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Chris Buzelli, special to ProPublica

Kafka in Vegas
Fred Steese served more than 20 years in prison for the murder of a Vegas showman
even though evidence in the prosecution�s files proved he didn�t do it. But when
the truth came to light, he was offered a confounding deal known as an Alford plea.
If he took it he could go free, but he�d remain a convicted killer.
by Megan Rose, ProPublica
May 26, 2017
This story was co-published with Vanity Fair.
I. The Plea

Fred Steese, Inmate No. 45595, often gazed at the 18-wheelers rumbling by the state
prison on a desolate stretch of highway outside Las Vegas, yearning to be behind
the wheel. Lying in his bunk in Cell Block A, Unit 7, he�d picture himself double-
clutching down hills, filling out the logbook, expertly backing up as he made
deliveries. Semis had been an obsession since he�d begun hitching rides with
truckers between stints with foster families and in group homes. By 16 he�d stolen
his first big rig. Now middle-aged, Steese treasured a commercial driver�s license
manual, so well-used it was held together by tape.

As a lifer, however, he knew that even this modest ambition was out of reach. In
1992, a once famous trapeze artist who�d moved on to performing with a costumed
poodle act on the Strip had been found murdered, stabbed dozens of times in his
trailer on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Police found a prime suspect in Steese, a
drifter with a record, who for a short time had been the victim�s lover and
assistant, and who, after protesting that he was innocent, offered a confession.
Vegas Judge Had Long History of Prosecutorial Misconduct

The behavior of Bill Kephart, who led the murder prosecution of Fred Steese, was
repeatedly lambasted by the Supreme Court of Nevada. But that didn�t stop him from
becoming a judge. Read the story.
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But there was evidence Steese had been 670 miles away at the time � and prosecutors
in Las Vegas didn�t share it. The prosecutors went on to win seats as state
district court judges, where they still sit. Steese went to prison for life with no
possibility of parole. That would have remained his fate except that, somehow, in a
life with few breaks, Steese finally caught one. Prodded by his original attorney,
the federal public defender sent a team burrowing into the prosecution�s files and
ultimately dismantled its case.

In October 2012, a judge declared that Steese, after 20 years in prison, was
innocent. It was an extraordinary ruling � in fact, unprecedented in that court.
But the Clark County district attorney was not willing to free Steese. Prosecutors
vowed to put him through lengthy appeals. Even to re-try him. The process would
take years. Or, if Steese just wanted to be released, the prosecutors had a
tantalizing proposition: he could agree to an Alford plea. In a feat of logical
gymnastics, this obscure plea allows defendants to maintain their innocence while
at the same time pleading guilty and accepting the status of a convicted felon.
And, perhaps most damaging to prisoners like Steese, after decades behind bars, the
plea meant giving up the right to sue. It would also allow prosecutors to keep a
�win� on the books, admit no wrongdoing, and avoid civil and criminal sanctions for
their behavior. In exchange for all this, the prosecution in Las Vegas would let
Steese go.

In legal circles, prosecutorial misconduct is viewed by many as a pervasive problem

� an �epidemic,� as one prominent federal judge called it in 2013. Jurisdictions
large and small are riddled with corrupt practices. Misconduct lies behind more
than half of all cases nationwide in which convicted defendants are ultimately
exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Driven by a win-at-
all-costs culture, such misbehavior is especially hard to root out because, many
experts say, there�s little incentive to play by the rules. Appellate courts often
sweep misconduct aside as harmless. Top prosecutors, burnishing their own careers,
rarely punish underlings for it � and indeed they often flourish, going on to
become judges reluctant to police their former peers. And the law gives prosecutors
broad immunity from civil lawsuits, even when their bad behavior lands the wrong
people in prison.

Fred Steese�s case exposed the rot in the system that robbed him of two decades of
his life. Yet even then prosecutors worked to keep it hidden, forcing him into an
almost incomprehensible choice: Risk freedom to fight for an uncertain exoneration
that might take years, or cop to a crime he didn�t commit and walk away.
II. Death of a Poodle Master
Dan Winters for Vanity Fair

Lucky the Clown, a 123-foot-tall blast of frenzied neon, has greeted visitors to
the Strip since 1976. With its massive grin and pinwheel lollipop, the marquee
beckons gamblers inside the striped big top at the Circus Circus hotel and casino.
In 1992, low rollers fed cups of change into slot machines while acrobats swung
overhead. A rotating lineup of circus performers did free shows on a small dark
stage on the second floor until midnight. Passersby would stop to watch before
moving along to the $2.99 dinner buffet. Among the performers was a faded but still
handsome dog trainer with the bearing of a dancer, often dressed elaborately in
sequined tails and matching bow tie. Gerard Soules, known as Jerry, was circus
royalty of sorts, a trapeze artist who had traveled the world, performing for the
queen of England and dazzling the crowd in the Ringling Bros. center ring. A
preening showman, he had worn a cape that he would fling open before beginning the
40-foot climb to the pedestal. From there he�d launch his daring signature move, a
somersault forward off the trapeze, catching himself by his heels at the last
second on the bar of the same trapeze.

