FARMERVILLE, La. — A Louisiana state trooper pleaded no contest Monday to significantly reduced charges that spared him jail time in the 2019 fatal arrest of black motorist Ronald Greene, the first conviction of any kind in a protracted police brutality case that has once national outrage. .

Kory York faced the most serious charges of five officers indicted in the case two years ago after a video camera captured him dragging Greene by the ankle cuffs and forcing him to sit handcuffed and face down before stop 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 is 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 obtained and published footage showing soldiers swarming Greene even as he appeared to raise his hands, beg for mercy and cry, “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 he died in a single-vehicle crash in 2020 after learning he would 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 to dismiss the negligent homicide charge against York and try to negotiate a plea deal on the remaining felony charges 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 civil rights investigation into the use of force by state police. But federal prosecutors have yet to say whether they will file charges in the case following a years-long FBI investigation.