08 December 2022 :
Utah County District Court Judge Derek P. Pullan has granted a new trial to Douglas Carter, finding that prosecutors knowingly withheld from the defense evidence that police coerced false testimony from two key witnesses, coached them to lie, provided them “thousands of dollars in financial benefits” to implicate Carter, and threatened them with deportation and loss of their son if they did not cooperate.
Carter, who is black, was charged with murdering a white woman, Eva Oleson, who was the aunt of the Provo City Police Department police chief. No physical evidence linked him to the crime. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in 1985 based upon a confession to police that Carter said was false and coerced and the testimony of two witness, Epifanio and Lucia Tovar, who were in the country illegally and claimed Carter had confessed to the murder.