Soules had grown up devoutly Catholic in 1940s blue-collar Michigan. When he came
out as gay to his mother as a teenager, his family defied expectations by
supporting him. Soules left home at 16 to join the circus. After a trapeze accident
in his late 20s, he reinvented himself as the ringmaster of a pack of well-dressed
poodles. In 1992, Soules took his act to Circus Circus, where, six days a week, his
14 poodles hopped on their hind legs across the stage: One in a poncho and sombrero
to a Mexican march, another to a can-can with her dress attached to her front paws,
Moulin Rouge-style, still others wearing three-foot-tall hats or giant hoopskirts �
all of the outfits handstitched by Soules himself.

Despite the act�s popularity, Soules had lost his spirit. The casino wouldn�t let
him stay at its own RV park with his poodles, so he was banished to the Silver
Nugget Camperland, in much less desirable North Las Vegas. And he�d been living in
a heartbroken fog since his partner of decades had died, several years earlier.
Eager for companionship, the 55-year-old had recently taken to helping young men in
need.
One May day, Soules had spied Fred Steese, disheveled and dirty, his hair bleached
sandy blond by the sun. He was holding a WILL WORK FOR FOOD sign. Soules leaned out
the window of his truck and offered to take Steese for a meal. Even in faded jeans
too big for his lean frame, Steese had blue-eyed good looks, with an easy smile and
a loud laugh that rose along the scales and made him seem younger than he really
was. Over dinner, Soules revealed that he was gay. Steese shrugged his shoulders
and told him that he himself was bisexual. Steese was familiar with the scene �
he�d hustled gay men for food, money or companionship most of his life. The
previous month, another middle-aged man had picked him up along a Pennsylvania
highway. That man, Rick Rock, enjoyed Steese enough that he paid for a bus ticket
and told him to call collect whenever he wanted. And Steese did, often. He liked
having someone who cared.

Steese had more or less been on his own since his mother had abandoned him, when he
was 10, and he bounced through 37 foster placements. As a teen, he wandered into a
hobo camp outside Phoenix, where an old-timer introduced him to riding the rails.
Alone on the road, he held tight to the memory of the Busses, the one foster family
who�d shown him any love, twice sheltering him at their dairy farm outside Austin �
even including him in a formal family portrait. He�d been chasing that connection
ever since, smoothing over his past with grandiose lies to gain acceptance and prop
up his self-image.

He struck up an affair with Soules and became his assistant. The dog trainer had
just fired his latest one, Alexander Kolupaev, a Russian defector with receding red
hair who was always short on cash and had rebuffed Soules�s overtures. Just as
Steese was settling in, the event manager told him he needed a work permit for his
job at the casino. Steese knew that was the end. He was wanted for violating parole
in Florida, and he�d been using the alias Fred Burke.

�Listen, I�m going to go ahead and move on because there ain�t no sense in me being
here, because I can�t make no money,� Steese told Soules, according to testimony.
Steese panhandled enough cash for liquor and a speedball and then hopped a train
heading north.

Six days later, when Soules didn�t show up for work, his boss went to the RV park
to investigate and heard the usually quiet dogs barking excitedly. He banged on the
door, calling Soules� name, before fetching a security guard. Inside detectives
found Soules�s belongings scattered around the trailer. The plaid window valance
had been yanked down. The TV-and-VCR cabinet was empty. Blood soaked the mattress
and trailed across the length of the trailer to the bathroom, where Soules lay
naked, his face covered by an orange towel. More blood splattered the bathroom
mirror, the counter, the toilet, the tub. Soules� throat had been slashed, and he�d
been stabbed so many times that the coroner stopped counting at 35.
Gerard �Jerry� Soules became a star in the 1950s and earned a place in the Circus
Hall of Fame for his forward somersault off the trapeze. He then had a popular
second act, traveling the world with his �Poodles de Paree� dog show. Soules was
killed in Las Vegas in June 1992. (Courtesy Soules family)
III. The Confession

Two North Las Vegas Police detectives shut Steese in a small interrogation room and
placed a questionnaire about the murder in front of him on the metal table. Forty-
five minutes later, he�d written just a handful of paragraphs, riddled with grammar
and spelling mistakes, in one place fumbling even his own name as �Fredrick,�
without the second �e.�

�I thing I was in New Plymouth, ID.�

Throughout his childhood, Steese had scored between 70 and 80 on IQ tests, putting
him at the very bottom of normal range. He had only the GED he�d earned recently
while imprisoned for a hapless bank robbery. Steese wrote that he didn�t have any
reason to hurt Soules.

�I have never been to know a friend that has gotten killed.�

The detectives had been tipped to Steese after a letter from Rick Rock arrived at
Soules� trailer. When contacted, detectives said, Rock told them that Steese had
revealed knowledge of a morbid, if not quite accurate, detail of the murder: that
Soules had been stabbed more than 100 times. When detectives finally reached Steese
by phone, he agreed to return to Las Vegas. Then he�d drunkenly hopped a train
going in the wrong direction, ending up in Wisconsin, where he stole a semi truck
and drove nearly 30 hours straight through to Nevada. There he was pulled over and
arrested.

In the interrogation room, Steese repeatedly told the skeptical and increasingly
angry detectives that he hadn�t murdered Soules. When one yelled that he was lying,
Steese jumped up and backed away from the table. �Do you want to hear a story? OK.
I don�t know nothing about the murder, but I�ll tell you a story,� Steese testified
he had told them. He went on to say that Soules had tied him up and tried to
sexually assault him with a plunger. But after detectives prodded him with details
from the murder scene that showed that his story couldn�t have happened, Steese
stumbled through several more scenarios.

