BATON ROUGE - In a little more than a week, former Baton Rouge police officer Donald Steele will be sentenced on a malfeasance in office conviction following a complicated, years-long legal process.

From the beginning, the case has been mired in controversy and judicial missteps that have shrouded what Steele was accused of in the first place.

Back in 2021, a 19-year-old Southern student was pulled over by Steele on suspicion of DWI.

What resulted was Steele's arrest, firing, and, according to former police chief Greg Phares, irreversible damage to public perception.

"It takes forever to build public trust and a moment to lose it," Phares said.

According to Steele's arrest affidavit, he told the victim he wasn't going to give her a ticket because "She was cute."

He started asking her personal questions and then said she needed to follow him to the airport, and that "he would hold her drinking and driving over her and put her in handcuffs if she didn't follow him,” an affidavit said.

After the encounter in which the victim claims he grabbed her breast, he started sending her inappropriate texts.

"We can look at the messages that were sent by Officer Steele to my client that were very graphically, sensual in nature that went unresponded to by my client," attorney Ron Haley told WBRZ back in 2022. 

Steele was charged with misdemeanor sexual battery, kidnapping and malfeasance in office.

"He used his influence as a police officer,” Haley said. “’If you don't follow me, 'xyz' is going to happen, and the 'xyz' is that she was going to get arrested."

Phares says officers asking for personal favors like this is never okay.

"That's about as improper as it gets. That's so far over the line, I don't even have a term for it," Phares said. 

According to the victim, she complied with all of Steele's alleged requests because she was scared of being arrested.

"If they go beyond driver's license, insurance card, 'This is why I pulled you over,' that sort of thing. ‘Do you have a weapon?’, the typical things that officially they should be asking you, if they start getting personal with you, that's way out of line."

A grand jury indicted Steele only on the kidnapping and malfeasance charges.

When the case got to trial, Judge Eboni Johnson Rose openly questioned the victim's credibility. She convicted Steele of misdemeanor malfeasance, which does not exist, then reversed her decision — essentially acquitting him.

That decision led to Rose's year-long suspension from the bench, and has since been overturned by two higher courts. Steele will be sentenced, as it happens, by Rose's uncle, Chief Judge Don Johnson, on Sept. 8.