A Utah judge on Monday ordered a 71-year-old man who spent decades on death row for a 1985 killing to be released on bail, despite objections from the victim's family, after prosecutors said newly analyzed DNA evidence did not match him.
Douglas Stewart Carter was sentenced to death that same year after a jury found him guilty of murdering Eva Olesen, an aunt of the Provo police chief at the time.
The state Supreme Court ordered a new trial last year,
citing misconduct by investigators. Carter has maintained his innocence and says a signed confession was coerced.
No physical evidence linked him to the crime scene, but the jury convicted Carter, a Black man, based on the confession and two witnesses who said he bragged about killing Olesen, who was white. Those witnesses later recanted.
A DNA analysis received Sept. 22 excluded Carter as a possible match to blood found on a doorknob and genetic material recovered from the handle of a knife used to stab Olesen, who was also shot.
Judge Derek Pullan said those results further undermined the case against Carter, but a reasonable jury still could conclude that he killed Olesen.
Pullan ordered Carter to wear a GPS monitor as a condition of his release, and to avoid contact with Olesen's family. Defense attorney Neal Hamilton said Carter was expected to be fitted with the monitor and released Monday night.
Carter will be placed in an extended stay accommodation near the family of his son, who was adopted by another family as an infant and didn't learn about the conviction until years later, Hamilton said. Carter also will need therapy to deal with his extended incarceration, the defense attorney said.
“It's not just as simple as, ‘Let’s let him go,'" Hamilton said. “He's being released with 41 years of state-induced trauma and the effect it will have on him is very real.”
Pullan had scheduled a two-month retrial for 2027, but last week Utah County prosecutors withdrew a notice that they intended to seek the death penalty.
Utah County prosecutor Erwin Petilos told the judge Monday that reassessing Carter’s bail was “necessary and fair” as the state continues to look at the remaining evidence in the case.
Carter, a Chicago native, had been living with his mother in Utah at the time of Olesen’s killing on Feb. 27, 1985. Court documents indicate the investigation eventually focused on Carter, who was suspected of killing Olesen during a robbery.
By that April, Carter had fled Utah believing he was a suspect in an unrelated assault case, according to court documents. He was apprehended that June in Nashville, Tennessee, where Carter signed a confession while under interrogation from a Provo detective.
Carter said later that he had given a false confession after being repeatedly threatened by police. He was convicted and sentenced to death after a trial in which the defense called no witnesses. He was again sentenced to death after a 1992 retrial, and courts in Utah rejected numerous appeals from Carter in subsequent years.
A turning point came in 2011, when the two witnesses at his original trial were tracked down in Mexico. They said they had been told to lie in court and were given cash and gifts by police who told them not to disclose the payments. They also said police and prosecutors threatened them and their son with deportation if they did not implicate Carter.
More than a decade of legal wrangling followed before the Utah Supreme Court last year ordered a new trial, citing “multiple instances of intentional misconduct” by police and a prosecutor. A DNA analysis of the evidence was conducted in response to that order and prosecutors said the results arrived last week. They declined Monday to say whether they're using the DNA evidence to search for other suspects with matching DNA.
Carter's defense attorneys have said witnesses saw a white man fleeing the crime scene and an investigator suppressed evidence pointing to other suspects, including the victim’s husband, Orla Olesen.
They allege that prosecutors were close to filing charges against the husband, but a Provo police lieutenant asked them not to so he could continue investigating. Carter was identified as a suspect soon after, according to court documents.
Orla Olesen, a painting contractor who died in 2009, told police he found his wife dead in their home, partially undressed and with her hands tied behind her back.
Theresa Olesen, a daughter-in-law of Eva Olesen, said during Monday's bond hearing that her family had "serious concerns" about Carter's release.
“By golly we were hoping for a concrete match,” Olesen said of the DNA analysis. “It doesn't mean he wasn't there."
“We just want justice for Eva. And if he had any part of it we want that to be known,” she added.