Around 10 p.m., after nearly five hours of interrogation, Steese signed a

confession, looping the final �e� in Steese back through the letters. It was his
sixth version of events. At this point he hadn�t slept since before he left
Wisconsin.
Steese�s 1992 mugshot after he was arrested for the murder of Gerard Soules. He
would be imprisoned for nearly 21 years.
IV. But He Wasn�t There

Las Vegas in the early 90s was at the start of a boom. Gated subdivisions were
eating up the desert and ever more luxe resorts were springing up on the Strip. But
Vegas hadn�t lost its frontier spirit; in some ways it was still the Wild West.

Clark County�s district attorney, Rex Bell Jr., embodied that spirit, with his slow
drawl, cowboy boots and plug of tobacco in his cheek. The son of Rex Bell Sr., an
actor in Westerns, and silent-film legend Clara Bow, he saw himself as the
protector of Las Vegas. He sometimes even wore a white hat. Bell, though, was more
politician than practicing lawyer, and he left the running of the criminal division
to his number two, Bill Koot, a gruff former Marine and Vietnam veteran. Deputy DAs
who didn�t pursue harsh enough sentences or lost too often at trial were exiled to
the age-old prosecutor doghouse: juvenile court.

The office had a frat-house looseness � it wasn�t unusual, former prosecutors

recalled, for a pack to leave at one p.m. on a Friday to go drinking or to a strip
club � but the atmosphere belied a cutthroat culture. On a whiteboard by the
receptionist�s desk was a grid listing the trials in progress. A �not guilty� was
an embarrassment that stayed on display for a week. Young attorneys started out in
an assigned courtroom with scant training and worked whatever cases came through.
The most ambitious chased homicides, prosecuted by the Major Violators Unit.

Among the young deputies gunning for the top, and a Koot favorite, was William
Kephart, a rough local boy from a blue-collar part of town. Kephart had the
gregariousness of a beefy high school jock giving high-fives in the halls.

He was known to prosecute with a sometimes unrestrained passion. Kephart was widely
viewed, even by his friends, as guided more by ambition than by talent or smarts �
�not a man for subtlety or nuance,� according to one of his former colleagues. His
reputation for recklessness in and out of the courtroom earned him the nickname
�Wild Bill.� He had his sights set on the MVU.

The case of the slain �Poodle King,� as the press had nicknamed Gerard Soules, hit
the overworked DA�s office at the perfect time for Kephart. An experienced
prosecutor had dropped out, handing the eager deputy a death penalty case, wrapped
in the bow of a confession. But more than two years later, when Kephart was finally
gearing up for trial, the case looked very different. Steese�s defense team had
assembled an extensive alibi with 14 witnesses and 10 items of documentary evidence
that they were sure proved Steese was nowhere near Soules� trailer at the time of
the murder.

Kephart and an investigator headed to Idaho in October 1994 to do their best to

unravel Steese�s alibi. There they devised a new explanation. One witness noted
that Steese had mentioned that he sometimes used the name �Robert.� Another said
Steese had told him a couple of times that he had to call his brother. Then Kephart
found a Salvation Army assistance form from June 8 that listed a �Fred Burke� and a
�Robert� as receiving $10.

Back at the office, they confirmed their suspicions: Steese had a look-alike
brother named Robert, who lived in Texas. Kephart and his team came up with a
theory: It wasn�t Steese in Idaho; it was Robert � all part of a grand scheme to
give Steese an alibi. The witnesses who thought they had met �Fred Burke� in
Wyoming and Idaho had really met Robert. Then the real Fred had high-tailed it to
Idaho after the murder, and that�s when they�d turned up together at the Salvation
Army. The beauty of this theory was that nobody involved knew anything about Robert
Steese. He could be anyone prosecutors wanted him to be.

A week or so before trial, Douglas Herndon, 30 years old and three years into his
tenure at the DA�s office, joined the case as Kephart�s second. A private-law-
school grad, and one of the few in the office not from Las Vegas, Herndon was seen
as an astute prosecutor. His first thought in reviewing the case was �Wow, I�ve
never seen that many alibi witnesses before. How is that going to affect things?�
They had no evidence to prove that Robert Steese had been in Idaho, and they had
serious conflicts with the timeline. The �Robert� theory was at odds with Steese�s
confession that his drunken decision to rob Soules was last-minute and that he
killed him only because Soules had woken up. Documents placed �Fred Burke� in
Wyoming on May 31, so Steese would have had to set the alibi plan in motion three
days in advance of a spur-of-the moment burglary.

