Eboni Johnson Rose is the new Trudy White

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On Tuesday, the Louisiana Supreme Court added a new — and likely final — twist to the winding case of a former Baton Rouge gym teacher who went viral after she was caught on video threatening people who drove a car through her flooded street.

Bridgette Digerolamo had been indicted, found guilty, acquitted, convicted then ordered to be tried again after judge declared a mistrial. But justices overturned her conviction, ruling that the presiding trial judge bungled the jury’s verdict at the end of a three-day trial in February 2023.

Digerolamo, 42, was initially found not guilty of felony aggravated assault. But 13 minutes later, District Judge Eboni Johnson Rose called attorneys back into the courtroom and rendered a guilty verdict after she consulted with jurors and realized they had meant to convict Digerolamo of lesser charges, not acquit her entirely. The judge then issued a new verdict finding Digerolamo guilty of misdemeanor aggravated assault.

Supreme Court justices on Tuesday unanimously ruled that Johnson Rose erred by allowing jurors to change their verdict after the acquittal was read into the record, "particularly after the court violated the sanctity of any further deliberations by meeting privately with the jury."

Her defense attorneys rejoiced in the judgment.

“We're pleased with the Louisiana Supreme Court's unanimous decision, which confirms what the jury found factually — that Ms. Digerolamo is not guilty,” said Jacob Longman, one of the ex-teacher’s attorneys.

Johnson Rose recused herself from presiding over the case last year after Digerolamo's defense attorneys challenged the validity of the guilty verdict. The matter was reassigned to District Judge Louise Hines Myers, who heard the defense objections and declared a mistrial in December. The First Circuit Court of Appeal upheld that ruling in a Feb. 1 order.

The retrial was winding its way through the courts with a July 11 hearing scheduled before Hines Myers.

But in Tuesday's order, the Supreme Court overturned the mistrial and reinstated the jury's original not guilty verdict in Digerolamo's case.

“We believe the unanimous Supreme Court decision is the right decision,” Digerolamo’s trial lawyer Franz Borghardt said in a statement. “We are very happy for Bridgette, who we believe is innocent of these charges.”

Justice Scott Crichton penned a one-page concurrent opinion chiding Johnson Rose for mishandling the trial’s outcome. He cited canons in the state’s judicial code of conduct that call for “professional competence” and impartiality from judges when they record criminal verdicts.

“Here, the trial judge’s blatant violation of these laws shocks the conscience,” Crichton fumed.

Chief Justice John Weimer offered a concurrent opinion with a relatively tempered tone.

“Unfortunately, a mistake was made by a relatively new judge,” he wrote. “Our role in the case immediately before the court is to review and, where appropriate, correct a mistake so that this judge and others can learn, make corrections, and not repeat the mistake. To castigate this judge in this case is simply not the proper forum because of the need to evaluate and consider far too many facts, which are simply not in evidence in this matter. Passing judgment on this judge at this time in this forum on this record could, itself, implicate the Louisiana Code of Judicial Conduct and result in recusal.”

Judge Johnson Rose assumed office at the beginning of 2021 and is three years into her first term, which ends Dec. 31, 2026. She declined to comment Tuesday.

was a gym teacher at Broadmoor Elementary School when the July 6, 2020, incident happened in southeast Baton Rouge’s Shenandoah subdivision. An arrest warrant alleged she came out of her residence in the 6200 block of Chattanooga Drive infuriated and wielding an aluminum baseball bat. She began yelling at a car that drove down her street — which had standing water from the morning rain — and cursed at the three occupants, telling them to turn around because they were causing water to flood her house.

Deputies said Digerolamo then hit the side and tailgate of the car with the bat before going back into her house to retrieve a gun. Moments later, she came back outside, pointed the gun at the passengers and said, “You better move,” according to deputies.

One of the occupants filmed portions of the encounter with a cellphone, and the video was widely shared on social media.

Jurors deliberated more than an hour at her trial last year, and returned with a verdict that found Digerolamo not guilty of felony aggravated assault with a firearm — the three charges she was tried on. A clerk read the verdict aloud in the courtroom, but when defense attorneys asked Johnson Rose to poll the jurors, it showed their decision wasn’t unanimous as required by state law.

The judge ordered them to continue deliberating, but jurors appeared confused on how to fill out the verdict forms. They returned a second verdict minutes later, but Johnson Rose noticed discrepancies in the jury sheets and told them to fix their errors.

About 10 minutes later, the jury returned with the full acquittal that cleared Digerolamo of all charges. Johnson Rose excused the jury and cleared the courtroom. She met with jurors alone afterward to talk about the confusion on the jury forms, and that’s when the judge said she realized they didn’t mean to acquit Digerolamo entirely, they intended to find her guilty of misdemeanor counts of the three charges of aggravated assault.

Johnson Rose called the defendant and attorneys back into the courtroom and read aloud the verdict convicting her of those lesser charges, court records show.

State prosecutors showed no intentions of challenging Tuesday’s ruling.

“We believe the evidence presented proved the charges of aggravated assault in all three counts,” East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore said in a statement. “However, we respect the judicial process and recognize that the jury's verdicts of not guilty were valid verdicts. We plan to fully honor the constitutional protections against double jeopardy. We appreciate the guidance offered by Justice Weimer in his concurring opinion and hope that the courts will find it helpful in all matters going forward.”

Another of Johnson Rose’s recent rulings caused controversy when she cleared former Baton Rouge police officer Donald Steele Jr. of malfeasance in office three weeks after mistakenly finding him guilty of a nonexistent “misdemeanor grade” of the felony charge.

During an April 18 hearing, the judge acknowledged that she made an error in originally finding him guilty of a lesser charge at the end of a bench trial over which she presided. She then changed the verdict and declared Steele not guilty. State prosecutors have lodged notices of their intent to challenge Johnson Rose’s reversal before the First Circuit Court of Appeal.

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