Utah
Utah to challenge decision overturning death row conviction
Protection lawyer Mark Moffat, left, clears a spot on the desk for dying row inmate Douglas Stewart Carter throughout a listening to in Provo’s 4th District Court docket in October 2007. Utah’s lawyer common plans to file an attraction difficult a choose’s resolution to overturn a dying penalty conviction three years after the state’s Supreme Court docket ordered a brand new trial. (Al Hartmann, Pool picture)
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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s lawyer common plans to file an attraction difficult a choose’s resolution to overturn a dying penalty conviction three years after the state’s Supreme Court docket ordered a brand new trial because of claims of prosecutorial misconduct.
Douglas Stewart Carter, 67, has been on dying row since 1985, when a jury discovered him responsible of the aggravated homicide of 57-year-old Eva Olesen, the aunt of a former Provo police chief who was discovered stabbed and shot within the head.
Although there was no bodily proof linking Carter to the crime scene, prosecutors secured a conviction based mostly on a written confession from Carter, who’s Black, and two witnesses who testified he had bragged about killing Olesen. Carter later argued the confession was coerced.
After many years of appeals, the Utah Supreme Court docket in 2019 reversed Carter’s conviction and ordered a brand new trial after the witnesses — Epifanio Tovar and Lucia Tovar — stated police and prosecutors provided them presents and cash, coached them to lie in court docket and threatened them with deportation in the event that they did not cooperate. The Tovars have been immigrants with out authorized standing.
Police stated the funds have been supposed for witness safety.
The Supreme Court docket’s reversal drew widespread consideration in Utah and renewed deal with questions on whether or not capital punishment must be permitted within the state. Utah was the primary state to execute somebody after the U.S. Supreme Court docket lifted its moratorium in 1976.
In his ruling overturning Carter’s conviction, Choose Derek Pullan dominated that the Tovars’ testimonies prejudiced Carter’s trial and gave Utah 5 days to resolve whether or not to problem his resolution to overturn the conviction.
“The State knowingly didn’t disclose that the testimony was false and coached by police. Carter’s conviction was secured — at the least partly — on the premise of this false testimony,” Pullan wrote in a choice final week.
Wealthy Piatt, a spokesman for the Utah Lawyer Normal’s Workplace, stated in a press release that the state deliberate to attraction Pullan’s ruling.
“The workplace has full confidence that each Carter’s conviction and dying sentence will likely be reinstated on attraction, particularly in mild of the truth that Carter confessed to committing this homicide,” he stated.