Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson indicted on 30 felonies related to 2025 jailbreak
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson was booked into and released from the Jefferson Parish jail Wednesday night (April 29) after being indicted on 30 felonies.
MORE: Outgoing Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson, aide indicted on malfeasance, obstruction charges
Most of the charges allege Hutson failed to do her job and keep inmates behind bars, related to last year’s jailbreak.
Sheriff Hutson appeared in court Thursday morning (April 30).
On Wednesday, Attorney General Liz Murrill’s office secured 30 felony indictments from a grand jury. Nearly half allege Hutson failed to do her job, while the rest accuse her of trying to cover up crimes connected to the 2025 jailbreak.
READ: MORE NEWS FROM THE NEW ORLEANS JAILBREAK
Earlier this month, Murrill talked about related safety, staffing and financial failures in a report by the legislative auditor.
“The auditor’s report raises a number of concerns that we’ve talked about from the very beginning,” Murrill said. “Just the fact that there were not enough people that were certified, post-certified at the jail. There’s a large population of violent offenders that are being held in pretrial detention. Many of those already have pre-existing charges or convictions.”
Bianka Brown, the sheriff’s chief financial officer, faces 20 similar counts.
Hutson is a Tulane Law School graduate and spent much of her career in police oversight. Political analyst Joe Raspanti weighed in on the indictment.
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“Being a lawyer or being a sheriff of a jail, she’s supposed to know these things, too,” Raspanti said. “She’s supposed to be the person that keeps everybody in. And if they get out, it helps everybody figure out why they got out. And it sounds like maybe she failed on both of those counts. But once again, this indictment didn’t tell you a whole lot of facts.”
Both Murrill’s indictment and the auditor’s earlier investigation looked back to 2022, when Hutson took office, focusing on the May 2025 jailbreak.
Ten inmates jerked open locked jail cells, pulled out plumbing and ran.
The auditor found failures that led to the escape. The inmate population increased by nearly 50 percent from 2022 to 2025, while staff to supervise those inmates only rose 7 percent. Cell block security patrols were skipped about 70 percent of the time during the week of the jailbreak.
The auditor also outlined potential financial and constitutional violations, including over 1,300 allegations of potential payroll fraud.
They uncovered over a million dollars in payments for cell lock replacements without public bids.
Murrill said she agreed with the auditor’s findings, and a federal probe could be in the works.
“Denying people the right to the public services that they were entitled to is part of what the federal government can do,” Murrill said. “But we can also look at that as a state law matter.”
If there were federal charges, that would be in an entirely separate indictment.
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