BATON ROUGE — Prosecutors say they made enough of a case against a former Baton Rouge police officer that his malfeasance conviction should be upheld, but the man's lawyer says that since he wasn't specifically found guilty of grabbing a woman's breasts after a traffic stop, the judge cannot say he performed his duties in an unlawful manner.

District Judge Eboni Johnson Rose convicted Donald Steele last month on a malfeasance charge but acquitted him of second-degree kidnapping. After the verdict, Steele's lawyer questioned whether the former officer could be convicted if the judge didn't convict him of any other crime listed against him.

A valid question, Rose agreed, and she asked each side to submit arguments on how she should proceed. She has scheduled a hearing for April 18.

According to the state, Steele stopped the woman near LSU on June 23, 2021, using his police lights in a way that did not activate his dashboard camera. The woman said he coerced her to follow him to an abandoned warehouse off Chippewa Street, where he made sexually explicit remarks, grabbed her breasts and forcibly kissed her.

A pair of LSU police officers said that when they happened upon the scene near the campus, Steele said the woman was his sister and that he was giving her directions. A BRPD sergeant also testified that Steele was working far outside his district and, despite his drunken-driving suspicions, didn't call in the traffic stop, never ran the woman's license or car registration and never turned on his body camera.

The indictment listed malfeasance and kidnapping, but as Steele's trial started, prosecutors amended their complaint and added a misdemeanor count of sexual battery.

Defense lawyer Franz Borghardt said Steele and the woman's exchange was consensual. At the end of the trial, Rose acquitted Steele of kidnapping but found that he had committed malfeasance — prompting the questions of whether she had done so correctly.

In a post-trial meeting with lawyers, Rose said she did not believe the state had proven that a sexual battery occurred, according to the Borghardt's filing. Because the sexual battery count was central to the malfeasance case, Borghardt said, there is no way the malfeasance count should stand. He said the state's case had fallen apart like a "house of cards."

"Without this finding, the state's charge of malfeasance in office crumbles, and Mr. Steele must be acquitted," Borghardt wrote.

The state says that, without a jury, Rose sat as the sole trier of facts and that she is not required to give reasons to support her verdicts. Prosecutors also say that any rational person would consider Steele's actions that night malfeasance. 

"... while defendant was on duty in his marked police unit, he sought out (the woman) as she exited her apartment, detained her under false pretenses, and engaged with her in a sexually explicit manner, without her consent," the state wrote to Rose. "Such intentional derelictions of duty by police officers, who wear the badge as a symbol of public faith, cannot go without punishment."