her son, Ronald Greene in Rayville, La., on May 13, 2019. Hardin has been waiting five long years for any resolution to the federal investigation into her son’s deadly arrest by Louisiana State Police troopers, an anguish only compounded by the fact that nearly every other major civil rights case during that time has passed her by. (Alana Wilson via AP, File)

JERUSALEM (AP) — The helicopter crash in which Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and other officials were killed is likely to reverberate across the Middle East, where Iran’s influence runs wide and deep.

That's because Iran has spent decades supporting armed groups and militants in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories, allowing it to project power and potentially deter attacks from the United States or Israel, the sworn enemies of its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Tensions have never been higher than they were last month, when Iran under Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel in response to an airstrike on an Iranian Consulate in Syria that killed two Iranian generals and five officers.

Israel, with the help of the United States, Britain, Jordan and others, intercepted nearly all the projectiles. In response, Israel apparently launched its own strike against an air defense radar system in the Iranian city of Isfahan, causing no casualties but sending an unmistakable message.

The sides have waged a shadow war of covert operations and cyberattacks for years, but the exchange of fire in April was their first direct military confrontation.

The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has drawn in other Iranian allies, with each attack and counterattack threatening to set off a wider war.

It's a combustible mix that could be ignited by unexpected events, such as Sunday's deadly crash.

Israel has long viewed Iran as its greatest threat because of Tehran's controversial nuclear program, its ballistic missiles and its support for armed groups sworn to Israel's destruction.

Iran views itself as the chief patron of Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule, and top officials for years have called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Raisi, who was a hard-liner viewed as a protégé and possible successor of Khamenei, chastised Israel last month, saying “the Zionist Israeli regime has been committing oppression against the people of Palestine for 75 years.”

“First of all we have to expel the usurpers, secondly we should make them pay the cost for all the damages they have created, and thirdly, we have to bring to justice the oppressor and usurper," he said.

Israel is believed to have carried out numerous attacks over the years targeting senior Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists.

There is no evidence Israel was involved in Sunday's helicopter crash, and Israeli officials have not commented on the incident.

Arab countries on the Persian Gulf have also long viewed Iran with suspicion, a key factor in the decision of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize relations with Israel in 2020, and of Saudi Arabia to consider such a move.

Iran has provided financial and other support over the years to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which led the Oct. 7 attack into Israel that triggered the Gaza war, and the smaller but more radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which took part in it. But there is no evidence that Iran was directly involved in the attack.

Since the start of the war, Iran's leaders have expressed solidarity with the Palestinians. Their allies in the region have gone much further.

Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, Iran's most militarily advanced proxy, has waged a low-intensity conflict with Israel since the start of the Gaza war. The two sides have traded strikes on a near-daily basis along the Israel-Lebanon border, forcing tens of thousands of people on both sides to flee.

So far, however, the conflict has not boiled over into a full-blown war that would be disastrous for both countries.

Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq launched repeated attacks on U.S. bases in the opening months of the war but pulled back after U.S. retaliatory strikes for a drone attack that killed three American soldiers in January.

Yemen's Houthi rebels, another ally of Iran, have repeatedly targeted international shipping in what they portray as a blockade of Israel. Those strikes, which often target ships with no apparent links to Israel, have also drawn U.S.-led retaliation.

Iran's influence extends beyond the Middle East and its rivalry with Israel.

Israel and Western countries have long suspected Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons in the guise of a peaceful atomic program in what they see as a threat to non-proliferation everywhere.

Then-President Donald Trump's withdrawal from a landmark nuclear pact between Iran and world powers in 2018, and his imposition of crushing sanctions, led Iran to gradually abandon all the limits placed on its program by the deal.

These days, Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity — near weapons-grade levels of 90%. Surveillance cameras installed by the U.N. nuclear agency have been disrupted, and Iran has barred some of the agency's most experienced inspectors. Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes, but the United States and others believe it had an active nuclear weapons program until 2003.

Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East but has never acknowledged having such weapons.

Iran has also emerged as a key ally of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, and is widely accused of supplying exploding drones that have wreaked havoc on Ukraine's cities. Raisi himself denied the allegations last fall in an interview with The Associated Press, saying Iran had not supplied such weapons since the outbreak of hostilities in February 2022.

Iranian officials have made contradictory comments about the drones, while U.S. and European officials say the sheer number being used in the war in Ukraine shows that the flow of such weapons has intensified since the war began.

In this photo provided by Moj News Agency, rescue teams' vehicles are seen near the site of the incident of the helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Varzaghan in northwestern Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (Azin Haghighi/Moj News Agency via AP)

An Iranian woman prays for President Ebrahim Raisi in a ceremony at Vali-e-Asr square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People pray for President Ebrahim Raisi in a ceremony at Vali-e-Asr square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

FILE - People gather around a component from an intercepted ballistic missile that fell near the Dead Sea in Israel, Saturday, April 20, 2024. The apparent crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other top officials is likely to reverberate across the Middle East. Tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and Israel and Iran directly traded fire for the first time ever in April. (AP Photo/Itamar Grinberg, File)

FILE - Iranian worshippers chant slogans during an anti-Israeli gathering after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 19, 2024. The apparent crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other top officials is likely to reverberate across the Middle East. Tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and Israel and Iran directly traded fire for the first time ever in April. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)