A 71-year-old man who spent 41 years on death row in the United States after being convicted of murdering a woman has been released on bail after prosecutors said newly analysed DNA evidence did not link him to the crime.
Douglas Stewart Carter was convicted of killing Eva Olesen in Provo, Utah, in February 1985 and sentenced to death, despite maintaining that he was innocent and that a confession he signed during police interrogation was coerced.
According to the BBC on Tuesday, the Utah Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Carter last year, citing misconduct by investigators.
A judge on Monday granted Carter bail despite objections from Olesen’s family. He is required to wear a GPS monitor while awaiting the new trial.
Olesen, the aunt of a local police chief, was stabbed multiple times and shot in the back of the head at her home.
Carter, who is originally from Chicago, was living with his mother in Utah at the time. Court documents showed that police suspected him of killing Olesen during a robbery.
Carter fled Utah after believing he was a suspect in an unrelated case and was later arrested in Nashville, Tennessee, where he signed a confession during interrogation.
However, there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime scene.
He was convicted by a jury based on the confession and testimony from two witnesses who claimed he had bragged about the killing.
The two witnesses later said in 2011 that they had been instructed to lie in court, given cash and gifts by police and threatened with deportation if they did not testify against Carter.
Carter’s lawyers also said witnesses had seen a white man fleeing the scene and alleged that an investigator suppressed evidence pointing to Olesen’s husband, Orla Olesen, as a possible suspect.
Orla Olesen, who died in 2009, had told police that he found his wife dead in their home.
The victim’s stab wounds were believed to have been inflicted with a knife from the couple’s kitchen, which was found near her body. The gun used in the killing was not recovered.
Prosecutors this month said DNA analysis had excluded Carter as a possible match to blood found on a doorknob and genetic material recovered from the knife handle.
Carter’s release was opposed by Olesen’s family.
Theresa Olesen, Eva Olesen’s daughter-in-law, told Monday’s bond hearing that her family had “serious concerns” about Carter’s release and said he should remain in custody pending a new trial.
“By golly we were hoping for a concrete match,” Olesen said of the DNA analysis. “It doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.”
Carter’s defence lawyer, Neal Hamilton, called for the case to be dismissed.
“If the state of Utah had their way, he would have been executed 15, 20 years ago before we discovered the misconduct,” he told Associated Press.