But because the prosecutors were already convinced that Steese had committed the
murder, to them the alibi must simply be wrong � the documents fishy, the witnesses
lying or mistaken. And quite possibly there was a conspiracy. Kephart and Herndon
would tell the jury that Steese�s alibi was a fantasy.
V. �Trial by Ambush�

Steese�s trial began in January 1995 and quickly devolved into a brawl, peppered
with accusations of prosecutorial misbehavior. James Erbeck, a well-known private
lawyer and former assistant U.S. attorney, had been appointed to represent Steese,
along with California transplant Nancy Masters, new to both Vegas and to lawyering.
Erbeck walked in on the first day with confidence � even though a 70-year-old
defense witness had already sworn in an affidavit that Kephart had tried to
dissuade her from testifying. Steese had such a strong defense that Erbeck actually
cautioned Masters not to think it was typically so easy. That mood dissipated when
Erbeck found himself filing motion after motion to dismiss, including for
�outrageous prosecutorial misconduct,� only to have each motion batted away by
District Court Judge Don Chairez, a rookie in his first year on the bench. Chairez
had been working for the DA when Steese�s prosecution began, three years earlier.
Erbeck�s sense of impotence grew as the trial progressed. He discovered only during
testimony that two prosecution witnesses had identified Steese, from photo lineups
that included Robert, as the man they�d seen in Idaho. This fact undermined the
�Robert� theory and Kephart and Herndon had sought to conceal it. Kephart had also
shown his own last-minute star witness, a neighbor of Soules� named Michael Moore,
a potentially misleading photo array. Moore subsequently identified Steese in court
as having been at Soules� trailer the night of the murder � even though he had told
police at the time that the man he�d seen had been short, had red hair and was
balding. That description fit Kolupaev, who had been convicted of a jewelry heist
shortly after the murder and would eventually be deported. Kolupaev was never
investigated further.

At Moore�s testimony, Erbeck had leapt to his feet, railing that it was �trial by
ambush,� and telling the court that the lineup Kephart had shown Moore was the most
suggestive he�d seen in his career. Each photo had a booking date, but only
Steese�s was from the year of the murder. �They have totally tainted the jury,�
Erbeck told Chairez. �Look at this lineup. One man in �92, everyone else in �93,
�94. The other five couldn�t commit the crime.�
Steese and his lawyer Nancy Masters (now Lemcke) in the Las Vegas courtroom where
he was tried for first-degree murder in 1995. (Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun)

By the time it was Erbeck�s turn, Kephart and Herndon had painted Steese as a
conniving killer who had, according to a jailhouse snitch, repeated his confession
while incarcerated. But one key prosecution witness was conspicuously absent from
the stand. Steese�s friend Rick Rock had been flown in to testify regarding
Steese�s alleged comment about the number of stab wounds, but as an older single
man living in rural Pennsylvania, Rock was protective of his private life and
wasn�t eager to cooperate. He also dodged Erbeck and Masters, who were desperate to
talk to him about whether Steese had called him from Idaho at the time of the
murder. Then the prosecution abruptly sent him home, telling the defense nothing.
Masters asked Kephart for Rock�s unlisted number, but she says Kephart told her
she�d have to get a court order. Kephart said he sent her to the witness-support
office and told that office to get Rock�s permission first.

To Erbeck, Steese�s defense was simple: He wasn�t in the state at the time of the
murder and couldn�t have killed Soules. He�d falsely confessed because he was
tired, coming down off drugs, frightened and of low intelligence. The documentary
evidence backed up Steese�s and the witnesses� claims. He�d left a long trail from
May 31 to June 8, using the alias �Fred Burke.�

Steese testified that after he had left Las Vegas he stopped in Salt Lake City,
then bumped into a man named Ron Bouttier in the train yard in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Steese took him to the local Salvation Army, and they scrawled their names on the
�Monday, May 31� sign-in sheet. On the Burke signature, he�d looped the �e� back
through the name with a line, in his typical fashion. Steese testified that
Bouttier had invited him to his grandparents� in Idaho, until he could get back on
his feet. �That was the best offer I had in a long time,� Steese testified. �I
didn�t have nowhere to go, so I says �all right.� We got along real good at the
time, and so we jumped on a train.�

Bouttier�s family and others Steese met there identified him in court, though two
were shaky at first and needed a second chance on the stand. Steese had gained
nearly 70 pounds by the time the trial started. In Idaho, he had gone to two
employment help centers, and on one job application, on June 4, he used as a
reference the name of his beloved foster parent: �Albert Busse.� A few days later,
he and Bouttier got into a fight, and Steese took off, showing up on June 8 at the
Salvation Army, where he put down two names on the welfare assistance form because,
as an employee testified, she would give him double that way, even if he was alone.
Kephart, speaking in a folksy style that juries liked, used his rebuttal to spin
out the �Robert� theory, even though Robert himself was never produced. He called
to the stand his investigator, who contradicted many of Steese�s alibi witnesses
and accused several of lying. Kephart insinuated that any defense documents that
were copies could be forgeries. He even made his own, blown-up version of the
Salvation Army sign-in sheet, but instead of Steese�s signature, it was his own,
�as an example to the jury to show how documents can be manipulated and why you
need originals.� Accusing the defense of presenting doctored evidence was a
shocking tactic, but it was consistent with Kephart�s perceived willingness to go
to nearly any length to get a conviction. Two of his murder convictions from the
prior year would soon be thrown out by the Supreme Court of Nevada for �improper�
and �deliberate� comments.

