Death penalty taken off table in Utah murder retrial after DNA findings
FILE-a judge's gavel is shown in a courtroom. (Photo by MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images)
Utah prosecutors will not seek the death penalty in a retrial of a 71-year-old man who spent decades on death row for a murder in 1985 in which newly examined DNA evidence didn’t match him.
Douglas Stewart Carter was sentenced to death in 1985 after a jury found him guilty of killing Eva Olesen. In 2025, the state Supreme Court ordered a new trial referencing misconduct by investigators. Carter is still in custody and has maintained his innocence, according to The Associated Press.
Utah death row retrial
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No physical evidence connected Douglas Stewart Carter to the crime scene, but a jury convicted Carter, a Black man, based on a signed confession and two witnesses who said he allegedly bragged about murdering Eva Olesen, a white woman, who was the aunt of a former Provo police chief.
According to The Associated Press, Carter claimed his signed confession was forced and the two witnesses he allegedly bragged to, a couple living in the United States without legal status, stated 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 in murder.
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Carter’s defense attorneys also tell the AP that witnesses saw a white man leaving the crime scene and that an investigator concealed evidence pointing to other suspects, including Eva Olesen husband, Orla.
The AP noted that Carter’s lawyers allege prosecutors were close to filing charges against Orla Olesen, but a Provo police lieutenant asked them not to, so he could continue investigating.
Carter allegedly was later identified as a suspect, according to court documents obtained by the AP.
Orla Olesen, who died in 2009, told authorities he discovered his wife dead in their home, partially undressed and with her hands tied behind her back.
A judge set a bond hearing for Sept. 28, when a defense attorney for Carter stated he expects his client to be released pending an eight-week trial scheduled to begin in July 2027.
The Source: Information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, which cites court documents in the case and comments from defense attorneys for Douglas Stewart Carter. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.