Prosecutors are dropping their plan to seek the death penalty in an upcoming retrial of a Utah man who spent decades on death row for a 1985 killing in which newly analyzed DNA evidence did not match him.
Douglas Stewart Carter, 71, was sentenced to death in 1985 after a jury found him guilty of murdering Eva Olesen, the aunt of a former Provo police chief. The state Supreme Court last year ordered a new trial, citing misconduct by investigators. Carter remains in custody and maintains his innocence.
No physical evidence linked him to the crime scene, but the jury convicted Carter, a Black man, based on a signed confession and two witnesses who said he had bragged about killing Olesen, who was white.
Carter’s attorney, Neal Hamilton, on Thursday urged prosecutors to dismiss the charges and requested a bond hearing. Hamilton said he expects his client to be released pending an eight-week trial set to begin next July.
“It’s not time to try to save face and continue with a tainted prosecution,” Hamilton said. “They know they don’t have a case. The moral obligation is to dismiss.”
Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray said in a Wednesday court filing that the state was withdrawing an earlier notice that it intended to seek the death penalty. He said results of a DNA analysis received Tuesday excluded Carter as a possible match to blood found on a doorknob and material found on the handle of a knife used to stab Olesen, who was also shot.
Gray said the state planned to reexamine its decision to move forward with the case. But the prosecutor added that the new evidence “does not necessarily exonerate Carter of the murder.” Gray noted the handgun used to shoot Olesen was never found and Carter confessed.
Carter argued his signed confession was coerced. The two witnesses he allegedly bragged to — a couple living in the U.S. without legal status — said years later that police and prosecutors offered to pay their rent, coached them to lie in court and threatened them and their son with deportation if they did not implicate Carter.
His defense attorneys also say witnesses saw a white man fleeing the crime scene and that an investigator suppressed evidence pointing to other suspects, including the victim’s husband, Orla Olesen. They allege 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, the document alleges.
Orla Olesen, who died in 2009, had told police he found his wife dead in their home, partially undressed and with her hands tied behind her back.