Whatever Steese was saying now, Kephart and Herndon argued, the original confession
should be trusted. The jury deliberated for almost two full days before rendering a
guilty verdict. After the trial, the prosecutors dropped the death penalty, but
Steese was sentenced to two life sentences without parole.
Left: A promotional photo of Soules for the Ice Capades in 1988. Right: Soules,
bottom center, with other Circus Circus performers in 1992, only weeks before his
death. (Courtesy Soules family)
VI. The Unraveling Begins

Nancy Masters � now married and known as Nancy Lemcke � was distraught. She felt as
if she had failed. She called every PO box center in Rick Rock�s town to track down
his new address and wrote one last letter begging him to contact her. When he
finally called, Lemcke told him his phone records could prove that Steese had
called him from Idaho. Rock, baffled, said the prosecutors already had a copy of
the records. Lemcke couldn�t believe it. Had Kephart and Herndon concealed key
evidence in a death penalty case? Hadn�t they seen the calls to Rock from Wyoming
on May 31 and from Idaho on June 3 (the likely day of the murder) and June 5 that
would exonerate Steese?

The U.S. Supreme Court, in the landmark case Brady vs. Maryland, long ago
established that prosecutors must turn over any evidence favorable to the defense;
withholding it violates a defendant�s right to a fair trial. Erbeck fired off a
motion, asking the judge for a new trial and also asking the court to sanction
Kephart and Herndon so that this will �not happen again in Clark County.�

In responding affidavits, both prosecutors claimed the records were irrelevant

because they said Rock told them those calls were from business associates. Lemcke
thought it should have been obvious that wasn�t true, especially since Rock had
made a Western Union money transfer to one of Steese�s alibi witnesses on the same
day he had received four of the collect calls. After Steese was arrested, on June
18, the only collect calls Rock received were from the county jail, up to eight a
day. Herndon conceded that the records showed Rock �wasn�t telling us everything he
knew.� But they had flown him home and never mentioned the phone records to the
defense.

Erbeck referred the prosecutors to the Nevada State Bar, which investigated and
found enough troubling behavior to merit an official hearing � a rarity. But the
newly elected district attorney, Stewart Bell, a prominent lawyer who was not
related to his predecessor, showed up to argue on their behalf. The matter went
away. (Bell didn�t respond to several requests for comment.) Herndon and Kephart
moved up to the DA�s elite teams: Herndon joined the relatively new Special Victims
Unit, and Kephart made it to the Major Violators Unit.

In 1998, the Supreme Court of Nevada, which rarely split, denied Steese�s appeal in
a 3-2 decision. The majority ruled that the state�s �case against Steese was
strong� and that no Brady violation had occurred because the defense could have
found the phone records on its own. The dissenting judges believed that the
prosecutors had skirted the rules and that Steese�s conviction should be reversed.
The decision slammed shut most legal doors, leaving Steese to languish in a maximum
security prison.
Nancy Lemcke, a Clark County public defender, not far from where Soules was stabbed
to death in his trailer in North Las Vegas. (Dan Winters for Vanity Fair)

Kephart, meanwhile, continued to build a successful career despite misconduct that

drew repeated criticism from the state�s highest court throughout his tenure. His
colleagues dismissed any dark intent, likening him to an excitable Labrador who
stole turkey off the table because he didn�t know any better. But in 2001 the
Nevada Supreme Court justices called Kephart out by name in a misconduct ruling �
an uncommon rebuke. Appellate judges typically blame misdeeds on �the State� or
�the prosecutor.�

�Now either he doesn�t want to learn, or he�s a very slow learner,� a justice said
in a hearing, expressing dismay that �the district attorney�s office just continues
to let him try major cases and give us these problems.� The court forced Kephart to
show why he shouldn�t be sanctioned, and Bell again came to his rescue. Apart from
being briefly benched from trials, former colleagues said, Kephart faced no
consequences. He went on to have yet another case overturned in 2008, partly as a
result of his misconduct. Then, in 2010, campaigning to become justice of the peace
as a law-and-order stalwart, Kephart made it to the judicial ranks alongside
Herndon, who had previously been appointed to the bench. As Kephart took office,
Steese had been in prison for more than 18 years.
VII. An Arduous Path

The San Antonio parking lot shimmered in the May heat, and Abigail Goldman chafed
against the fabric seats of her rental car, hours into a sweltering stakeout of a
strip mall. Goldman, 29, an investigator for the federal public defender�s office
in Las Vegas, was on the hunt for Steese�s long-lost brother.

When Goldman joined the office, in 2010, Steese had been pointed out among the 30
cases in her stack as something special � an innocent man. Steese had recently had
a new breakthrough, and a judge would soon re-examine his alibi, in particular the
alleged involvement of Robert Steese. Now, in 2011, Goldman just had to find him.
She had nothing more than a three-year-old address, but the trailer park manager
there had given her a small clue: Steese�s wife worked at a nearby Office Depot.
Goldman had been watching the store for almost a full day. Earlier she had
crisscrossed Nampa, Idaho, to link two phone numbers from Rock�s records to the pay
phones Steese said he had used. But the prosecutors could still argue that Robert
Steese had made those calls. As she sat sweating and second-guessing herself, a
dark-haired woman in the telltale red polo of an Office Depot employee hurried out.
Maybe that�s my girl, Goldman thought, instinctively ducking her head as if that
made her inconspicuous as she drove three mph behind the woman. The slow-motion
chase ended at the scene of a car accident down the street, where one of the
drivers looked a lot like Fred Steese. Goldman leapt out, launching into a fast-
paced pitch about needing his help.

�The last time I saw my brother, I was nine years old. I�m 41 now,� Robert Steese
said. He didn�t want anything to do with the case, and his wife adamantly told
Goldman to go away. An annoyed cop shooed her off. Goldman realized a few days
later that the stakeout was more productive than she had thought: The accident
report listed Robert Steese�s current address. Fred Steese�s lawyers now had a way
to subpoena him.

