Utah prosecutors have abandoned their bid to execute Douglas Stewart Carter after fresh DNA testing ruled him out as the source of blood and material found on weapons used in a 1985 murder.
Carter, 71, has spent nearly four decades on death row for the killing of Eva Olesen in Provo, and his defense attorney now expects him to walk free on bond as soon as Monday. Judge Derek Pullan scheduled a bond hearing that day, with an eight-week retrial tentatively set for next July.
The new genetic analysis, delivered to prosecutors on Tuesday, excluded Carter as a contributor to blood on a doorknob and material on the handle of a knife used to stab Olesen, who was also shot, Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray acknowledged in a Wednesday court filing. Gray said the state was withdrawing its earlier notice of intent to seek the death penalty and would reexamine whether to proceed with the case at all.
Defense attorney Neal Hamilton said the prosecution should go further and drop the case entirely.
“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.”
Gray countered that the DNA results “does not necessarily exonerate Carter of the murder,” noting the handgun used to shoot Olesen was never recovered and that Carter had signed a confession. Carter has long maintained that confession was coerced.
The case against Carter rested heavily on that confession and the testimony of two witnesses who claimed he had bragged about killing Olesen, who was white. Carter is Black. No physical evidence had originally linked him to the crime scene.
Years later, the couple who testified against Carter — both living in the U.S. Without legal status — recanted, saying police and prosecutors had offered to pay their rent, coached them to lie on the stand, and threatened them and their son with deportation unless they implicated Carter.
Carter’s attorneys have also raised questions about other suspects they say were never properly investigated. Witnesses reported seeing a white man fleeing the scene, and defense documents allege an investigator suppressed evidence pointing to alternative suspects, including the victim’s husband, Orla Olesen. Prosecutors were reportedly close to charging Orla Olesen when a Provo police lieutenant asked them to hold off so he could continue investigating; Carter was identified as a suspect shortly afterward. Orla Olesen, who told police he found his wife partially undressed with her hands tied behind her back, died in 2009.
The Utah Supreme Court ordered Carter’s new trial last year, citing misconduct by investigators.
Members of Olesen’s family had testified at a hearing last month that Carter could endanger them if released. In a Thursday statement released through the Utah County Attorney’s Office, the family struck a measured tone.
“The latest developments have raised difficult questions and once again left our family without the sense of resolution we had hoped for after so many years,” the family said. “We will not comment on the guilt or innocence of any individual” while prosecutors decide their next move.
Carter remains in custody pending Monday’s bond hearing.