Louisiana court halts criminal indictment against state attorney general

Republican Liz Murrill was indicted for the alleged intimidation of New Orleans elected officials Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email Louisiana’s highest court has granted a stay of the proceedings in a criminal indictment targeting the state’s attorney general, in the latest twist of a high-stakes political battle between Republican state leaders and Democrats who govern its most famous city, New Orleans. Liz Murrill, a Republican who is Louisiana’s first female attorney general, was slapped with a 16-count indictment on Thursday by a New Orleans grand jury charging her with intimidation and malfeasance. The charges effectively accused her of trying to intimidate New Orleans officials who fought a law passed by Republican legislators to overhaul the city’s courts. Murrill quickly moved for a stay on Thursday. And the Louisiana supreme court granted it early on Friday, finding she made “a compelling argument concerning the disturbing defects in the grand jury proceedings and in the trial court’s handling of those proceedings”. The attorney general had also called the charges against her “retaliatory, meritless and unconstitutional”, writing on X that she would continu