A 71-year-old American man who spent 41 years on death row has been granted bail after new DNA analysis excluded him as a possible contributor to evidence recovered from a murder scene.
Douglas Stewart Carter was convicted of murdering Eva Olesen in Provo, Utah, in February 1985 and sentenced to death. He had consistently maintained his innocence, arguing that police coerced him into signing a confession during interrogation.
According to the BBC, a judge granted Carter bail on Monday despite objections from the victim’s family. He is required to wear a GPS monitoring device while awaiting a new trial.
The Utah Supreme Court ordered a retrial last year over misconduct by investigators in the case.
Prosecutors said this month that DNA analysis had excluded Carter as a possible match for blood found on a doorknob and genetic material recovered from the handle of a knife found near Olesen’s body.
Olesen was stabbed multiple times and shot in the back of the head at her home. The gun used in the killing was never recovered.
Carter, originally from Chicago, was living with his mother in Utah when the murder occurred. Police suspected him of killing Olesen during a robbery.
He later left Utah after believing he was a suspect in an unrelated case and was eventually arrested in Nashville, Tennessee, where he signed a confession during police interrogation.
However, investigators had no physical evidence directly linking him to the crime scene. A jury convicted him based on his confession and testimony from two witnesses who claimed he had boasted about the killing.
The two witnesses subsequently recanted their accounts in 2011, alleging that police had instructed them to lie in court, given them cash and gifts, and threatened them with deportation if they refused to testify against Carter.
Carter’s lawyers also argued that witnesses had seen a white man fleeing the scene and accused an investigator of suppressing evidence that pointed to Olesen’s husband, Orla Olesen, as a possible suspect.
Orla Olesen, who died in 2009, had told police that he discovered his wife’s body at their home.
The victim’s family opposed Carter’s release, expressing concern about his freedom while awaiting retrial. The family also maintained that the DNA findings did not establish that he had not been at the scene.
Carter’s defence lawyer, Neal Hamilton, called for the case to be dismissed, arguing that the alleged investigative misconduct could have resulted in his client’s execution had it not been uncovered.
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