Race issues dog 'wild card' prosecutor in Ronald Greene case

FARMERVILLE, La. (AP) — In this conservative corner of northern Louisiana, where reverence for law enforcement runs deep and Blue Lives Matter flags often fly alongside the Stars and Stripes, the case of five white officers charged in the deadly 2019 arrest of Black motorist Ronald Greene is seen as anything but a slam dunk.

So even with explosive body-camera video showing officers stunning, beating and dragging Greene, the Black district attorney in mostly white Union Parish has decided to bring in a hired gun: an experienced white special prosecutor with a folksy law-and-order bravado and a three-decades-long reputation for winning complicated cases across the state.

But Hugo Holland’s background is also marked by accusations of racial bias, including new claims uncovered by The Associated Press, that make him an unlikely advocate for racial justice. In fact, he says the concept has no place in the Greene case or anywhere in the justice system.

“Justice is justice,” Holland told the AP. “It doesn’t make any difference what race the offender or the victim is. F——— race has got nothing to do with it.”

Holland drew criticism as a local prosecutor for displaying a portrait in his office of Confederate general and early KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. He once sent a fellow lawyer an email joking about chasing down “a Black guy or a Mex-can.” And he wrote the judge in the 2021 Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial to say he would never have charged the teen acquitted of killing two people during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, calling it a “good shoot.”

Beyond that, Holland has served as a reserve police officer in Bossier City for 20 years and has been criticized for rarely prosecuting police, deciding in 2018 against charging two white sheriff’s deputies seen on body-camera...