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Steese, a young, poorly educated drifter, was arrested in 1992 for the grisly murder of Gerard Soules, a Las Vegas performer with a costumed poodle act at the Circus Circus casino. At the time of Soules’ death, Steese was several states away. But prosecutors didn’t reveal that they had evidence that Steese was telling the truth, instead telling jurors that Steese had fabricated his alibi with the help of his look-alike brother. During the trial, the prosecutors also concealed the nature of several photo lineups pointing to Steese’s innocence and accused the defense of manufacturing evidence.

Steese was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to two life sentences. The men who prosecuted him, Bill Kephart and Doug Herndon, are now district court judges in Las Vegas.

Decades later, federal public defenders took up Steese’s case and proved that his brother, estranged since childhood, couldn’t have helped with Steese’s alibi. They also discovered the proof of Steese’s whereabouts during the murder in the prosecution’s files.

In 2012, a Nevada Eighth Judicial District Court judge issued a rare Order of Actual Innocence, the first of its kind in that court, essentially declaring that Steese didn’t kill anyone. But the Clark County District Attorney’s Office refused to concede it had convicted the wrong man. Instead, prosecutors vowed to fight Steese’s exoneration and to retry him.

Assistant District Attorney Pamela Weckerly told Steese she’d agree to release him from prison under one condition: he plead guilty. She offered Steese an unusual deal called an Alford plea, which allows a defendant to assert his innocence on the record while still accepting a deal. Steese, skittish after being wrongfully convicted once, agreed. But the deal had significant consequences: Steese was free, but remained a convicted killer. The Clark County district attorney, meanwhile, didn’t have to admit it made a mistake and the murder case stayed closed. Prosecutors across the country are increasingly using the Alford plea and similar deals to quietly dispose of likely innocence cases.

At the pardon hearing Wednesday, Steese’s lawyer, Lisa Rasmussen, described how law enforcement’s pursuit of Steese was riddled with misconduct at every step: From the beginning at his trial when his constitutional rights were “violated in a huge way” to the end when he was “coerced” into the plea. What happened was “an embarrassment and a black mark on Clark County and the state of Nevada,” said Rasmussen, who has worked pro bono on the case since 2013.

After signing the Alford plea, Steese left prison in 2013 and struggled to put his life back together with a murder conviction on his record. He went through stints of homelessness before finding a job as a cross-country trucker with one of only two companies that accept drivers with a felony.

Sitting before the pardon commissioners Wednesday, dressed in a new gray shirt and striped tie from Walmart, Steese said he wanted them to understand “the horror I got released into” without any help from the state. Many jobs, he said, require computer skills, for example, and after two decades locked away “I couldn’t even pump gas” because of the technology. As a result, he said, he ended up living on the streets of Las Vegas.

After Steese testified, a petite, 67-year-old with short auburn curls stepped up to the podium, her hand shaking with three pages of yellow legal pad paper covered in capital letters and underlined phrases. Her name, she told the commissioners, was Kathy Nasrey and she was Soules’ sister. She had flown in from Michigan to speak on behalf of Steese.

“I am simply here to right a wrong,” she told the board, “and to restore the life of Mr. Frederick Steese, knowing my brother would want this done.”

Nasrey said she’d long believed Steese was guilty and had felt misled by the prosecution when she realized he wasn’t. Now, she said, she grappled with the knowledge that “the murderer was free and will never be held responsible for this crime.”

Her experience, she told the board, had given her “doubts about the sincerity of the Nevada legal system.”

At the hearing, Nasrey pressed the commissioners on the consequences for those responsible for Steese’s conviction: “Now that it was clear that certain lawyers and detectives helped convict an innocent man … will they be held accountable for taking away 20 years of his life?”

When Steese’s case came up for a vote, each justice of the Supreme Court voted “yes” without hesitation. Then came attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Adam Laxalt. For most of the day he had voted “no” on pardons. In this case he asked to abstain. When the governor wouldn’t allow it, Laxalt paused and then leaned into his microphone and voted “no.”

It didn’t matter. Steese simply needed a majority and the governor’s vote. Sandoval voted yes and Steese’s pardon was granted.

A Las Vegas judge ultimately approved a $1.4 million payment to the wrongfully convicted Steese.

We would like to thank ProPublica for the content. Click HERE to view the original comprehensive article.