A freshly minted federal public defender, Ryan Norwood toiled in one of law�s
toughest jobs for some of its poorest clients: habeas corpus. His task was to help
destitute prisoners essentially sue the government for wrongful imprisonment.
Norwood, 33, whose neat beard and natty three-piece suits stood out among his
rumpled peers, had landed Steese�s case after Nancy Lemcke repeatedly pushed for
help. The situation was a legal minefield. For one thing, the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which has become so loathed that even some
conservative judges have called for its repeal, gave prisoners one year to file a
habeas suit. States such as Nevada had the same practice. So, in both state and
federal court, Steese was long since out of time. Norwood had petitioned both � and
had lost in both, until 2010, when the Supreme Court of Nevada stepped in and
ordered a local judge to hear Steese out.

There was only one arduous path around the time limit: actually proving Steese
innocent. Norwood had to show that there was new, compelling evidence that cast
doubt on Steese�s conviction. So while Goldman scoured everything publicly
available, Norwood fought to get his hands on the prosecution�s file. And in the
end he succeeded: District Court Judge Elissa Cadish, who was presiding over the
case, ordered the DA to hand it over.

In her office, Goldman scrolled through the 2,440 pages of documents on a CD. Forty
pages of voir dire. Police reports. Steese�s criminal history in Utah. Stop. At the
top of page 923: �Union Pacific Railroad Police.� Goldman leaned in for a closer
look at the old-fashioned dot-matrix document on the screen. There were several
�field interrogation reports� that the railroad police filed when they caught
people illegally on the trains or in the rail yard. There was one for �Frederick
Lee Burke� in Salt Lake City on May 29, and there were two for �Fred Lee Burke,
Jr.� on May 31 in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Here was evidence that put Steese out of state five days before the murder �
evidence that matched Steese�s testimony at trial.

�I got thrown off the train,� he had testified. �They got bulls.�

�Bulls?�

� � We call them the bulls. That�s what the hobo term is. What they are is, they�re
railroad security � and if they catch you riding the train they�ll ask you your
name and write it down and then kick you off the train.�

Down the hall, Norwood also dug into Steese�s file and uncovered several letters
the DA�s office had written on behalf of the jailhouse informant which seemed to
contradict Kephart and Herndon�s claim at trial that he�d received no benefit for
his testimony. Kephart had also repeatedly elicited testimony from the informant
during trial that allowed him to hide his criminal past.

Before long, yet another disturbing discovery came to light when the DA�s office
gave Norwood a copy of a National Crime Information Center report on Robert Steese.
The report showed that on May 25, June 1, and June 4, 1992, Texas authorities had
run Robert�s name through the system � which typically occurs when an individual is
stopped by police. That would mean Robert Steese was in Texas at the time the
prosecution had argued he was impersonating his brother in Idaho. And it looked to
Norwood as if Kephart and Herndon had known this at the time of the trial. Their
investigator had testified that he �went through NCIC.� as part of an �extensive
investigation� into the whereabouts of Robert Steese but claimed that the search
turned up next to nothing. The DA�s office contended it hadn�t known about the
stops at the time of the trial, arguing that its investigator hadn�t done as broad
a search or that the stops had been inexplicably added to the system later.

Norwood says he had not seen misconduct on this scale before and believed that any
one of the discoveries proved Steese innocent. But Pamela Weckerly, a 16-year
veteran prosecutor who was now handling Steese�s case at the DA�s office in Las
Vegas, refused to budge.
VIII. �I Killed Gerard Soules�
Ryan Norwood, a federal public defender, in the parking garage of his Las Vegas
office. Norwood worked for four years to prove Steese�s innocence and free him from
prison. (Dan Winters for Vanity Fair)

Fred Steese�s only chance now lay in four daylong hearings � dragged out over more
than 16 months � to prove that his brother had nothing to do with his alibi. At the
first hearing, in June 2011, Robert Steese�s former boss, co-workers and
acquaintances from the early 90s all testified that he was in Texas at the time of
the murder and laughed at the notion of him hitchhiking or jumping trains, saying
he was too lazy and unambitious for that. Five months later, Robert Steese himself
testified, telling the court he hadn�t seen Fred since he was a child, had never
been to Idaho or Wyoming and didn�t so much as know Fred�s birthday.

�I didn�t even know he was still living,� Steese testified.

At the next hearing, in January 2012, the hallway outside Cadish�s courtroom
crawled with defense attorneys. Word had spread that Herndon and Kephart might be
testifying � and cross-examined. Herndon was up first, and Norwood seized the
opportunity to ask him about the document with the Union Pacific reports.

�I believe I�ve seen it before, yeah.�

Herndon said he didn�t think he had the reports at trial; nevertheless, he was
still ethically bound to turn them over later, and the records could have made the
difference in Steese�s 1998 appeal. Herndon then rejected even the most basic
realities of Steese�s case.

�There was somebody up in Idaho during that week calling himself �Fred Burke,��
Norwood prodded. �Can we agree on that?�

�I�m not prepared to even agree on that.�

Norwood was dumbfounded. Seventeen years earlier, Herndon had argued to a jury that
Robert Steese had been in Idaho creating a false alibi, even saying in his closing
he had �no doubt� about it. Now he was contending that Steese�s alibi witnesses
might have helped orchestrate an 11-day, multi-state conspiracy and forged 10
different official documents. �What I�m saying, very bluntly,� Herndon testified,
�is that I didn�t believe a whole hell of a lot of what the people from Idaho had
to say.� Weckerly never called Kephart to testify.

