Judge OKs $1.4M settlement for wrongful murder conviction

Fred Steese spent part of Monday morning digging a woman’s wedding ring out of a bathtub drain.

By the early afternoon, he was walking into a Las Vegas courtroom, where a judge approved a roughly $1.4 million settlement for the nearly two decades he spent behind bars for a murder he did not commit.

In the eight years since he was freed, Steese has worked as a truck driver and a handyman but struggled to pay the bills and fight addiction. The 57-year-old plans to celebrate three years of sobriety Saturday.

His initial reaction when asked what he would do, as he walked out of District Judge Jasmin Lilly-Spells’ courtroom: “Go back to work.”

Later, with time to reflect, he spoke of rides across the desert on his new dirt bike, hunting and fishing, watching Raiders football, a new home with a garage, a new truck and a cruise to Italy. Freedom. And maybe not working so hard.

“I’ll tell everybody else what to do now, instead of doing all the work,” he said. “But yeah, I want to stay busy. I’ll probably just do stuff that I like to do, you know, now that I don’t have to worry about my rent or how I’m going to eat.”

Standing next to him in the hallway of the Regional Justice Center, as she has done for years, was attorney Lisa Rasmussen. She successfully fought for Steese’s pardon and ultimately helped persuade the Nevada Legislature in 2019 to compensate the wrongfully incarcerated.

From time to time, Rasmussen would help Steese with money for groceries or a phone bill. She would let him shave in her office before a job interview.

“She’s my rock,” Steese said. “She’s been there through everything. Never gave up on me.”

Steese, his lawyer and the Nevada attorney general’s office recently reached an agreement for Steese to receive $75,000 for each year he was imprisoned after his conviction for the death of 56-year-old Gerard Soules, who ran a dog show at Circus Circus.

“As attorney general, my job is justice, and I’m thrilled that Mr. Steese has been declared an innocent man,” Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a prepared statement after Monday’s hearing. “While no amount of money can ever replace our freedom, Mr. Steese will be compensated for the years he has lost.”

In total, Steese spent more than 21 years behind bars, but he will not be paid for the time he spent in jail while awaiting trial.

He said he doesn’t hold a grudge against the men who prosecuted him — Douglas Herndon, who is now a Nevada Supreme Court justice, and Bill Kephart — even though his lawyers said he was in Idaho at the time of the slaying.

“I’m not going to dwell on the 20 years I lost,” Steese said. “I’m going to move forward. … I’m just a bundle of energy right now. I’m so happy that I got what I got.”

Lilly-Spells signed off on the settlement, wished Steese well and asked him to keep her updated on his life.

Steese said he wants to help programs such as the Innocence Project and Hope for Prisoners.

He was convicted in March 1995 and freed in February 2013, when he reached out to Rasmussen.

It was not until November 2017 that the Nevada Board of Pardons cleared Steese of the wrongful murder conviction.

He fought his conviction while serving a life sentence, and in 2012, then-District Judge Elissa Cadish, now also a justice on the state’s high court, declared Steese actually innocent.

Rasmussen said Steese’s 1992 confession to police was coerced and beaten out of him after he had driven three days without sleep to talk to investigators about a friend who had been killed.

Under the state’s agreement with Steese, he will be granted a certificate of innocence, and the judge will order his records sealed. He said he plans to take advantage of a financial literacy program.

“This has been a long time coming,” he said, with Rasmussen by his side. “There have been struggles, like anybody else. But, you know, I pulled through it. This is like an ending to the story.”

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.