BATON ROUGE - A former Baton Rouge police officer’s Tuesday conviction is in limbo after a Wednesday meeting behind closed doors in the office of the judge who heard his case in a bench trial this week.

Donald Steele, who was fired from the police department after his 2022 indictment, was found guilty of malfeasance in office Tuesday after the trial before Judge Eboni Johnson Rose. Johnson Rose found him not guilty of second-degree kidnapping.

Johnson Rose did not return a phone call seeking clarification on the verdict Wednesday and her staff attorney did not respond to either phone or email messages.

District Attorney Hillar Moore released a statement saying attorneys requested the meeting with the judge "to clarify her verdict of guilty of malfeasance in office."

Johnson Rose asked that each side file additional legal analysis and argument by April 5 ahead of a hearing set for April 18.

Moore declined to comment further until after a final verdict.

Franz Borghardt, who represented Steele, said in a phone interview that the issue is a technical question regarding whether Steele can be convicted only of the crimes for which the elements are specifically laid out in the charging document.

A grand jury indicted Steele on second-degree kidnapping and malfeasance in office. He had been initially arrested on those two charges and a misdemeanor count of sexual battery, accused of touching the breasts of the woman he’d pulled over on what he said was an indication of drunken driving.

Before the start of the trial Monday, prosecutor Dana Cummings amended the charging document. Her handwritten addition said that Steele “had the lawful duty as a Baton Rouge City Police Officer to investigate and prevent suspected illegal activity including executing traffic stops and taking appropriate action.”

“The defendant acted in a unlawful manner while executing this lawful duty by touching the breasts of the subject of the stop without her consent,” she wrote, identifying that as a violation of the sexual battery law.

In a written statement, Borghardt said that the meeting "validated" that Steele was acquitted of "any type of sexual malfeasance."

Steele stopped the woman, Tramiria Pitcher, in June 2021 using his police lights in a way that did not activate his dash camera. She said he coerced her to follow him to an abandoned warehouse where he made sexually explicit remarks, grabbed her breast and forcibly kissed her.

Borghardt argued during the trial that the encounter between Steele and Pitcher was consensual. He accused Pitcher of "lying and gameplaying."

Cummings called Steele a "hunter."

"He was preying on her. All of the evidence shows his intent to prey on her," she said.

Pitcher also has filed a civil lawsuit against Steele.