Death row inmate to be tried again 40 years after Provo woman's death

Yahoo

15-05-2025

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — A Utah death row inmate will be retried for the death of a Provo woman after the Utah Supreme Court affirmed the decision Thursday, saying officers violated the Constitution by coercing witnesses to falsely testify in court.
Douglas Carter was sentenced to death by a jury in 1985 for the murder of Eva Olesen in Provo. While there was no physical evidence tying him to her death, the conviction rested on witness testimonies and a confession written by the investigator and signed by Carter.
However, decades after his trial, two of the key witnesses — Epifanio and Lucia Tovar — confessed that they had been threatened by police with arrest, deportation, and the removal of their son if they did not falsely testify against Carter in court.
On Thursday, approximately 40 years after his conviction, the Utah Supreme Court sided with Carter and the postconviction court affirming that he deserves a retrial.
'The court correctly observed that because no physical evidence tied Carter to the crime scene, his confession and the Tovars' corroboration of his confession were the pillars of the State's case. And the undisclosed evidence damages both pillars,' the Court's opinion reads.
Eva Olesen, the aunt of a former Provo police chief, was found dead in her Provo residence in 1985. Her hands were tied behind her back and she had been stabbed ten times and shot once in the back of her head, court documents say.
Carter became a suspect after his wife told police she suspected he may have used her gun — which was missing — to kill Olesen.
Investigators were unable to find any physical evidence tying Carter to the murder but spoke with several witnesses who claimed Carter had confessed to the killing. The lead investigator later interrogated Carter in jail and claimed he verbally confessed to her murder.
The investigator wrote up the confession and Carter signed it.
The case has been debated now for decades as more recent evidence suggests two of the witnesses were coerced into adding false information to their testimonies.
After Carter's 1985 conviction, he appealed the sentence and was granted a new sentencing trial in 1992 where he once again was sentenced to death.
However, the second sentencing trial was also compromised as prosecutors quoted the Tovars' witness statements made during his first trial, including the parts that are now believed to be fabricated.
In 2011, the Tovars were found in Mexico and confessed they had been threatened by police in order to coerce them to testify in a specific way. Their rent, phone, groceries, and utilities were also paid for by police but they were instructed to deny it on the stand.
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Epifanio Tovar said in a later deposition that he included the lies in his testimony because 'that's what [the police] wanted me to say.'
He said he was afraid because he and his family were not legal residents in the country and he was worried if he didn't comply they would deport his family and claim he was an accomplice or the murder suspect.
'I was afraid and that's why I lied, because … if they didn't catch the guy, they would arrest me as the murderer,' he said.
Lucia Tovar said the officers had threatened them 'with arrest, deportation, and loss of their son more than three times between her first meeting … and her trial testimony.'
During the review, the officers admitted they helped the Tovars with their bills so they wouldn't leave town for employment before the trial. Evidence points to the officers having paid them more than $4,000 in benefits.
'The constitutional violations that took place during Carter's trial and resentencing are serious. It is rare to see a case involving multiple instances of intentional misconduct by two different police officers—one of them the lead investigator on the case—and a prosecutor. But that is what the postconviction court found here,' the Utah Supreme Court's opinion reads.
The court ordered a new trial in 2019, but that was not the end of it as the state filed an appeal several years later, according to the Associated Press. On May 15, 2025, the Utah Supreme Court affirmed the previous decision for a retrial.
Read the full opinion below:
Carter v. State20250515Download
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