New Orleans Headlines: Federal Courthouse Meltdown & Jailbreak Reunion

Sometimes the news in New Orleans feels stranger than fiction. In this episode, David and Brad discuss two stories that captured headlines across Louisiana and beyond. First, they examine the bizarre incident at the Hale Boggs Federal Building, where a man barricaded himself inside and began throwing furniture and debris onto Poydras Street below. 

Then, they revisit the Orleans Justice Center jailbreak saga, including the criminal indictment of former Sheriff Susan Hutson and the surprising return of several escaped inmates to the very jail they escaped from. Along the way, the conversation explores public safety, mental health, government accountability, and why some stories seem uniquely New Orleans.

Here’s what we discuss in this episode:

🏛️ Federal Incident: Chaos at the Hale Boggs Building

🧠 Mental Health: Questions raised by the public response

🔑 Jailbreak Fallout: The continuing Orleans Parish saga

🚔 Returning Escapees: Inmates transferred back to Orleans

⚖️ Sheriff Indictment: Accountability and criminal allegations

📰 What's Next: Future developments to watch

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Scott Vignair, injured turnings, we fight for the win.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Overruled Podcast brought to you by the Scott Wignair Law Firm. This is your co-host, David Vignair, along with my co-host and law partner, Brad Scott. Good whatever part of the day it is, Brad. How are you doing today? Doing well. How about yourself, David? I'm doing great. We have a couple of interesting New Orleans topics to talk about today. A little bit of New Orleans mayhem. So take us away, Brad. First, uh, I don't know how many of our listeners have saw this news story a couple weeks ago, but maybe about a week, a week and a half ago, we had a gentleman throwing some things out of the federal court building.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

Yeah, Mardi Gros came early to Poitra Street a couple Fridays ago. So this was what, May 29th, I think, or right after 5 30 in the afternoon. Some guy, some kind of way, got into the Halebod's federal building down the street from the office right there, barricaded himself in, busted out some windows, and decided to start tossing furniture to the passer-buyers uh on the street below, it seems.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Which, by the way, I just have to jump in and say I was telling Miles the other day when we talked about this topic, Brad, that I got some questions about this from a few friends and family members, and I just saw it in passing on TV. It was a Friday evening when this all broke at like 5.53 in the evening or something, and it was live on a few of the local news stations. But that's federal building on Poydras is which houses all the federally appointed judges who are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate, and then magistrate judges who are federally appointed by the federal bench, all their staff, all their courtrooms. I mean, even I was telling Miles an anecdotal story, even now, you know, three three years into running different brand advertisements, you know, people recognize you, they know who you are just because we're on TV and do different things like that. That when I go to federal court for hearings or settlement conferences with the federal judges or stuff like that, like, hey, Mr. Vignair is like, sorry, we need you to take your belt off, like empty your pockets. Like nobody gets special treatment. It's like you're going into any type of federal building, it's a high security facility.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yes. So yeah, it's amazing he got in. You know, I I don't know the backstory and that or how he sneaks in. I think the building closes either at five or six. So this is like close to you know, end of the day type thing on a Friday. So the fact that he actually got past security is it's I don't know. I don't know if there was something there. If he maybe he came in pretending to be a lawyer and they believed him.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Well, our team really combed through all that and Miles dug through three or four different news reports on it, and nobody has officially said how he got in there. But the only thing Miles that we could find is that allegedly he is one of the US marshals said that he was either an employee or connected to an employee, and so that would actually make sense to me is like how did this person that I think he had some type of mental episode um and it was reported to them, I think, after I I may be wrong, Brad, but I thought it got reported after 5 p.m., which is on a Friday, you know, that place is a ghost town.

SPEAKER_03 2:58

You would think so. But I mean ended up I mean, he was he was barricaded in there for a good bit of time. I think the US Marshals ended up getting in there and the way this thing ended, I ended up I think they cased him um and kind of drug him out of there at the end of the day. Um the more amazing thing is if you look at some of the social media posts that were being made around that time is how unfazed typical New Orleans New Orleanians are with people throwing things onto the street from above. Because I mean just like the crowd is just sitting there watching it. It's a normal Friday to us. That's how sensitized we've gotten into this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

It's a funny, it's a funny sociological or psychological, whatever you call it, experiment. Because now I'm thinking about it why why you say this, but I never thought about it from that lens. But I'm watching it on the TV and I'm having a bourbon at home, and it's a Friday evening, and I see it, and I'm talking to one of my neighbors, and I'm like, uh, all right. Like just a usual. Another day in New Orleans.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

