Douglas Stewart Carter was sentenced to death in 1985 after a jury convicted him of killing Eva Olesen.
UTAH, USA — A Utah judge on Monday ordered the release on bail of a 71-year-old man who has spent decades on death row for a 1985 murder, despite objections from the victim’s family. Prosecutors said newly analyzed DNA evidence does not match him.
Carter received the death sentence that year after jurors found him guilty of murdering Olesen, who was the aunt of Provo’s police chief at the time.
The Utah Supreme Court ordered a new trial last year, citing misconduct by investigators. Carter has consistently maintained that he is innocent and said police coerced him into signing a confession.
Although no physical evidence connected Carter to the crime scene, the jury convicted him based on his confession and testimony from two witnesses who said he had boasted about killing Olesen, a white woman. Both witnesses later withdrew their statements.
An analysis received Sept. 22 ruled out Carter as a possible source of blood found on a doorknob and genetic material recovered from the handle of the knife used to stab Olesen, who had also been shot.
Judge Derek Pullan said the DNA findings further weakened the prosecution’s case, although he determined that a reasonable jury could still find Carter responsible for Olesen’s death.
Prosecutors are reconsidering the case
As a condition of release, Pullan ordered Carter to wear a GPS monitor and have no contact with Olesen’s relatives. Defense attorney Neal Hamilton said Carter was expected to receive the monitor and leave custody Monday night.
Hamilton said Carter will stay in an extended-stay facility near his son’s family. The son was adopted as an infant by another family and did not learn about Carter’s conviction until years later. Carter will also undergo therapy to address the effects of his prolonged imprisonment, Hamilton 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 set a two-month retrial for 2027. But last week, Utah County prosecutors withdrew a notice stating that they planned to seek the death penalty again.
Utah County prosecutor Erwin Petilos told the judge Monday that revisiting Carter’s bail was “necessary and fair” while the state continues reviewing the remaining evidence.
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Carter, who is from Chicago, was living with his mother in Utah when Olesen was killed on Feb. 27, 1985. Court records show that investigators eventually focused on Carter, suspecting him of killing Olesen during a robbery.
By April, Carter had left Utah because he believed he was wanted in an unrelated assault case, according to court documents. Authorities arrested him in Nashville, Tennessee, that June, where he signed a confession during questioning by a Provo detective.
Carter later said police repeatedly threatened him and that he confessed falsely as a result. He was convicted and sentenced to death after a trial in which his defense called no witnesses. A 1992 retrial also ended with a death sentence, and Utah courts rejected numerous appeals in the years that followed.
Key witnesses say police gave them cash and gifts
The case took a major turn in 2011, when the two witnesses from Carter’s original trial were located in Mexico. They said police had instructed them to lie in court, paid them in cash and gifts, and warned them not to reveal the payments. The witnesses also said police and prosecutors threatened to deport them and their son unless they implicated Carter.
More than a decade of legal disputes followed before the Utah Supreme Court ordered a new trial last year, citing “multiple instances of intentional misconduct” by police and a prosecutor. The DNA testing was conducted in response to that ruling, and prosecutors said the results arrived last week. They declined Monday to say whether investigators would use the findings to search for other suspects whose DNA matches the evidence.
Victim’s husband was potential suspect
Carter’s attorneys have said witnesses saw a white man fleeing the scene. They also allege that an investigator suppressed evidence pointing to other possible suspects, including Olesen’s husband, Orla Olesen.
According to court documents, the defense claims prosecutors were close to charging the husband until a Provo police lieutenant asked them to hold off so he could continue investigating. Carter was identified as a suspect soon afterward.
Orla Olesen, a painting contractor who died in 2009, told police that he discovered his wife dead inside their home. She was partially undressed, with her hands bound 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.
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