As La. Trooper avoided jail time in Ronald Green’s fatal arrest

A retired Louisiana State Police officer will not serve prison time death of an officer 49-year-old black driver, Ronald Greenwho cried on body camera footage “I’m your brother! I’m scared!” like six military men they threw, hit, pulled and hit him until he stopped breathing.

On Monday, Oct. 28, Corey York pleaded no contest to eight misdemeanor counts of simple battery in exchange for six months of probation and one year of probation, his attorney, Mike Small, confirmed to PEOPLE. He was previously charged with negligent homicide and two felonies.

“The result is a complete victory for Mr. York!” Small wrote in an email to PEOPLE.

The so-called “nolo contendere plea” conviction will not be accepted in the pending wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Green’s family and allows him to keep his $83,000-a-year pension, Small said.

Still York conviction first of the five servicemen charged in the Union Parish, Louisiana, case, only one serviceman is still scheduled for trial, the Associated Press reports. (The Sixth Soldier, Christopher Clay Hollingsworth, died in 2020, after a One car accident (just a few hours after he was told he would be fired.)

Small says that “if brought to trial,” York “would have testified truthfully” in the latest trial, but he did not make a plea deal with prosecutors.

The servicemen’s cases unfolded along with the current “pattern or practice investigation to the Louisiana State Police” by the Department of Justice to determine whether the department “uses excessive force and engages in racially discriminatory policing.”

PEOPLE has reached out to federal authorities for new information about the investigation, which they announced in June 2022. Lester Due, a spokesman for Attorney General Liz Merrill’s Office, did not directly answer any of PEOPLE’s numerous questions about the investigation, including whether federal authorities planned to file charges.

State authorities initially told Green’s family he died in a high-speed car accident, and state police filed a crash report with no reference to the troopers, according to the AP, which noted that an emergency physician quickly questioned their claims .

Want to keep up with the latest crime news? Click here to receive the latest crime news, current trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

Then, two years after Green’s death, the AP obtained body camera footage that it said showed six troopers groping, choking and swearing at him while Hollingsworth hit him over the head with a flashlight. and boasts that he “knocked the ever-living devil out of him.”

The footage shows York, who previously faced the most serious charges, dragging Green by his ankle cuffs, handcuffing him and lying face down for several minutes while yelling, “Shut up” and “Put on the x… — – belly, as I told you!” Green later stopped breathing, according to the AP, which reported that York was briefly suspended — for 50 hours — for his part in the arrest.

But five years after Green’s death, the 49-year-old’s cause of death remains unclear.

In an autopsy report obtained by the AP, the coroner cited several contributing factors: repeated hits by police, physical struggle, restraints while lying down, blunt force trauma and “complications of cocaine use.”

Ultimately, the medical examiner did not identify a major contributing factor, leading to uncertainty leading according to York’s plea agreement, the AP reported.

PEOPLE asked District Attorney John Belton a series of questions about the case and whether he believes in justice. Belton, who declined to respond to questions posed by the AP, did not respond to an Oct. 29 request for an Oct. 30 post.

But Green’s mother, Mona Hardin, was unequivocal in her views as she addressed the judge during Monday’s sentencing, the AP reported.

“It doesn’t have to end today,” Hardin said. “This is wrong. It’s not fair.”