In October 2012, Norwood and Weckerly each made their final arguments. Steese sat
in his blue prison garb in a near empty courtroom, cheerful as always, but with few
expectations. Norwood had warned him that the wait was far from over. Cadish would
likely take a few months to make a decision.

Norwood�s hour-and-a-half speech had the passionate feel of a trial lawyer

beseeching a jury.

�Robert is a red herring here. The Robert Steese theory, however good it might have
looked to the jury, can�t be the explanation for what happened, because Robert
wasn�t in Idaho,� Norwood said. Later, with an uncharacteristic dramatic flair,
Norwood announced, �At this point, I want to make a confession of my own. I killed
Gerard Soules.� He was in high school in Pennsylvania at the time, but �at this
point there is precisely as much reliable evidence that I committed this murder as
there is that Fred Steese committed the murder,� he said. �In fact, I have to say
that in some ways that my confession is a little more reliable. I just made this
confession in open court. I didn�t make it after spending four hours in a room with
two police detectives where who knows what happened. Unlike Fred, I can�t prove
that I was someplace else on June the 3rd and June 4th in 1992.�

What Steese has provided, Norwood concluded, is �probably the most extensive alibi
that�s ever been proven by somebody in this state.�

In stark contrast to Norwood, Weckerly was brief, arguing that a jury had heard �98
percent� of the evidence Norwood presented and still found Steese guilty. By law,
she said, �it�s not our burden at this point to explain anything.� She refused
Norwood�s challenge to answer the most basic question: If Robert Steese wasn�t
involved, then what now is the state�s theory of the crime?

It was clear, Norwood told Cadish, that Weckerly wouldn�t concede Steese didn�t
kill Soules, because that �would be admitting that an innocent man has been behind
bars for 20 years � that justice wasn�t done in this case � that � the killer
[wasn�t] found.�

Norwood fully expected Cadish to conclude the hearing by announcing that she would
take the arguments under advisement. Instead, without any fanfare, she said she
believed the testimony from Robert Steese and from those who knew him with �no dog
in the fight.� Norwood and Fred Steese sat up a little straighter in their chairs.
The more Cadish spoke about new, reliable evidence, the more Norwood realized not
only that she was about to issue a ruling but that it would be what he�d hoped for
over the last four years. He put his hand on Fred�s shoulder.

�Given everything additional that we now know,� Cadish said, �I am finding that it
is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have found him guilty beyond
a reasonable doubt with that evidence.� For the first time in the 8th Judicial
District, a judge would issue an �Order Regarding Actual Innocence,� declaring
publicly that Steese had not killed anyone.
IX. Innocent � but Still Guilty

Astonishing as Cadish�s decision was, Norwood knew that an innocence ruling was not
the get-of-jail-free card it seemed to be. It was only the first step. Steese had
to show that his wrongful conviction was somebody�s fault. Normally when a
defendant appeals, the issue at hand is not innocence or guilt but whether he
received a fair trial. Because Steese had run out of time to appeal and was suing
for denial of his civil rights, Cadish�s ruling only cleared the way for her to
consider the constitutional merits of his case. It was, in essence, a reset button.
For Steese�s murder conviction to be thrown out, a judge would now have to rule
that the prosecutors acted improperly or otherwise failed in their duties.

Norwood was confident that Steese would win such a case. He relished the idea of a
rigorous examination in court of Kephart and Herndon�s behavior. But while he was
optimistic, Norwood also knew that, should Cadish agree with him, Steese�s ordeal
still wouldn�t be over. The state could appeal immediately � which meant Steese
would have to wait for a ruling by the Supreme Court of Nevada. That could take
many years. If the court came down in Steese�s favor, the prosecution could still
re-try him. Only after a not-guilty ruling would Steese be fully exonerated. And he
might not get bail during this process.

Weckerly, the deputy DA, could have simply supported Steese�s petition for habeas
corpus, but she responded by tweaking the state�s argument. After hammering on the
Robert theory for nearly two decades, her office suddenly asserted that Robert
didn�t matter. Steese, Weckerly maintained, was still guilty. But she was facing
the daunting prospect of starting over on a 20-year-old murder case. Two weeks
after Cadish�s ruling, Norwood says, she proposed a deal. What if she gave Steese
parole? Norwood countered: How about dropping all charges and having Steese plead
to stealing the truck he used to get to Nevada, with a time-served sentence?
Weckerly refused � she wanted a murder charge on the books. That was when she
offered an Alford plea.

Though unfamiliar even to some lawyers, the Alford plea has been around since a
1970 U.S. Supreme Court case. Henry Alford, a 35-year-old black man, had said he
was innocent of murder but pleaded guilty to avoid an automatic death sentence. He
later appealed, claiming that his plea was made under duress, violating due
process. The Supreme Court disagreed. The justices ruled that it wasn�t
unconstitutional to accept a guilty plea despite protests of innocence, so as long
as a defendant had intelligently made the decision and was counseled by a lawyer.

