Douglas Stewart Carter spent nearly 40 years on death row for a murder that he says he didn’t commit. On Monday, the 71-year-old walked out of a Utah jail on bail after new DNA tests failed to link him to evidence from the crime scene.
Carter was convicted of killing Eva Olesen in her Provo, Utah, home back in 1985. That conviction and death sentence were overturned last year because of misconduct in the original case. But he still faces a murder charge.
The latest tests excluded Carter as a possible source of blood found on a doorknob at the crime scene. They also excluded him as a match for genetic material recovered from the handle of the knife used to stab Olesen, who was also shot.
Prosecutors responded by withdrawing their plan to seek the death penalty at a new trial, CBS reports. They’re currently reassessing the evidence, though they’ve stressed that the DNA result doesn’t, by itself, fully establish Carter’s innocence.
Olesen’s family opposed his release. Her daughter-in-law Theresa told the court that they had ‘serious concerns’ over it and said that the absence of a DNA match didn’t prove Carter had never been at the house.
‘We just want justice for Eva,’ she said. ‘And if he had any part of it we want that to be known.’
Olesen was found dead in her home on February 27, 1985, with her hands tied behind her back. Her husband, Orla, told police that he had discovered her body.
Carter was living with his mother in Utah at the time. Police apprehended him in Nashville, Tennessee, that June and he signed a confession while being questioned by a Provo detective.
He has maintained that the confession was false and that police repeatedly threatened him.
His lawyer, Neal Hamilton, told CBS News last year that Carter believed confessing would protect a friend who had been arrested with him.
No physical evidence connected Carter to Olesen’s home at his trial. The prosecution relied on his confession and two witnesses who said that he had bragged about killing her.
A jury convicted him and he was sentenced to be executed in 1985. His murder conviction survived an appeal, but his death sentence was overturned because of an error in the jury instructions; a second sentencing hearing in 1992 again resulted in a death sentence.
Years later, the two witnesses said that police officers had given them financial help and told them to hide it from the jury. One also testified that an investigator had coached him to make a false claim about what Carter said on the night of the killing.
A court subsequently found that police had provided the witnesses with about $4,000 in assistance that the defense had never been told about.
It found that the prosecution had failed to correct false testimony, undermining confidence in Carter’s conviction and sentence. Contributing, in no small part, to the recent turn of events.
In May 2025, the state’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling that overturned Carter’s conviction and death sentence and ordered a new trial. He was then moved from Utah State Prison to Utah County Jail while the case awaited a new trial.
The DNA findings brought his custody back before Judge Derek Pullan on Monday. The judge said that they further weakened the case against Carter, though a reasonable jury could still find him guilty.
Pullan granted bail on the condition that Carter wears a GPS monitor and has absolutely no contact with Olesen’s family. A retrial had been scheduled for 2027, but prosecutors are reviewing whether to continue with the case.
Hamilton said that Carter would stay in extended-stay accommodation near his son’s family. His son was adopted as an infant and didn’t learn of his father’s conviction until years later.
The lawyer said that Carter would need therapy after 41 years in custody.
His release is a pretty remarkable change in a case that remains open, both for Carter and for Olesen’s family. How it resolves, only time – and the legal system of Utah – will tell.