The Utah's Supreme Court orders a new proceedings against men in the death cell after police claim is superfluous

Salt Lake City – The Supreme Court of Utah decided on Thursday that “numerous violations of the constitution” during the trial and the conviction of a man who has spent decades in the death cell deserves a new procedure.

The judges confirmed the decision of a judge of the lower court who ordered a new proceedings against Douglas Stewart Carter after having determined problems with how the police and the public prosecutor dealt with his case. The 69 -year -old Carter was sentenced to death in 1985 after a jury found him guilty, Eva Oilesen, the aunt of a former Provo police chief who was stabbed a dozen times and shot in the head.

While he did not link physical evidence to the crime scene, the public prosecutor's office Carter, a black man, condemned to kill Olesen, a white woman, based on a written confession and two witnesses. Carter has argued that his confession was forced.

In 2019, the Supreme Court of Utah Carter's case sent back to the lower court for review after the witnesses – two immigrants without legal status – said that the police and the public prosecutor offered to pay their rent, they trained in court and threatened to deport them if they did not get involved in Carter.

Judge Derek Pullan ordered a new procedure in 2022 and said that the testimony and the misconduct of the police had biased the original process. The general prosecutor's office in Utah appealed and led to the decision of the High Court on Thursday.

“There is no question that these numerous constitutional violations – suppress the evidence, did not correct myid and knowingly incorrect testimony – carter both in his process and the conviction,” wrote Justice Paige Petersen in the opinion of the High Court.

She added to see a case in which two police officers, including the senior investigator and a public prosecutor, included “several cases of willful misconduct”. The Provo police, George Pierpont, had received Carter's confession, and Officer Richard Mack collected testimony. The post -mail court also found that the public prosecutor Wayne Watson was present when the police stated a witness, and that he did not correct the wrong certificate during the trial.

Carter stays in prison while waiting for a new process, said his lawyer Eric Zuckerman.

“Mr. Carter has spent more than forty years behind bars because an unconstitutional conviction in the police and the public prosecutor is rooted – including the accommodation of myid in front of a jury of his colleagues,” said Zuckerman in a statement. “We are pleased that both the court and the Supreme Court of Utah have confirmed Mr. Carter's claims. But no judgment can restore the four decades of freedom that the state of Utah wrongly took away from him.”

Carter belongs to several occupants involved in a separate lawsuit that questions the execution methods and protocols in Utah.

Olesen's family has repeatedly frustrated that the decades of murder has not yet been completed.

“We extend our heart and compassion for the family of Eva Olesen, who has been looking for justice for their murder in the past 40 years,” said Madison McMicken, spokesman for the General Prosecutor of Utah, Derek Brown. “We are disappointed that the Olesen family has no solution in this case.”