Law v. Justice

They aren’t the same thing you know. In some ways it’s like the difference between a strike and a foul ball. But this isn’t baseball. This time a man’s life is at stake. This time the law has failed the standard most of us would hold justice to. It happened last week in Collin County. Trial Judge Nathan White retired in December and Judge Webb Biard was appointed to review new facts in the case, a review Judge White sat on for years. Judge Biard recommended that Ashley Estell’s convicted killer, though probably not guilty of the crime, be denied a new trial. In essence he ruled that under the law Michael Blair should be executed for a murder he may well not have committed. It was a notorious case that many of us remember. I thought Blair was guilty. A lot of us did and so did the jury. Ashley was a beautiful child and Blair was a known child molester. That he was even out on parole was a bureaucratic blunder. It didn’t take much evidence to convince us all he did it. We were most likely wrong. Judge Biard didn’t consider the moral issue at hand, whether the original trial jury, or any reasonable jury, might have reached a different verdict had they known what we know now. What we now know is the principle physical evidence used to convict Blair has been discredited. Hair originally thought to tie him to the crime does not. That much has been proved by DNA testing. The forensic scientist who testified that it did had been involuntarily committed to a mental institution at the time. Neither the jury nor the defense knew that at trial. Whether it might have made a difference, or whether the state knowingly concealed it is a matter of some question but it would have certainly been a topic of interest to a competent defense. Prosecutors are left with a thin case. There are witnesses that place Blair at a soccer tournament where Ashley was abducted. None of them knew Blair, saw him up close, were able to accurately describe him, or saw him with the child. Such eye witness accounts are notoriously unreliable but unlike other unreliable evidence remain admissible under court rules. Blair has other witnesses who place him away from the scene. Jurors didn’t believe them. What physical evidence remains amounts to fibers found on Ashley and in Blair’s car that could have come from one of her toys, from toys he might have used to lure her to his car, or from any of a thousand other sources. The most damning evidence may have come from Blair’s own testimony. He doesn’t see anything wrong with consensual sexual contact between himself and underage girls, certainly not with mere fondling. He believes young girls he thought about abducting but didn’t are proof of his innocence. His victims are still alive and there is no evidence Ashley was sexually molested. The point would be lost on most of us. So would Judge Biard’s. He relies on the very closely reasoned argument that it is not enough in an appeal to cast doubt on the condemned man’s guilt. A claim of innocence must be supported by unquestionable proof. A jury is held to reasonable doubt but that standard is left for them to interpret. On appeal the standard rises. New evidence must be shown to be not merely likely to affect a jury’s deliberations but to positively demand a not guilty verdict. The convicted becomes not presumed innocent until proved guilty. He is guilty until proved innocent. Michael Blair has not been proved innocent. He may yet pay with his life. That’s the law. It is not justice.