State audit opened after lax recordkeeping at Hinds County DA’s office
Mississippi’s state auditor has opened a review of the Hinds County district attorney’s office after newly appointed District Attorney Brad McCullouch said he found scant financial records, according to McCullouch and the auditor’s office.
McCullouch, appointed in July, told Mississippi Today he searched for invoices, accounting software and bank account details and instead found a black three-ring binder of checks dating to Jan. 2026. He said that discovery prompted him to ask the auditor’s office to review finances from the tenure of former District Attorney Jody Owens, who pleaded guilty in June to a federal corruption charge and left office soon after.
Jacob Walters, a spokesperson for the state auditor, said the review will be the first audit on record for the Hinds DA’s office since at least 2013. Walters said state law requires audits for district attorneys’ offices but does not set a schedule or penalties when audits or required filings are not completed. “There’s no penalty if it’s not getting done, so it’s basically not a law,” he said.
The Hinds DA’s office has not filed an annual report on bank accounts holding public money with the state treasurer’s office since 2017, a treasury spokesperson told Mississippi Today. Amanda Beck, an accounting professor who studies government auditing, said an audit could clarify how self-generated funds such as drug seizure proceeds and program fees were spent. “It’s public property so the public deserves to know how that money has been spent,” she said.
Gaps in oversight are common across Mississippi, officials and prosecutors said. Hal Kittrell, a longtime district attorney in south Mississippi, said his office voluntarily pays for an independent audit each year. “There’s 23 DAs and 23 ways of doing things,” he said. David Ewing, whose accounting firm signed a 2013 contract to audit the Hinds office, said he could not find a final copy of that report and speculated it may never have been completed. McCullouch said he hopes the independent audit will be finished before he leaves office after the Nov. 3 special election.
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