And the timing's kind of interesting too, because it all happened around 5 30, 6 o'clock, you know, in the CBD, and you have kind of that transition from, you know, all the working stiffs down there into more of the tourists and people who are walking around on a Friday afternoon and going places. So I can only imagine the stories that people went home with after that weekend, their visit to New Orleans and almost getting hit by a file cabinet falling out of the eighth story of a building.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

Well, he was throwing all kinds of stuff out there. I mean, he threw a bunch of glass. Um, I think there was reports that there was an American flag full of blood. There was an eagle like that you would find on the top of the flagpole that was tossed out the window. And then he was getting into like file cabinets and throwing papers that he looked. When I saw the clip, I'm like, is he naked? Like, somebody needs to get some clothes on this dude. And I think they had to tase him to um I think he had a mental health episode. They had to tase him to subdue him, and I was nervous he might jump. Um, of course, he's like on the eighth floor, so you don't want him to jump. That would be horrible. And uh I don't think he would have survived the fall if he had. So it was like clearly a chaotic thing. And what some people may not realize, which I know you know, Brad, a lot of the they're in two different buildings, so partially in 650 Poydras, but a lot of the U.S. attorney's office is also in that building. So it's kind of one of those things where I'm like, man, like that kind of stuff usually does not happen in a federal building because you have papers and things that are very confidential and sensitive in nature between the federal judiciary and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District down there. And so that kind of just at least made it the story even a little bit wilder. Not that it wasn't wild to begin with, but there's like, you know, a secretive, sensitive, and like very confidential, tight, tight security facility that that's all happening at.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

Yeah. It was kind of wild to watch it unfold, but the the first kind of thoughts I had was you know, this is another example of a mental health crisis on Main Street, basically. Yeah. And we're starting to see more and more of this in the news lately. And it's kind of following the deinstitu in deinstitutionalization of you know America and how we treat psychiatric people. Um you know, but we had a lot more infrastructure before that we don't have now due to funding and other reasons. But these people are more out there, and we're seeing a lot of this stuff develop on the streets. Um there was one, wasn't that long ago, but it may have been ten years ago, that guy had gotten into the airport one time in New Orleans with a machete and the waspray, you know, and started, you know, shooting at the TSA people with the waspray. So you're seeing a lot of this stuff kind of now manifest itself uh manifest itself out in the public. So you know it calls on the question do we need to re-evaluate how we deal with mental health issues in America? And do we need to do we need to have a place for these people to be so they're not wandering around? And I'm not saying this isn't a situation that can be prevented by that, but it's an example of things that are a lot more common in the news, it seems. And you know, does is there an audience effect to this thing too? Because it seems like it escalated once people started gathering around on the street and watching this guy. Because we're in a society now where everybody wants to whip out their f um their mobile phones and turn on the cameras and make it a viral moment. So like these things attract more attention and does that amplify things once they do occur.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Yeah, it i a couple of really great points there. The the second part, it maybe that it's like people want in this case, probably not. It seems like maybe he had a mental episode. It does always, though, just make me dispirited on the state of society at large that when something terrible is happening, our reaction is to like pull out our phone and video it instead of like either avoid the terrible thing, or if you're in a situation of assist and help, go help the terrible thing. I mean, how many videos have I seen of like an avalanche coming down a snow mountain in the last year and people are like worried about video? And I'm like, get to safety. Um, or invite in the inverse here, like maybe you can go help this guy. Like, why are we videoing this? So fair point. And and on the on the first part, too, especially, which we're obviously speculating, we don't know for sure yet that he is an employee, but if he is an employee, you know, he clearly an employee either of the federal court system or the U.S. attorney's office or any branch of the federal government that has office.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

We don't know. We don't know.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

But if if he's an employer of it, like he's clearly going through a federal a federal security check and a background check. And so it's somebody who could have cleared uh or vetted the federal government and at at the judiciary and or at the U.S. Attorney's Office, you would presume very, you know, robust security and background check, and was clearly just a mental health episode, and not somebody who they would have thought would have been um the kind of person who may have an episode and throw stuff out of an eighth-floor window, but has a mental health crisis, and so it's a very good point that I hadn't really thought of when I was watching the story, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_03 8:32

