Douglas Stewart Carter, 71, has been ordered released on bail after spending decades on Utah’s death row, after DNA tests excluded him as a possible match in the 1985 killing of Eva Olesen.
Olesen was found stabbed and shot in her Provo home on Feb. 27, 1985.
Carter was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985, and again after a 1992 retrial.
He has long said the confession he gave a Provo detective in Nashville, Tennessee, was false and followed repeated police threats.
In 2011, two trial witnesses located in Mexico said police told them to lie, paid them in cash and gifts, and threatened them with deportation.
Last year, the Utah Supreme Court ordered a new trial, citing “multiple instances of intentional misconduct” by police and the prosecutor.
Test results that arrived Sept. 22 excluded Carter from blood on a doorknob and genetic material on the knife handle.
Prosecutors dropped the death penalty last week, and a retrial is set for 2027.
Judge Derek Pullan ordered Carter to wear a GPS monitor and avoid contact with Olesen’s family.
Theresa Olesen, the victim’s daughter-in-law, raised “serious concerns” about the release. “It doesn’t mean he wasn’t there,” she said.
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