Over a year later, new trial date still not scheduled in Douglas Carter's death penalty case

Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Doug Carter, 70, awaits a new trial after his death-penalty conviction was vacated.
• Judge Derek Pullan plans to retire on Dec. 6, and hopes to convene with his replacement about the trial date.
• Defense attorney Neal Hamilton criticizes delays in receiving crucial DNA evidence.

PROVO — In the year and a half since the Utah Supreme Court vacated Doug Carter's death penalty conviction, the 70-year-old has begged for just one thing.

"Let's go to trial," he said in a phone call with KSL a few days before an Aug. 26 hearing where a judge was expected to, among other things, set a new trial date. Carter said he was tired of hearings that never resolved anything.

"Any evidence (they) got, bring it on," he said from the Utah County Jail. "It will make a jury say, 'What is going on here with this case?"

More than two weeks after that hearing, the state still hasn't set a new trial date.

At the Aug. 26 hearing, Judge Derek Pullan, who retires on Dec. 6, said he wanted to make sure any date set was realistic and reliable.

"There's a lot of moving parts," he said, noting he needed to check with the judge who would replace him as the trial would take place no earlier than 2027. "We need to assess the availability of expert witnesses and then also build a schedule into this that schedules time for Mr. Carter's own DNA experts to do their work.

"With those moving parts — I've considered those — I'm going to go through the calendars. The clerk will issue a notice of the trial dates. That should come out as early as, well, no later than Monday. Could be earlier than that," Pullan said.

That self-imposed Sept. 1 deadline came and went without a trial date. The judge also hasn't issued a decision on whether Carter can post bail while he awaits a new trial, something he said he wanted to do in writing.

But Thursday, the judge did sign an order giving prosecutors 14 days to respond to discovery requests that Carter's attorney, Neal Hamilton, made in the fall of 2025 and spring of 2026.

When asked about the order, which came in response to a motion filed a day earlier, Hamilton expressed frustration.

"It's the second time he's essentially ordered them to please do their jobs," he said. "We're entitled to that information. They didn't respond. It's frustrating that it took a court order, but it also hasn't happened yet."

Hamilton said they've been willing to work with prosecutors to accommodate issues, but he said he's had no communication, of any kind, with anyone working on the case.

"It is frustrating," he said. "They are seeking the death penalty, and you know, basic functions of prosecutors, like getting the defendant discovery, we struggle with that. And it kind of makes me wonder what's happening in Utah County. I mean, are all cases treated this way, or just cases where they're trying to kill my client?"

Hamilton said Carter exercised his right to a speedy trial last year, and he doesn't understand why the state is allowed to just ignore repeated requests for information about the evidence prosecutors say they're using against him.

In fact, aside from Thursday's order, which means prosecutors have until Sept. 24 to give defense attorneys the evidence — or information about evidence — they've been seeking. All of the requests concern DNA evidence, which both prosecutors and Hamilton agreed is critical in how Carter's case will proceed.

But while Carter gave prosecutors the new DNA they asked for, his attorneys haven't received any of the information they've asked for, including allowing their own expert to look at the tests the state has already run.

Those tests seem to indicate that Carter's DNA is not on two key pieces of evidence. Hamilton said Carter gave the state new DNA evidence so the crime lab can run side-by-side comparisons with all the evidence they have from the crime scene. Both sides told Pullan that results of the DNA tests would "likely be dispositive of the case."

Hamilton doesn't know if the state isn't responding because they are waiting for DNA results. But Carter, who turns 71 next week, "doesn't have that luxury. He's lost 41 years of his life. That's enough."

Hamilton said Carter isn't asking for anything he isn't legally entitled to, and after the last hearing, he was hopeful that at a minimum, he'd get a date for a new trial.

"Doug is very, very, very frustrated," Hamilton said. "He's frustrated he allowed himself to feel hope."

Pullan is the judge who presided over the hearings on police and prosecutor misconduct and made the 2022 ruling to vacate Carter's conviction, a decision the Utah Supreme Court affirmed in May of 2025. He indicated that he wants to make critical rulings, including one Hamilton filed to suppress Carter's 1985 confession, before he retires in December.

"The clock is ticking on Judge Pullan, and as he said at the last hearing, there's no one in the state on the bench that knows this case better than him," Hamilton said. "That's why he needs to be the one to hear all these motions that need to be filed before this case goes to trial."

In an email to KSL, Pullan's clerk said the judge is working on the bail ruling.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Amy Donaldson

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Amy Donaldson is an executive producer with KSL. She reports, writes and hosts “The Letter” and co-hosts “Talking Cold.” She spent 28 years as a news and sports reporter at the Deseret News.