Man on death row for decades released on bail after DNA tests show no match to him

A Utah judge has ordered a 71-year-old man to be released on bail after he spent decades on death row for a 1985 killing 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 murd£ring 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.

Defense attorney Neal Hamilton said 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. Carter will also need therapy to deal with his extended incarceration, 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.”

Judge Derek 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.

The prosecutors said results of a DNA analysis received September 22 exclude 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.

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 February 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 by 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.