Black Man Released From Death Row After Crime Scene DNA Doesn’t Match Him 

In news that yet again justifies distrust in the American justice system, a Black man in Utah who spent over 40 years on death row was released this week after DNA evidence from the crime scene didn’t match him.

CBS News reports that 71-year-old Douglas Stewart Carter was sentenced to death in 1985 over the murder of Eva Olesen. Olesen was the aunt of Provo’s police chief at the time. Carter had unsuccessfully filed appeals over the last four decades and was sentenced to death once more in a 1992 retrial.

So what changed? 

Well, for starters, a lot of evidence has come out pointing to misconduct by the officers involved in the original investigation. Carter has consistently said that he was coerced into signing a confession. He was living with his mother in Provo at the time of the killing and fled the state as he believed he was a suspect in an unrelated assault. Authorities arrested Carter in Nashville, Tennessee, along with his friend, and the two were detained for two days.

“They don’t house men and women together. So Doug was literally kept with a front-row seat of the consequences of his failure to confess,” Defense attorney Neal Hamilton told CBS News. “Doug said and has always said that the only reason he confessed was to save his friend.”

Two of the witnesses who said they saw Carter flee the scene of the murder recanted their testimony in 2011. The witnesses allege that Provo police officers gave them cash and gifts with the agreement they would lie in court and not disclose the payments. One of the witnesses said that the police threatened to deport them and their son if they didn’t implicate Carter. 

No physical evidence linked Carter to the murder, and he was convicted solely on the testimony of the two witnesses. As a result of this alleged misconduct, the state Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Carter last year. 

The final piece that led to Carter’s release was DNA analysis that came back last week, revealing Carter’s DNA didn’t match samples found on a doorknob in Olesen’s house or on the knife that was used to stab her. Judge Derek Pullan said that the lack of physical evidence undermined the case against Carter, but said a reasonable jury could still convict him- which, like, how? If the testimony that incarcerated him was recanted, and there’s no physical evidence linking him to the crime, what exactly would a conviction be based on? 

Pullan ordered Carter’s release on the condition he wears a GPS monitor and avoids contact with the Olesen family. Carter will be placed in an extended-stay hotel near his son’s family, who was adopted and wasn’t informed about his father’s conviction until years later. Hamilton said that Carter will also need therapy to process the decades he lost while incarcerated. 

“It’s not just as simple as, ‘Let’s let him go,'” Hamilton said. “He’s being released with 41 years of state-induced trauma and the effect it will have on him is very real.” 

While it looks increasingly unlikely that Carter committed the crime, his defense attorneys have argued that the real suspect has been known all along. 

From CBS News:

Carter’s defense attorneys have said witnesses saw a White man fleeing the crime scene and an investigator suppressed evidence pointing to other suspects, including the victim’s husband, Orla Olesen.

They allege that prosecutors were close to filing charges against the husband, but a Provo police lieutenant asked them not to so he could continue investigating. Carter was identified as a suspect soon after, according to court documents.

Orla Olesen, a painting contractor who died in 2009, told police he found his wife dead in their home, partially undressed and with her hands tied behind her back.

Theresa Olesen, daughter-in-law of the victim, told reporters she had “serious concerns” about Carter being released. “By golly we were hoping for a concrete match,” Olesen said of the DNA analysis. “It doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.”

“There are other factors, and hopefully the investigation will continue,” she added. “We just want justice for Eva. And if he had any part of it, we want that to be known.”

Given everything being alleged about how the case was handled, I feel those “serious concerns” should be directed at the police officers responsible for seeking justice for Eva. If only half of what’s being alleged is true, it looks like Provo police officers scapegoated an innocent Black man to prevent a white man from facing the consequences of his actions. 

If that ain’t America in a nutshell, I don’t know what is. 

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