Baton Rouge judge Eboni Johnson Rose returned to the bench this week after a nearly yearlong hiatus imposed by the ¶¶Ňőh Supreme Court. On Thursday, her colleagues at the 19th Judicial District Courthouse decided to take her off criminal cases.
Ten of the 14 active judges in the Baton Rouge-based 19th Judicial District Court signed the order to shift Johnson Rose. She will begin presiding over a docket composed entirely of civil cases beginning Aug. 11, according to the order. She will be swapping judicial assignments with her uncle, Donald Johnson, currently the 19th JDC’s chief judge.
According to the order, Johnson Rose will handle her uncle's civil docket, and he will take the reins of her criminal docket.
Johnson Rose, who was elected in 2020, handled a full slate of criminal cases and a small civil docket before the ¶¶Ňőh Supreme Court justices took the unusual step of sidelining her last August, pending the outcome of a Judiciary Commission of Louisiana investigation into misconduct allegations.
Behind the suspension
The interim suspension stemmed from a series of miscues Johnson Rose made in criminal cases that led to five judicial misconduct complaints being lodged against her in little more than a month last year.
In March 2024, the judge convicted a former Baton Rouge police officer, accused of sexual misconduct against a Southern University student, of "misdemeanor grade" malfeasance in office. When attorneys pointed out there is no such offense in ¶¶Ňőh law, Johnson Rose acquitted the defendant, drawing intense objections from prosecutors.
Less than a month later, the state Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a Baton Rouge teacher accused of bashing a car on a flooded street with a baseball bat and threatening its occupants with a gun. Johnson Rose originally read out a verdict of "not guilty," but then returned everyone to the courtroom and issued a guilty verdict, saying the jury had misunderstood the instructions.
The Supreme Court, in overturning the verdict, ruled that Johnson Rose improperly met with jurors alone after the trial. One of the justices from the state Supreme Court went so far as to question Johnson Rose's "professional competency."
Then, in May 2024, Johnson Rose had to vacate the guilty plea of Texas lawyer who admitted to setting his ex-girlfriend's Baton Rouge home on fire. The judge realized she had suspended too much of his prison time.
Lastly, Johnson Rose, who is Black, accused East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore’s office of “systematically targeting Black men” and striving to “stick every n****r in jail” during an April 29, 2024, sidebar with prosecutors and public defenders in her courtroom.
The investigation ended with Supreme Court justices suspending Johnson Rose without pay for two months in an April 23 order. The state’s high court also placed her on two years of probation and fined her more than $11,000.
Johnson Rose was one of the 10 district judges who signed off on the reassignments Thursday, 19th JDC records indicate. District judges Tiffany Foxworth-Roberts, Collette Greggs, Beau Higginbotham and Richard “Chip” Moore did not sign the order.
The district court is one elected judge shy of its normal roster of 15. Former chief judge Wilson Fields won a seat on the First Circuit Court of Appeal unopposed in January. Ad hoc judges have handled his docket since he assumed his new position in the appellate court in March. Fields’ successor is set to be determined in the Oct. 11 election. That could happen sooner if a candidate for the seat is unopposed when the qualifying period ends July 11.
