A 71-year-old man who spent 41 years on death row in the United States has been released on bail after newly analysed DNA evidence failed to link him to the murder for which he was convicted.
Douglas Stewart Carter was convicted of killing Eva Olesen in Provo, Utah, in February 1985 and sentenced to death. Carter, who has consistently maintained his innocence, said a confession he signed during a police interrogation was obtained under coercive circumstances.
Carter’s case has remained before the courts for decades, with questions raised over the investigation, the evidence used to convict him and the conduct of some investigators and witnesses involved in the original case.
According to the BBC, the Utah Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Carter last year after citing misconduct by investigators.
The ruling opened the way for Carter to challenge the conviction that had kept him on death row for more than four decades.
A judge subsequently granted Carter bail despite objections from Olesen’s family. As part of the conditions attached to his release, Carter is required to wear a GPS monitoring device while awaiting the new trial.
Carter, who was originally from Chicago, was living with his mother in Utah when Olesen was killed. Police suspected him of carrying out the murder during a robbery.
The case centred partly on a confession Carter signed after he was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee. Carter had left Utah after believing he was a suspect in an unrelated case and was later arrested in Tennessee.
Carter’s defence has maintained that the confession was coerced during police questioning. There was also no physical evidence directly linking him to the crime scene at the time of his conviction.
A jury nevertheless convicted Carter based on the confession and testimony from two witnesses who claimed he had bragged about killing Olesen.
The credibility of those witnesses was later seriously challenged. In 2011, the two witnesses said they had been instructed to lie in court. They also alleged that police gave them money and gifts and threatened them with deportation if they refused to testify against Carter.
Carter’s lawyers also argued that other evidence had not been properly presented during the original proceedings.
They said witnesses had reported seeing a white man fleeing the scene after the killing. The defence further alleged that an investigator suppressed evidence that pointed towards Olesen’s husband, Orla Olesen, as a possible suspect.
Olesen’s husband, who died in 2009, had told police that he discovered his wife dead inside their home.
Olesen had been stabbed several times and shot in the back of the head. Investigators believed the knife used in the stabbing came from the couple’s kitchen, and the knife was found near her body.
The firearm used to shoot Olesen was never recovered.
Decades after the conviction, advances in DNA testing provided another opportunity to examine evidence from the crime scene.
Prosecutors said this month that newly analysed DNA evidence excluded Carter as a possible match to blood found on a doorknob and genetic material recovered from the handle of the knife.
The findings did not establish who committed the murder, but they provided evidence that Carter was not the source of the genetic material examined from those items.
Despite the latest DNA findings, Olesen’s family opposed Carter’s release from custody.
Theresa Olesen, Eva Olesen’s daughter-in-law, told Monday’s bond hearing that the family had serious concerns about Carter being released while awaiting a new trial.
She said the family had hoped the DNA testing would produce what she described as a concrete match to Carter.
However, she also acknowledged that the absence of a DNA match did not necessarily establish that Carter had not been present at the scene.
Carter’s defence lawyer, Neal Hamilton, has argued that the case should be dismissed rather than proceeding to another trial.
Hamilton said Carter could have been executed years earlier if the alleged misconduct by investigators had not eventually been uncovered.
The defence is now seeking to use the latest DNA findings, along with the concerns surrounding the original investigation and witness testimony, in its efforts to end the case.
Carter remains under GPS monitoring following his release and is awaiting the new trial. The case will therefore continue to focus on the evidence surrounding Olesen’s 1985 killing and whether prosecutors can establish Carter’s involvement after the conviction that kept him on death row for 41 years.