Utah
AG to challenge decision to overturn death row conviction
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah’s attorney general plans to file an appeal challenging a judge’s decision to overturn a death penalty conviction three years after the state’s Supreme Court ordered a new trial due to claims of prosecutorial misconduct.
Douglas Stewart Carter, 67, has been on death row since 1985, when a jury found him guilty of the aggravated murder of 57-year-old Eva Olesen, the aunt of a former Provo police chief who was found stabbed and shot in the head.
Though there was no physical evidence linking Carter to the crime scene, prosecutors secured a conviction based on a written confession from Carter, who is Black, and two witnesses who testified he had bragged about killing Olesen. Carter later argued the confession was coerced.
After decades of appeals, the Utah Supreme Court in 2019 reversed Carter’s conviction and ordered a new trial after the witnesses — Epifanio Tovar and Lucia Tovar — said police and prosecutors offered them gifts and money, coached them to lie in court and threatened them with deportation if they didn’t cooperate. The Tovars were immigrants without legal status.
Police said the funds were intended for witness protection.
The Supreme Court’s reversal drew widespread attention in Utah and renewed focus on questions about whether capital punishment should be permitted in the state. Utah was the first state to execute someone after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted its moratorium in 1976.
In his ruling overturning Carter’s conviction, Judge Derek Pullan ruled that the Tovars’ testimonies prejudiced Carter’s trial and gave Utah five days to decide whether to challenge his decision to overturn the conviction.
“The State knowingly failed to disclose that the testimony was false and coached by police. Carter’s conviction was secured — at least in part — on the basis of this false testimony,” Pullan wrote in a decision last week.
Rich Piatt, a spokesperson for the Utah Attorney General’s office said in a statement that the state planned to appeal Pullan’s ruling.
“The office has full confidence that both Carter’s conviction and death sentence will be reinstated on appeal, especially in light of the fact that Carter confessed to committing this murder,” he said.
Indiana
Judge rejects plea for alleged barn fire accomplice
ELKHART, Ind. (AP) — A judge rejected a plea agreement Monday for a woman accused of helping her boyfriend set fire to several northern Indiana barns, citing her plea deal’s lack of prison time.
Sherry Thomas, 33, of Nappanee had reached a plea agreement that includes an admission to one felony count of arson in the string of eight barn burnings. Thomas was charged last year with eight counts of arson and one felony count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Her boyfriend, Joseph Hershberger, was sentenced last week to 50 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to torching eight barns last year in Elkhart County.
But Elkhart County Superior Court Judge Stephen Bowers said Monday he rejected Thomas’ plea agreement because it doesn’t specify the length of her sentence and calls for any prison time that’s not suspended to be served in a community corrections program, The Elkhart Truth reported.
Bowers said he didn’t know what unique circumstances or issues with evidence may have led to prosecutors offering a plea with those terms. But he said he was too well acquainted with the accusations against Thomas to accept it.
“I will not accept this plea because it doesn’t call for any period of incarceration,” the judge said.
Bowers, who set Thomas’ next court appearance for Dec. 5, said he would arrange a meeting for the attorneys to discuss the terms of a new plea agreement.
Indiana
Appeals court reinstates state’s abortion burial, cremation law
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A federal appeals court has reinstated an Indiana law adopted in 2016 that requires abortion clinics to either bury or cremate fetal remains.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling released Monday overturns an Indiana judge’s decision in September that the law infringed upon the religious and free speech rights of people who do not believe aborted fetuses deserve the same treatment as deceased people.
The appeals court cited a 2019 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the fetal remains provisions of the law signed by then-Gov. Mike Pence and that the state had a legitimate interest in how those remains are disposed.
“Indiana does not require any woman who has obtained an abortion to violate any belief, religious or secular,” the appeals court ruling said. “The cremate-or-bury directive applies only to hospitals and clinics.”
Indiana’s Republican-dominated Legislature approved an abortion ban law over the summer, but abortions have been allowed to continue after a judge sided with abortion clinic operators who argue the ban violates the state constitution. The state Supreme Court is scheduled in January to hear arguments in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit against the fetal remains law was filed in 2020 on behalf of the Women’s Med Group abortion clinic in Indianapolis, its owner, two nurse practitioners who work at the clinic and three women.
Attorneys for the group didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday.
The group’s lawsuit argued Indiana’s requirements caused both abortion and miscarriage patients “shame, stigma, anguish, and anger” because they “send the unmistakable message that someone who has had an abortion or miscarriage is responsible for the death of a person.”
Republican state Attorney General Todd Rokita praised the court’s ruling as recognizing the fetal remains as more than medical waste.
“They are human beings who deserve the dignity of cremation or burial,” Rokita said in a statement. “The appellate court’s decision is a win for basic decency.”