Unlike the better-known no-contest plea, in which a defendant accepts a conviction

without admitting guilt, the Alford plea lets a defendant actually assert his
innocence for the record. The defendant acknowledges that the state might be able
to get a conviction despite his or her innocence. All but three states allow the
plea, but the federal government says it should be used only in �the most unusual
of circumstances.� The Alford plea is most often used in bargaining before a
conviction, like a typical plea deal, and could very well be taken by guilty
defendants who simply won�t own up to their crimes. How often it is offered and
accepted, and by what sort of defendants, isn�t tracked. Many prominent legal
scholars, such as Cornell law professor John Blume, contend that prosecutors are
using the plea to quickly and quietly resolve newly challenged convictions. It�s
undeniably coercive for a prosecutor to tell someone who has been in prison 5, 10,
20 years that �you don�t have to admit guilt, just sign this plea and we�ll let you
go,� Blume said.

Norwood questioned whether justice was served by an Alford plea, especially when it
was being used to prevent the exoneration of an innocent man � and to keep what he
saw as prosecutorial misconduct under wraps. But he knew it was a valid way to
resolve Steese�s case quickly. Norwood gave Steese the news: There was a way for
him to get out of prison almost immediately. Steese didn�t have to think about it.
�Now sounds good,� he said. �I�ll take now.�

As word of the deal circulated, some who had grown close to Steese were angry.
Lemcke thought he was too near the finish line to give up a sure victory. And
Steese�s half-sister, Lynn Myers, who reconnected with him after he�d been
incarcerated and had been writing him letters for years, begged him to turn the
plea down and clear his name. But Steese believed they were wound up about nothing.
Judge Cadish had said he was innocent! He�d been locked up for 7,545 days. He just
wanted to get on with life.

Shortly before 9 a.m. on a February day in 2013, Steese faced Cadish one final time
in a hearing that lasted all of eight minutes. Under the terms of the Alford plea,
Cadish accepted his guilty plea for a crime that just three months earlier she�d
ruled he didn�t commit. She sentenced him to time served.

�Good luck to you,� she said.

Fred Steese, after his wrongful incarceration. (Dan Winters for Vanity Fair)
X. �All Rise�

About a year out of prison, Steese went to Southern California for training with a
major trucking company. He was a 50-year-old man finally getting a shot at his
childhood dream � what he�d called at his trial �the best job in the world.� He
whizzed through the written test, and when he was called into the back office one
morning, he thought it was to meet about how well he�d been doing.

We�re sorry, Steese was told, but you can�t work with a felony conviction.
No, wait, that�s just a misunderstanding, Steese replied. The judge said I was
innocent. You can see the news stories all about me. He jumped into the first
boxcar to Utah, where the company was headquartered. Folded in his back pocket was
a copy of his order of innocence. If he could just show the owners, surely they
would realize he was no murderer. He couldn�t get past the lobby.

In advocacy circles, Steese is counted among the exonerees. But the exoneration is
only honorary. Signing the Alford plea meant he was still a convicted murderer,
except that his original 1995 murder conviction had been vacated and replaced with
the new deal. To a person doing a standard background check, it could appear as if
Steese had killed someone in 2013. He felt as if the state had set him up to fail.
It took Steese three years to find a trucking company willing to hire someone who,
technically, in the eyes of the law, was an ex-felon. When CRST International
invited him on board, he packed up the very next day. His truck gives him a place
to stay and offers a shot at stability. Steese knows he doesn�t have much time left
to work. �I�m 20 years behind,� he says.

Almost forgotten now is Gerard Soules. His sister, Kathy Nasrey, had written an
angry letter to Cadish after the plea, telling her that if Steese hurt anyone else
it was on her head. The district attorney hadn�t informed her that Steese had been
found innocent, just that his release was the judge�s doing. Nasrey wept when she
learned the truth, for Steese and for her brother, whose killer had never been
caught. An entire room of her Detroit home remains a shrine to Jerry and his circus
career. Nasrey still has Soules�s silver ring, stained with blood, in the envelope
the coroner had returned it in. She wonders if the killer�s DNA is on it, and if
anyone cares.

Both the Clark County DA and the North Las Vegas Police consider the Soules murder
a closed case. The current DA, Steve Wolfson, who authorized Steese�s Alford plea,
declined to discuss the matter. Herndon to this day stands by his prosecution of
Steese, though he says he would produce Rock�s phone records if he had it to do
over again. But he was skeptical about the use of the Alford plea. �If a judge has
found somebody actually innocent, then there�s a part of me that says walk away
from the case. You shouldn�t be asking somebody to plead guilty to something,� he
said last year during a lunch break in his chambers. He added that if he had put
someone in prison for a crime that person didn�t commit, �then it�s the worst thing
I�ve ever done in my life.�

Kephart spends his days on the third floor of the Regional Justice Center in
downtown Las Vegas. Steese�s Alford plea in 2013 had conveniently shut down what
could have been a damaging examination of Kephart�s conduct, clearing the way for
the justice of the peace to make a successful leap to the more powerful district
court in 2014. He will not talk about the pursuit and wrongful conviction of Fred
Steese. When court is in session, he puts on his black robe. Ruddy-faced, as if
he�d worked out but hadn�t quite cooled down, he strides to the bench.

�All rise. The Honorable William Kephart presiding.�

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Megan Rose covers the military for ProPublica. Previously she was the national
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