CARTER, 70, told Judge Derek Pullan that “Legally, enough is enough,” as his case moved back through pretrial hearings in Provo, Utah, following the Utah Supreme Court’s order last year for a new trial. The hearing came after decades on death row for a murder conviction that Carter and his lawyers have long challenged, including on grounds that evidence used against him was tainted.
Carter was sentenced to death in 1985 after a jury convicted him of murdering Eva Olesen, the aunt of a former Provo police chief. Prosecutors said at the time that no physical evidence tied Carter to the crime scene, but jurors nonetheless convicted him based on a signed confession and testimony from two witnesses who said he bragged about killing Olesen. Carter argued that his confession was coerced, and he also disputed the credibility of the witnesses later identified as having been pressured by law enforcement and prosecutors.
In 2022, Judge Pullan reversed Carter’s conviction, and the Utah Supreme Court affirmed that reversal last May, concluding that “numerous constitutional violations” required a retrial. Carter remained in prison while the retrial proceedings were pending, and the judge scheduled a bond hearing for June, according to the filings and hearing described in court reporting.
In the new motion filed Friday, Carter’s defense again sought to end the case before the retrial proceeds. Carter’s attorneys said he “spent over 40 years on death row for a crime which he, and the evidence, says he did not commit,” framing their request as a dismissal rather than another delay. Prosecutors, for their part, have maintained that the case should not be dismissed.
The defense said the prior investigation included actions they described as coercive. The witnesses, described as a couple living in the United States without legal status, said years later that police and prosecutors offered to pay their rent, coached them to lie in court and threatened them and their son with deportation if they did not implicate Carter, according to the court history summarized in the AP reporting.
The new filing also raised a separate evidentiary theory, according to the motion described in reporting: Carter’s lawyers argued that an investigator suppressed evidence pointing to other suspects, including Orla Olesen, the victim’s husband. The defense alleged that prosecutors had been close to filing charges against Orla Olesen but that a Provo police lieutenant asked them not to so the lieutenant could continue investigating; the motion also alleges Carter was identified as a suspect soon after.
The motion further drew attention to materials the state said it might not have, including evidence tied to Orla Olesen’s polygraph test and items seized during the investigation. In court filings last week, prosecutors said they were not sure whether Provo police still had the tape recording of Orla Olesen’s polygraph test and also said the state does not have the clothes seized from him. Prosecutors said they did not have information on any other items of Orla Olesen that may have been taken as evidence.
The case also remains anchored in the original account of what happened to Eva Olesen. Orla Olesen told police that he found his wife dead in their home, partially undressed and with her hands tied behind her back; court documents described her as having been stabbed 10 times and shot in the back of the head. Orla Olesen died in 2009.
The Provo Police Department and prosecutors with the Utah County Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment Friday, and prosecutors had not filed a response to the motion described in the reporting. With the bond hearing scheduled for June, Carter’s defense is pressing the argument that, in light of the earlier reversals and ongoing disputes over evidence, the retrial should not go forward at all.