Louisiana officials said Tuesday that they had charged a New Orleans sheriff’s employee in a jailbreak by 10 violent inmates, as the governor and law enforcement advocates blamed the sheriff’s lax oversight of the facility on her ties to left-wing billionaire George Soros.
The state attorney general’s office said Sterling Williams, a 33-year-old maintenance worker at the Orleans Justice Center, faced multiple charges regarding the prison break, which happened at around 1 a.m. Friday.
Ten felons crowded into a single cell, removed a toilet and cut a hole in the wall. Six remained at large Tuesday.
“Williams admitted to agents that one of the escapees advised him to turn the water off in the cell where the inmates escaped from,” the attorney general’s office said. “Instead of reporting the inmate, Williams turned the water off as directed, allowing the inmates to carry out their scheme to successfully escape.”
Four employees have been suspended without pay as the sheriff’s office investigates the incident. The state is auditing the jail.
Guards didn’t notice that the inmates had vanished until a morning head count nearly eight hours after the escape. Authorities arrived at the cell to find a taunting message, “To easy lol,” scribbled above the makeshift opening.
Police captured four of the escapees. The six still on the run had been jailed on charges including murder, rape, burglary and weapons offenses.
“I take full accountability for this failure,” Sheriff Susan Hutson, a Democrat, told New Orleans City Council members at a hearing Tuesday. “It is my responsibility to make sure it is addressed with urgency and transparency.”
A Soros sheriff
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, and police groups have linked the disaster to Sheriff Hutson’s affiliations with Mr. Soros, a prodigious political financier who supports candidates with lenient attitudes toward violent criminal suspects.
“The irony of the progressive promises that have been made to this city is clear. New Orleans handed the jail keys to those who vowed to keep criminals out of jail. Sadly, it worked!” Mr. Landry posted Monday on X. “The Landry Administration intends to get to the bottom of this failure and ensure it never happens again.”
Louisiana campaign finance records show that political action committees backed by Mr. Soros spent about $180,000 on the sheriff’s winning campaign in 2021.
The Washington Times has reached out to Sheriff Hutson for comment.
The sheriff told local media that faulty locks and understaffing contributed to the escape. However, her tenure in overseeing the 1,400-inmate facility has been pockmarked with criticisms of shoddy procedures that endanger inmates and guards alike.
Federal monitors last year submitted two reports to U.S. District Judge Lance Africk detailing a scourge of assaults among detainees and against staff, as well as drug overdoses and contraband. The sheriff’s office has been under federal supervision since 2013.
The monitors wrote that the office “used to house many of those inmates in a high-security unit, but chose to abandon this practice shortly after Sheriff Hutson took office [in May 2022].”
The federal report stressed the need for the sheriff’s office to move high-risk inmates from the ground floor to add extra layers of security. The inmates who escaped were housed on the ground floor.
Sean Kennedy, policy director of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, said Sheriff Hutson allowed the inmates to “do whatever they want.”
He attributed the jailbreak to her lack of experience in law enforcement or running a jail before taking office.
Sheriff Hutson had worked as a police accountability watchdog and a lawyer. She is up for reelection this fall.
During one of the federal monitoring reports in 2023, report authors took issue with the sheriff’s hiring of Australian academic Astrid Birgden as the jail’s warden.
The investigation noted that the sheriff’s office did not provide any documentation about Ms. Birgden’s qualifications to run the facility. Sheriff Hutson responded to the monitors’ concerns by calling the academic an “international expert.”
Ms. Birgden is no longer listed as the warden, but to Mr. Kennedy, the episode further proves that Sheriff Hutson is not fit for the job.
“She was basically a consultant to anti-police groups and advisory bodies,” he said. “She hasn’t run anything in her life, and then she’s asked to run one of the most dangerous jails in America, which was already dysfunctional.”
State Rep. Aimee Freeman, New Orleans Democrat, told WVUE-TV that Sheriff Hutson should resign.
The sheriff told the station she would not be stepping down.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, said Monday that she supported Sheriff Hutson’s decision to stay and that the sheriff was “devastated” by the jailbreak.
A Soros prosecutor
Mr. Landry noted Mr. Soros’ broader influence in the city’s criminal justice system, including his help electing Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams in 2020.
On Sunday, the governor said Mr. Williams was not prosecuting defendants fast enough, allowing inmates to overwhelm the staff at the Orleans Justice Center and risking their early release.
In 2021, Mr. Williams was stung when more than 100 defendants, including some charged with murder and carjacking, were let out of the city jail because they had not been charged in the period required by state law.
In February, Ms. Murrill said Mr. Williams had “improperly granted” sentence reductions for dozens of convicted killers.
Ms. Murrill said there were “at least 35 murder cases that involve first-degree or second-degree murder” in which the district attorney’s office petitioned to shave years off their prison terms. Victims and their relatives told WDSU-TV that prosecutors never informed them they were seeking the sentencing reductions.
The Times contacted Mr. Williams’ office for comment.
Louisiana State Police are leading the investigation into the six inmates still at large.
Among the inmates is Derrick Groves, who was convicted of double murder in a 2018 shooting during Mardi Gras. Groves was in jail awaiting his July sentencing.
Family members of Jamar Robinson, one of Groves’ victims, told WWL-TV that they went into hiding after hearing he was part of the jailbreak.
