Getting it Right

It’s been more than fourteen years since Ashley Estelle was abducted from a Plano soccer field and murdered. Michael Blair was convicted of the crime in 1994 and has been in virtual solitary confinement on Texas Death Row ever since. For eight years we’ve known the most important physical evidence used at trial to tie him to the crime was bogus. DNA testing showed that hair samples found on the child’s body and thought to be Blair’s weren’t his. Hair found in Blair’s car and linked to Ashley wasn’t hers. The case went back to the trial court to weigh the new evidence and to consider several other issues raised on appeal, Judge Nathan White sat on the case until he retired in 2006 without ever ruling on those issues. In the meantime more DNA testing demonstrated that tissue found under the girl’s fingernails isn’t from Blair either. Last April Visiting Judge Webb Biard finally ruled. He held essentially that Blair probably didn’t commit the crime but none of the new evidence proved his innocence conclusively. He sent the case back to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals with a recommendation that the conviction and sentence should stand. Now TCCA has sent it back one more time. They want the trial court to evaluate some further DNA testing that also fails to connect Blair. More important they want another look at the same issues the lower court already ruled on once. The Dallas Morning News quotes current Collin County DA John Roach calling the new order a procedural one. Procedural my foot, I’m not a lawyer but TCCA is saying in no uncertain terms Judge Biard got it wrong. He used the wrong standard. Blair doesn’t have to prove his innocence. He just has to show that "the newly discovered evidence, if true, creates a doubt as to the efficacy of the verdict sufficient to undermine confidence in the verdict and that it is probable that the verdict would be different on retrial…it is not reasonable to hold, and we reject the implication . . . that confidence in a verdict is undermined only when newly discovered evidence renders the State's case legally or constitutionally insufficient for conviction." I think TCCA is getting tired of being reversed by federal courts. This time they’ve set a forty five day time limit for the district court to reconsider. There will be no more interminable delays. Michael Blair was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury that thought hair samples tied him to Ashely Estell. They don’t. He probably isn’t guilty and he should get a new trial. Personally I don’t think a reasonable prosecutor would try the case on what’s left. Eye witness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Those placing Blair at the soccer field come from people who had never seen him before, did not see him with Ashley, saw him only at a distance, and had trouble describing him. Witness who do know Blair but the jury didn’t believe placed him at his apartment far from the soccer fields. That he volunteered to help search for Ashley proves nothing. Neither does his driving by the site after her body was discovered. The only remaining physical evidence is fiber similar to that from a toy found in Blair’s car. Such fibers could have come from thousands of toys. Blair is a confessed serial child molester but you can’t just convict the first monster that comes along, and there is no evidence Ashley was sexually molested. In any new trial Blair will be represented by attorneys a lot more experienced than his original defense team. Most prosecutors are reluctant to try cases they are likely to lose. That is written all over this one. Any new jurors are going to be left wondering who really killed that little girl, and why the state isn’t trying to find out.