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A New Orleans grand jury indicted Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson after 10 inmates broke out of the Orleans Parish jail in an escape that prosecutors tied to leadership failures, according to Louisiana and court records made public this week. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said her office’s state probe found that Hutson’s management of the jail contributed to the jailbreak, even as the indictment does not accuse Hutson of personally opening the doors for the inmates.
The jailbreak unfolded in an audacious escape that involved inmates crawling through a hole behind a jail toilet and scaling a barbed wire fence, according to the Associated Press account. Investigators said the jail did not realize the inmates were missing for more than seven hours, and the escapees left graffiti that read “To Easy LoL.”
Murrill said the state’s investigation found that Hutson’s lack of compliance with legal requirements and failure to take precautions directly contributed to and enabled the escape, according to a statement quoted in the AP report. The grand jury returned a 30-count indictment charging Hutson with malfeasance, obstruction of justice and falsifying public records, court documents described by the outlet said.
The AP report said Hutson’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment by phone, text message and email. Court records cited in the report also indicated that Hutson did not have a personal attorney listed in the file, and that she lost her reelection campaign; she was set to leave office on Monday.
Hutson addressed the matter in a farewell address Tuesday, according to the AP report. She said the jail’s “bailbreak” “tested us to the limit,” and added that her office “responded with professionalism, urgency and resilience, and we came out stronger because of it.”
Court records described in the AP report said bond for Hutson was set at $300,000, and that she was ordered to turn in her passport and not leave the state. The AP report also said Bianka Brown, the chief financial officer of the sheriff’s office, was indicted on 20 similar charges, and that she did not immediately respond to outreach by phone and text sent to numbers associated with her.
Beyond the allegations in this case, the AP report said the Orleans Parish jail system has faced violence, corruption and dysfunction for decades, and has been under federal oversight since 2013. It added that problems persisted despite tens of millions of dollars in investment and the opening of a new jail facility in 2015, and said federally appointed monitors warned in the two years leading up to the jailbreak about inadequate staffing, lax supervision and a growing number of “internal escapes.”