BATON ROUGE — Donald Steele, a former Baton Rouge Police officer convicted of malfeasance in office after a traffic stop in which a woman said Steele forcibly groped her, was sentenced to time in prison on Thursday.

Steele was sentenced to one year behind bars, but will only serve six months of that sentence due to time served.

According to court records, state prosecutors wanted to see Steele sentenced to five years in prison, arguing that Steele's conduct "goes far beyond the failure to live up to the public's expectation for behavior of a police officer."

"Police officers are given extensive power and authority and must be held accountable in the strictest sense when they abuse that authority to hurt the same individuals that they are sworn to protect," District Attorney Hillar Moore wrote. "At the very least, this conviction must remain on Donald Steele's record so that he is not given the opportunity to work for any law enforcement agency again." 

Steele's conviction stemmed from a 2021 traffic stop of a 19-year-old Southern University student on suspicion of DWI. 

Following Steele's arrest, he was fired.

The case was rife with controversy before Thursday's sentencing. Judge Donald Johnson's decision on Thursday came after errors made in the case by his niece, Judge Eboni Johnson Rose.

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; this happened in April 2024.