Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Nevada to pay wrongfully convicted man $1.4 million after serving 18 years in prison

Steese

David Calvert for ProPublica

Fred Steese and his lawyer, Lisa Rasmussen, are shown outside the Nevada Supreme Court in Carson City after Steese’s successful pardon hearing on Nov. 8, 2017.

A payment of $1.35 million to Fred Steese — who spent 18 years in Nevada prison for the slaying of a friend he was innocent of — was approved by the state’s Board of Examiners, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced Tuesday.

“Today, Mr. Steese’s innocence was fully acknowledged by the state and he will be compensated for the years he has lost,” wrote Attorney General Aaron Ford in a news release. “I’d like to thank the members of my office who worked on this case and helped Mr. Steese pursue his innocence.”

Steese was the fourth person in the state to receive a certificate of innocence under 2019’s Nevada Assembly Bill 267, which aims to monetarily compensate those wrongfully convicted of a crime.

Steese’s nightmare began in 1992, when he was charged in the killing of Gerard Soules, a Las Vegas performer. Steese had an alibi that placed him in a different state at the time of the crime, yet he was convicted on counts of murder, robbery, burglary and auto theft, Ford’s office said.

Two decades later, in 2012, a Clark County District Court judge agreed that he was innocent but only allowed him to enter an Alford plea, which let him leave prison the following year, remaining a convicted killer until a full Nevada pardon in 2017.

That year, his case was highlighted by a ProPublica-Vanity Fair investigation.