But yeah, I mean the people that were down there, I I mean I wasn't in the city that day. Uh, I haven't heard anybody had first hand experience of it, but you know, it's like a Poyter Street Parade. You know, everybody's just kind of accumulating and watching this stuff fly out the the the building. Maybe they were looking for Muse's shoes, I don't know, uh waiting for something to fall that was good. I don't know what the else came out of there, but he was throwing.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Well, I'm glad that he was tased and he's safe, and hopefully he gets some mental health treatment. And I'm not sure exactly where that case is gonna go. Uh if he's gonna be charged with anything, I'm sure he will be. I don't know how that's gonna be managed, um, depending upon if it was truly a mental health break, that there may be a pleadio or something of that kind to try to get get him into a mental health facility, but revisiting another criminal case that we've chatted about before. Um crazy. You know, we had uh addressed earlier, Brad, probably six months ago, the jailbreak in New Orleans where ten inmates escaped the Orleans Justice Center last May in a live jailbreak. I'm sorry, I counted wrong. It's been a whole year since that jailbreak. And we've had a lot had some stuff happening since we first covered that jailbreak, and those 10 inmates um running across the highway in New Orleans created national news. Um, primarily Sheriff Sheriff uh Sheriff Susan Hudson, who is a sheriff and in charge of that facility, has been charged and indicted. She was indicted back on April 29th in a 30-count indictment alleging malfeasance, falsifying public records, and obstruction of justice by Attorney General Liz Morell. Morell claims that when she was investigating the prison break on behalf of the state and the lack of security and protections in the facility, she discovered all of these alleged pieces of evidence which allegedly show malfeasance, obstruction of justice, and falsifying public records. And Sheriff Hudson was booked at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Facility Center in the end of April, beginning of May, and indicted by a special grand jury in Orleans Parish on 30 different counts. A bond was set for her at $300,000 and $200,000 for her assistant, I believe, is a Mr. Brown, who was also uh Bianca Brown, maybe a female, I apologize there, a top eight of hers, who was also indicted with about 20 counts, malfeasance in office, conspiracy conspiracy to commit malfeasance in office, filing public records, etc. A few other counts there. And so Hudson had a $300,000 bond, Bianca Brown had a $200,000 bond, um, and each was ordered to surrender their passport and barred from leaving the state while the charges were pending. So we have Sheriff Hudson and Bianca Brown both indicted on collectively 50 counts by Attorney General Morel stemming from that prison break, and that has also led to many of the criminal court judges recusing themselves. This has been like a month-long parade now of recusals at Criminal District Court of hearing Sheriff Hudson's uh Hudson's case because many of them, if not all of them, except for the newly elected judge John Fuller, all of them were involved in closed door meetings and were sort of in a fight with Sheriff Hudson that she was not cooperating with delivering inmates to the court's hearing dates and times that the criminal judges could have the prisoners in the court during their docket calls. They also were fighting with her over evidence and other things. So there's at least many of them have recused. The latest was Judge Pittman, who recused based on the appearance of impropriety of them potentially presiding over it because they all had some level of conflict with Sheriff Hudson when she was in office. So it's looking like her case, which has been delayed because of all of these recusals, is probably gonna steer towards a point where the Supreme Court's just gonna have to appoint somebody to hear it. Yeah. Um, because even though John Fuller was not on the bench when she was sheriff, his seat, I think, was clipped by the state and the legislature's last reduction of criminal district court judges. And so he's really only gonna be a judge, I think, for six months. And so a lot going on down there. A lot going on in Sheriff Hudson's case. I think even if she got to John Fuller, she very unlikely her case is gonna be resolved in the six months that his seat would still be alive until the legislature had cut it out. So it looks like the Supreme Court's gonna have to appoint a judge to hear her case. And while that's all going on with her related to the prison break and the indictments, is she lost her re-election attempt, obviously, because she could not secure a prison, which is a primary primary job duty of the sheriff.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

Um even when we first covered that story, I mean, just the way it played out and the amount of time it took anybody to figure out what was going on, it it was ridiculous. I mean, are we surprised something didn't come out of this?

SPEAKER_02 13:30

I'm not surprised. I uh the criminal nature of the allegations kind of shocked me. You know, I to be honest with you. I at the time was more thinking like this is somebody who just had no idea what she was doing. And it was clear negligence and not having an understanding in law enforcement of how to secure a facility. I do think really highly of the person who ran for sheriff and beat her. I think Michelle Woodfork's gonna do a great job. She's a lifelong cop with the NOPD. And if you recall before the the current uh New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Ann Kirkpatrick was hired by the city, Woodford was in a uh temporary role as chief of the NOPD, which by all accounts she did a pretty good job over that short period interim period. Um and she's a lifelong New Orleanian. So I don't I think she's got competence, uh Michelle Woodford does, in law enforcement, and she's gonna do a lot of better job. And even um even uh Attorney General Morel has come out and said she has a lot of confidence in Woodford to do the job and really correct things going on at the facility. But the criminal nature of the allegations, I'm gonna be honest, have kind of surprised me.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

They've escalated from malfeasance to criminal work criminal at this point. So yeah, I mean, but the bar is pretty low going in for the new person as far as you just gotta show up and do your job to do a little bit better than what we had before.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

