Under intense scrutiny over her handling of Orange County’s jails, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens railed Wednesday against a scathing report on jail conditions released this week by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, saying the report was rife with inaccuracies and “purposely distorted” facts.

She also insisted that her announcement Tuesday that she will not seek reelection in 2018 — which came within hours of the ACLU report’s release and advocates’ calls for her to resign — had nothing to do with the report or those demands.

“I’m not going to call it an investigation,” Hutchens said about the ACLU’s 104-page report, which was the result of what the group described as a two-year investigation, “because it doesn’t rise to that level in my mind.”

Hutchens was appointed in 2008 after former Sheriff Michael S. Carona was indicted on federal public corruption charges. She was widely seen as a reformer of a troubled agency, and her first years were marked by widespread popularity.

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