Louisiana's top court halts the criminal case against the state attorney general

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The Louisiana Supreme Court on Friday halted the criminal case against state Attorney General Liz Murrill a day after she was indicted on accusations that she threatened the jobs of officials in New Orleans.

The state's top court said the local court and special prosecutor in the case did not follow proper procedures in the process surrounding the indictment — including multiple local media reports that the court handcuffed and locked out a journalist attempting to report on the grand jury action.

Friday's stay puts the case on hold, at least for now. Murrill, a Republican, said she intends to ask a court to dismiss the case, which shows a deep rift between Republican state officials and the Democrats who control the state's most populous city.

“I hope this political witch hunt is not a harbinger of things to come,” she said in a statement Friday, “but I fear that it is.”

The 16-count indictment handed up Thursday by a New Orleans grand jury accused Murrill, the state's first female attorney general, with intimidation and malfeasance.

The Supreme Court says there were deep flaws with the charges.

“This indictment appears to turn the law on its head and flows from what appear to be extraordinary procedural defects and improprieties,” the court said in a filing signed by Justice Jay McCallum, a Republican.

The court says there are likely conflicts of interest involving Laurie White, the special prosecutor and former state judge who brought the charges, including that she's being defended by the attorney general's office against a sexual harassment lawsuit.

McCallum's explanation also notes that the law used in the intimidation charge against Murrill requires that threats be “unlawful or include a threat of bodily harm or death.”

The court also found the attorney general is likely to succeed in having the case dismissed and that she would suffer irreparable harm if it can move forward.

The order was issued by all four of the Republican justices and one Democrat. The court's other Democrat and an independent dissented. Justice John Guidry, a Democrat, was critical of the quick decision by his colleagues. "Due process and equal protection under the law does not allow anyone to cut the line and have their matters considered more preferentially than others,” he wrote.

The case is fallout from a major political battle in Louisiana.

The state this year abolished the job of the New Orleans criminal court clerk — merging it with another court clerk position. That action came months after Calvin Duncan, who spent decades in prison before his murder conviction was vacated, was elected to the criminal clerk office.

Murrill and other GOP officials have refused to acknowledge Duncan's innocence, though he's listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.

The court noted that Duncan was previously represented by White — which it called "a likely conflict of interest."

A letter from Murrill to New Orleans' city council members and Mayor Helena Moreno came after the city council set a special election that would have given Duncan a shot at the combined clerk role. Murrill told officials they could lose their offices for violating state laws that forbid support for an unauthorized officeholder.

Murrill has said she was doing her job.

After the indictment was issued Thursday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, said he would pardon Murrill. The governor also said on social media that he was ordering state police to investigate “the alleged improprieties of this grand jury and those who ran it.”

On Friday, the governor thanked the Supreme Court and called the indictment “a political witch hunt” against Murrill.