And while this is all going on, and we have Sheriff Hudson indicted, her aide Bianca Brown indicted and being prosecuted by the state. The state recently just hit the news notifies or the Orleans Justice Center, who is now managed and run under the direction and leadership of Michelle Woodford, uh Sheriff Woodford, that four of the ten inmates who escaped, we have four of the ten jailbreakes, Corey Boyd, DeCannon Dennis, Kendall Miles, and Gary Price, not the long holdout. Who was the long holdout? Well, that's the last guy.

unknown 15:22

Graves.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

The guy who we were like it was like a betting war. When is he gonna be caught? He was like hiding somewhere under a rock. Like, this dude knows how to hide. These other goofballs were like posting on social media and like track. This guy.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

Was it one of them walking through the French quarter thing?

SPEAKER_02 15:38

It was like having a daiquiri or something, just having a nice afternoon, a Sunday show in the quarter. Derek Groves. Derek Groves. Derek Groves was the last holdout. It was like they they they got like all six or seven pretty quick, and then there was one or two that they got a bit farther away. One of them maybe got to Geor. I think maybe Derek Groves got to Georgia, but they got I thought I thought Derek Groves was forward Mexico. I was like, that guy is like Shawshank Redemption style, sitting on a beach somewhere down in Argentina, uh singing in a boat. Like you're never hearing from him again. But no.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

He was the hide-and-seek champion of 2025, though.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

So four of them, not Derrick Groves, four of them. They're coming back. They're back in the New Orleans, Orleans Justice Center, where they escaped last May. Uh it's like uh it's like a reunion. They are back. Um and their their transfer was spurred by a bed capacity shortage and issues related to necessary travel to and from Orleans for their court dates. And so the state essentially um let uh sent them back, and Sheriff Woodford ordered leadership to develop a housing placement and security plan ahead of their arrival. Um, and so it looks like we're have a sheriff who now is going to be a lot more ahead of the game of like planning for securing the site and ensuring they don't figure out a way to get out like they did last time running across the interstate. These guys will just run the same plan over again. I mean, some of the stuff I read about the online, I was like, you couldn't help but follow the story. Like, how did 10 inmates get out of a major city jail like this? It's like some of the store thing you don't know what to believe, what is fully true, what's not, but like some of the things they were saying about the the old locks, and everybody had many copies of the keys and and nobody's inspecting these pipes. I'm like, this is like Shawshank Redemption, like it yeah, it kind of hard to believe. But they're back. Um, and Sheriff Hudson's unfortunately facing a criminal indictment.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

And now that the story is resurfaced, I'd like to go back. I'm gonna have to do the research and see. Remember, we talked about the expense that it costs to run a national manhunt. Was it got like a million dollars a day or something? This went on for how long for ten of them. I would be curious to go back and see what the actual tally was, what that cost the state and the federal government to try to track these guys down. A lot. A lot of money. A lot.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

And I I think yeah, a lot of the success of the search clearly was borne by the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office, and different federal agencies who utilize their extensive resources in tracking them, monitoring them. I'm sure there were satellites zeroed in on all their family members' houses. There were undercover agents monitoring key points of contact, whether it be boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, whoever it is, like watching each piece of the domino to piece together where they would surface next. So I'm sure it was a lot. Oh, New Orleans News. It's always good. Anyways, um just some interesting tidbits and fun to discuss with you, Brad. So uh it will be interesting to see where Sheriff Hudson's indictment goes and and curious to see whether or not those uh allegations from Attorney General Morel are supported or not.

SPEAKER_03 18:48

And stay tuned. We got news developing in the North Shore with our sheriff, too, Sheriff Randy Smith.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Yeah, so we got we got a lot of we got a lot of hot topics to cover this fall. We got Latoria Cantrell's trial coming up. We got Sheriff's uh Randy Smith decides to have a couple of Martini muscles at a steakhouse in Mandeville. Is it was he in Mandeville?

SPEAKER_03 19:07

Yeah, oh yeah. It's Madisonville, basically. It's a steakhouse quite often, actually.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Attacks a blogger, uh the sheriff. Just sometimes you can't make this stuff up.

SPEAKER_03 19:19

I mean, we have a unique set of politicians to get into office.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Well, we'll be following all those stories as well as Sheriff Hudson's indictment. And so it's fun to talk to you about all that today, Brad. And thanks to all of our listeners for following along with us and listening along as well. We can't wait to see you next time. This has been another fun and great discussion on the Overrule podcast brought to you by the Scott Vignaire Law Firm. On behalf of Brad and I, thanks for listening and following along. We will see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Scott Vicknair, danger, we fight for the win.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

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