January 1, DNA Clears Utah Man After Decades on Death Row

Wyatt’s Take

• DNA testing proved a man spent decades on death row for a crime he did not commit.
• Police misconduct and witness bribery destroyed years of this man’s life.
• Working families pay the price when the justice system gets it wrong.

A Utah man walked free after spending decades on death row when new DNA tests showed he had nothing to do with a 1985 murder.

Douglas Stewart Carter, 71, was released on bail Monday night over the protests of the victim’s family. He must wear a GPS monitor while he waits for a new trial in the killing of Eva Olesen, who was found tied up, stabbed, and shot inside her Provo home on Feb. 27, 1985.

A judge ordered Carter to have no contact with the Olesen family.

The Utah Supreme Court ordered a new trial last year after pointing to misconduct by investigators.

Carter has always said he was innocent and that police forced him to sign a confession.

No physical evidence ever tied Carter to the crime scene. The jury convicted him on the confession and the word of two witnesses who later admitted they lied for cash and gifts from police.

DNA results received on Sept. 22 ruled out Carter as the source of blood on a doorknob and genetic material on the knife used in the attack.

Judge Derek Pullan said the new evidence hurt the case against Carter but left open the possibility that a jury could still convict him.

“This is going to be a lot for him,” Carter’s son, Tyler Anger, said Monday as he waited for his father.

Carter will stay in an extended-stay hotel near Anger, who was adopted as an infant and only learned about his father’s conviction years later, according to Carter’s attorney, Neal Hamilton.

Carter will need therapy after so many years behind bars, Hamilton said.

“If the state of Utah had their way, he would have been executed 15, 20 years ago before we discovered the misconduct,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton also called on prosecutors to drop the aggravated murder charge still pending against Carter.

A retrial had been set for next year, but prosecutors dropped plans to seek the death penalty last week.

Utah County prosecutor Erwin Petilos told the judge Monday that reviewing Carter’s bail was “necessary and fair” while the state looks at the remaining evidence.

Carter was living with his mother in Utah when Olesen was killed. By April 1985 he had left the state, thinking he was a suspect in a different case. He was picked up two months later in Nashville and signed a confession after hours of questioning by a Provo detective.

Carter later said police threatened him until he falsely admitted to the crime.

He was convicted and sentenced to death after a trial where his defense called no witnesses. He received the death sentence again after a 1992 retrial.

In 2011 the two witnesses from the first trial were found in Mexico. They admitted police paid them cash and gifts to lie and threatened them with deportation if they refused to implicate Carter.

More than a decade of legal fights 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 came after that ruling.

Prosecutors would not say if they will use the DNA to look for other suspects.

Carter’s attorneys, who note that he is Black, said witnesses saw a White man running from the scene and that an investigator hid evidence that could point to other people, including the victim’s husband, Orla Olesen.

Prosecutors were close to charging the husband, but a Provo police lieutenant asked them to hold off so he could keep investigating, the defense said. Carter then became the focus.

Orla Olesen, who died in 2009, told police he found his wife dead, partially undressed, with her hands tied behind her back.

Theresa Olesen, a daughter-in-law of Eva Olesen, told the judge Monday her family had “serious concerns” about Carter’s release.

“By golly we were hoping for a concrete match,” Olesen said of the DNA test. “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.

Wyatt Matters

Families across Middle America count on the justice system to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. When police and prosecutors cut corners or play games with evidence, honest people lose decades of their lives and the real criminals stay free.