A grand jury indicts Louisiana’s attorney general in a fight over changes to the local courts

Louisiana’s attorney general was indicted Thursday over accusations she threatened the jobs of New Orleans leaders who fought a Republican-led overhaul of local courts in the heavily Democratic city.

The 16-count indictment against Republican Liz Murrill, handed up by a New Orleans grand jury, charges Louisiana’s first female attorney general with intimidation and malfeasance. At the center of the case are deepening rifts between state leaders in Louisiana, which is heavily Republican, and Democrats who control the state’s most prominent city.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry promised a swift pardon, saying Murrill would not have her reputation tarnished by an “Orleans Kangaroo court.” Mayor Helena Moreno, a Democrat, was among those who had accused the state’s top law enforcement official in May of making threats against public officials.

The assistant district attorney handling the case, Laurie White, is a retired Orleans Parish criminal court judge appointed as a special prosecutor, and she said she expects the case to be “very simple” and “very open and shut.”

In response to Landry’s promise to pardon Murrill, she said, “Let’s get her convicted, and then he can pardon her.”

Landry, Murrill and GOP legislators have been sparring publicly for months with New Orleans officials over the local elected office won last year by a man who spent nearly three decades in prison for a wrongful conviction.

At Landry’s urging, legislators enacted a law to eliminate that job, Orleans Parish criminal court clerk, and give its duties to the civil court clerk. That kept the elected eping the criminal court clerk, Calvin Duncan, from taking office in May. Murrill and Landry have long refused to acknowledge his innocence, though he’s listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.

Murrill says she won’t back down

Bond for Murrill was set at $400,000 on Thursday, according to court records. Landry slammed the indictment in a social media post on Thursday, promising to pardon Murrill “as fast as the law allows.”

“The criminal justice system is a circus at its finest in Orleans and we will not have any of that!” he wrote on X.

The Republican Attorneys General Association said that in making statements to local officials — in writing — was simply “issuing a legal opinion and warning public officials about the law” as part of her official duties. It called the indictment “as outrageous as it is dangerous.”

Local officials had a swearing-in ceremony for Duncan on the steps of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court two weeks before he was to take office — while lawmakers still were considering the measure to eliminate his job, combining its duties with those of the civil court clerk.

Then, in May, the City Council sought to oust the civil court clerk and set a special election for November to fill the combined job — and give Duncan a chance to claim it. That prompted Murrill to warn local officials that they could lose their offices for violating state “usurper” laws, which forbid support for an unauthorized officeholder.

“Louisiana’s usurper laws carry serious consequences, and I will enforce them,” Murrill wrote in a May statement when her office publicized the letters.

Murrill called the case against her “retaliatory, meritless, and unconstitutional,” in a Thursday evening post on X.

“I will not back down. I will continue enforcing the law, fighting corruption, and doing the job the people of Louisiana elected me to do” she wrote, saying that she would file an emergency appeal with the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Local officials see statements as intimidation

Moreno, who was among the officials that Murrill said could be ousted, said indictment is “a matter for the courts” and did not directly address the allegations against Murrill.

“My focus, as always, remains on fulfilling the responsibilities the people of New Orleans elected me to carry out,” Moreno said.

Moreno and the five city council members who received the letters swiftly rebuked the attorney general’s guidance in videos posted on social media.

“It is surprising that the attorney general put all of this in a letter considering that there is a criminal law” that prohibits intimidation, Moreno said in an Instagram video at the time.

White told reporters after the indictment: “We’re very interested in elected officials in New Orleans not being intimidated or threatened by letter or any other way.”

Those who backed the law eliminating Duncan’s elected position argue that it promotes government efficiency and tries to improve a dysfunctional court system in Orleans Parish. They also said the offices of criminal and civil clerks of courts are combined in other parishes.

Man denied clerkship says state targeted him

Duncan has said he believes state officials were retaliating against him in eliminating the job he won with 68% of the vote.

Duncan was a jailhouse lawyer who later graduated from law school. He founded a nonprofit dedicated to expanding incarcerated people’s access to the court system and was the driving force behind a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended nonunanimous jury convictions.

He sought compensation from the state over his imprisonment but withdrew his petition after Murrill threatened to go after his law license because he referred to himself as exonerated. She also demanded during his campaign that he stop describing himself that way or face “further action.”

Duncan spent more than 28 years in prison over a fatal shooting during a robbery in 1981.

The night before a 2011 hearing to consider new evidence, prosecutors offered to reduce Duncan’s sentence to the time he’d already served in prison if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery. Duncan took the deal and was freed but didn’t give up on clearing his name.

In 2021, a judge agreed that Duncan had been unjustly convicted and vacated his sentence altogether. Landry and Murrill have pointed to the 2011 plea deal in objecting to Duncan calling himself exonerated.

——

Associated Press reporter Jack Brook contributed from New Orleans.

By Safiyah Riddle And John Hanna, The Associated Press