Following more than 18 months of appeals and turmoil , a former Baton Rouge Police Department officer convicted of soliciting sex from a Southern University student he pulled over in the middle of the night was sentenced to jail time Thursday.

District Judge Donald Johnson, chief judge of the 19th Judicial District Court, gave Donald Steele Jr. one year at the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison then suspended half of the jail term. He placed Steele on a year of probation after he is released and ordered the ex-policeman to pay a $1,000 fine and repay the victim for any mental health therapy she has paid to undergo since the traumatic June 2021 encounter.

Steele must report to Judge Johnson’s courtroom to turn himself in and begin his jail stint by Nov. 3.

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