FARMERVILLE, La. (AP) — A Louisiana state trooper pleaded no contest Monday to significantly reduced charges that spared him jail time in the fatal 2019 arrest of Black driver Ronald Greenethe first conviction of any kind in a protracted police brutality case that once sparked national outrage.

Kory York faced the most serious charges of five officers indicted in the case two years ago after body camera video to surprise dragging Greene by the ankle cuffs and forcing him to sit handcuffed and face down before he stopped breathing.

But instead of the original charges of felony negligent homicide and misdemeanor battery, York pleaded no contest to misdemeanor assault in exchange for a year of probation and an agreement to testify against the lone officer who still faces trial.

The plea came despite vehement objections from Greene’s family, who said they were misled about the terms of the deal and robbed of a chance to see the felony charges go to trial.

“My family is a victim and we should have more to say,” said Greene’s mother, Mona Hardin, who refused to sign the last-minute plea deal prosecutors pushed amid fears York would acquit in a conservative corner of the state. .

“It shouldn’t end today,” she told the packed courtroom. “It’s wrong. It’s unfair.”

District Attorney John Belton declined to say Monday whether justice has been served in Greene’s death, saying the case remains open.

York’s no contest plea is effectively the equivalent of a guilty plea, but the conviction cannot be used in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Greene’s family. York, 51, will also keep his nearly $83,000-a-year pension after his August retirement from the Louisiana State Police.

“This is clearly a victory for Kory York,” said his attorney Mike Small. “It’s not an admission of guilt.”

It was a dramatic anticlimax to a case once shrouded in scandal, including allegations of a state police cover-up and institutional racism that sparked two still-unsolved federal investigations. In the fever area, then the governor. John Bel Edwards called Greene’s treatment criminal and racist, and Republican lawmakers threatened to impeach the Democrat over his handling of the case only to abandon a legislative investigation without even questioning him.

Greene’s death in May 2019 was suspicious from the start, when state authorities told grieving relatives he died in a car crash at the end of a high-speed chase near Monroe — an account immediately put under question mark by an emergency room doctor. However, a state police accident report omitted any mention of the troopers’ use of force, and 462 days passed before state police launched an internal investigation. All the while, officials from Edwards on down refused to release the body camera video.

But in 2021 The Associated Press also obtained published Footage of soldiers swarming Greene even as he appeared to raise his hands, beg for mercy and wail, “I’m your brother! I’m afraid!”

The police repeatedly shook him with stun guns, one wrestling him to the ground, choking him and punching him in the face. A soldier hit Greene in the head with a flashlight and was recorded boasting that he “beat the hell out of him forever.” That officer, Chris Hollingsworth, was considered the most culpable of the half-dozen officers involved in the arrest, but died in a single vehicle accident in 2020 hours after he found out he was going to be fired.

York could be seen in the video pinning the handcuffed and heavy Greene face down on the ground for several minutes and repeatedly ordering him to “shut up” and “lay on your stomach like I told you!” Experts said such a prone restraint could have dangerously restricted Greene’s breathing.

Although state police suspended York for 50 hours for his role in Greene’s arrest, investigators were never able to determine what caused the 49-year-old’s death. Autopsy reports cited several contributing factors, including the soldiers’ repeated use of a stun gun, physical combat, restraint in the decline, self-inflicted injury and “complications of cocaine use,” with a forensic pathologist declining to identify which was the most lethal. .

That ambiguity led prosecutors last month dismiss the negligent homicide charge against York and to try to negotiate a plea deal for the other 10 felony counts against him.

Greene’s death was among several beatings of black people by Louisiana troopers that prompted the US Department of Justice to open an ongoing lawsuit. civil rights investigation in the use of force by the state police. But federal prosecutors I haven’t said yet whether they will file charges in the case following a years-long FBI investigation.

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