BATON ROUGE — East Baton Rouge Parish prosecutors don’t want the uncle of 19th District Judge Eboni Johnson Rose to handle the sentencing for a former police officer she once convicted of a crime that doesn’t exist.
Judge Donald Johnson this month took over Rose’s criminal docket after she returned from a monthslong suspension imposed by the Louisiana Supreme Court. After a number of errors on the bench, justices last summer removed her from the bench temporarily while a state panel reviewed her competency.
Former Baton Rouge Police officer Donald Steele had been accused of second-degree kidnapping and malfeasance. After a bench trial, Rose acquitted him of the kidnapping charge and said he was guilty of misdemeanor malfeasance, a crime that doesn’t exist…