New Orleans Sheriff Indicted in Jail Oversight Corruption Case

By Matt Bruce and James Finn

Source The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.

Sheriff Susan Hutson, who rode a progressive wave to office on a pledge to reform New Orleans’ long-troubled jail, will leave that post under criminal indictment after a grand jury accused her Wednesday of dozens of state corruption counts.

The indictment charges Hutson, 59, with 30 counts in all: 14 for malfeasance in office, three for filing or maintaining false public records, three for obstruction of justice, and 10 conspiracy charges for those crimes.

Bianka Brown, the chief financial officer of the sheriff's office, was charged with 20 similar counts.

The 23-page indictment was secured by the office of Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and released by her spokesperson late Wednesday. It reveals no details about the allegations against either Hutson or Brown.

In each count against Hutson, the indictment lists the date for the alleged crimes as May 2, 2022 to April 8, 2026 — her four-year tenure as sheriff. The charges against Brown also do not specify her alleged crimes or their dates, instead giving a range spanning her employment there.

Criminal District Judge Pro Tem Franz Zibilich set a $300,000 bond for Hutson. Brown, 40, had her bond set at $200,000 by Zibilich, who ordered both defendants to surrender their passports and remain in Louisiana, court records show.

The sheriff, who has days left in office, did not respond to a phone message seeking comment. Records showed that she and Brown were being booked late Wednesday in Jefferson Parish.

Hutson and Brown are due to appear in Zibilich’s court in Orleans Parish Thursday morning, according to Murrill’s office.

Jail escape prompted probe

The indictment stems from the investigation Murrill’s office launched into last year’s May 16 mass jail escape, in which the 10 escapees crawled through a hole from a ripped-out toilet and fled the New Orleans jail. All 10 were later captured over a span of months and currently face escape charges.

Murrill issued a statement after Thursday’s indictment.

"Nearly a year ago, I made a commitment to the people of New Orleans and the people of our state that those responsible for the Orleans Parish Prison break would be held accountable,” it read.

“While Sheriff Hutson did not personally open the doors of the jail for the escapees, her refusal to comply with basic legal requirements and to take even minimal precautions in the discharge of her duties directly contributed to and enabled the escape.”

Murrill expressed confidence in the incoming Sheriff-elect, Michelle Woodfork, who takes office Monday.

A spokesperson for Murrill, Lester Duhe, declined requests to provide additional details of the allegations against Hutson. "Though these indictments were issued today, this remains an ongoing criminal investigation, and we cannot comment any further,” Duhe said.

The charges make Hutson, a Democrat, the second citywide official in New Orleans to be indicted while in office in less than a year. Former Mayor LaToya Cantrell was charged in August with federal crimes for allegedly conspiring with her police department bodyguard and alleged paramour to cavort on romantic liaisons using taxpayer money, then lying to federal agents and destroying evidence. She has pleaded not guilty.

Hutson’s indictment also marks the latest set of corruption charges secured by Murrill’s office in state courts in recent months. Cleve Dunn, an East Baton Rouge City-Parish council member, was charged with corruption-related offenses in January by prosecutors from Murrill’s office as part of a broader probe. Last week, the office secured charges against the Winnsboro mayor for alleged Medicaid fraud.

Murrill, whose office’s recent corruption cases have leaned on state statutes penalizing malfeasance and payroll violations, described the strategy as a matter of holding public officials to account.

“It’s certainly a commitment that I made not to avoid hard cases, or avoid cases that might have political implications,” she said in a recent interview. “I fundamentally think it is a terrible thing to breach the public trust when you’re a public official.”

A difficult tenure

The city’s former Independent Police Monitor, Hutson became its first Black female sheriff when she beat Marlin Gusman, the former sheriff, in 2021, joining a progressive wave into elected office in New Orleans.

Her tenure was troubled by controversy over top staff, spending on hotel rooms for Mardi Gras and troubles controlling violence in a lockup plagued by broken doors and other problems since it opened a decade ago. Hutson struggled to maintain staffing levels as the jail population swelled beyond a soft 1,250-inmate cap set by the City Council. Federal monitors have cited backsliding on reforms under a 12-year-old federal consent decree.

Then came the jailbreak that Hutson said “tested us to the limits” under a national spotlight, as she issued a farewell address Wednesday reflecting on wins and “challenges” of a rocky term. Hutson said she was leaving the office with “gratitude.”

Brown, the agency’s chief financial officer, won praise from Hutson in 2024 for exposing a scheme by two veteran employees to siphon tens of thousands of dollars from inmate commissary funds, as well as another scheme by an employee who was charged with siphoning agency funds.

Brown previously served as CFO for the Downtown Development District.

A sweeping state audit of the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office released earlier this month by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor revealed a litany of security and operations issues at the jail ahead of the escape.

Murrill said at the time that the problems highlighted in the audit were "of obvious concern."

The audit found that deputies had completed fewer than a third of required security checks during the week of the jailbreak. It also found that deputies regularly reported working off-duty details at the same time as their standard shifts, in possible violation of state payroll fraud laws.

Between January 2022 and May 2025, auditors found that 179 deputies, or roughly a quarter of OPSO’s staff, reported working overlapping shifts more than 1,300 times.

Auditors also questioned OPSO's management of funding and contracts, finding that the office lacked written purchasing policies or a contract management system.

Staff writers John Simerman and Sophie Kasakove contributed to this report.

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