The Collin County court in Texas has dis­missed cap­i­tal mur­der charges against Michael Blair who had been on death row for the 1993 mur­der of Ashley Estell. After more than a decade of legal appeals and requests for DNA test­ing, the hair evi­dence that had been used to con­vict Blair was shown to be mis­tak­en. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that no rea­son­able jury would con­vict Blair based on the exist­ing evi­dence.

The District Attorney’s office filed a motion to dis­miss the charges on August 25, stat­ing, ​“It has been deter­mined that this case should be dis­missed in the inter­est of jus­tice so that the offense charged in the indict­ment can be fur­ther inves­ti­gat­ed.” The Plano Police Department is now rein­ves­ti­gat­ing the 15-year-old case to find the true killer. The DNA evi­dence that cleared Blair indi­cates that anoth­er man, now deceased, is a plau­si­ble sus­pect in the girl’s death. Referred to only as ​“Suspect 4” in court doc­u­ments, this pos­si­ble per­pe­tra­tor showed an obses­sion with the vic­tim and bought a grave plot as close as he could get next to her rest­ing place. He has been deceased for at least 10 years.

The case was made famous in the mid-1990’s by a series of legal reforms known as ​“Ashley’s Laws.” Named after the vic­tim Ashley Estell, these laws cre­at­ed longer prison sen­tences and life­time sex offend­er reg­is­tra­tion require­ments.

According to DPIC’s inno­cence list, Blair is the fourth per­son to be exon­er­at­ed from death row in 2008 and the ninth in Texas since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed. His case brings the total num­ber of exon­er­a­tions from death row to 130 since 1973. Blair remains in prison on oth­er charges.

DPIC’s inno­cence list con­sists of those for­mer death row inmates who have been acquit­ted of all charges relat­ed to the crime that placed them on death row, who have had all charges relat­ed to the crime that placed them on death row dis­missed by the pros­e­cu­tion, or who have been grant­ed a com­plete par­don based on evi­dence of inno­cence.

This dis­missal comes on the heels of a state­ment by Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins that he will re-exam­ine near­ly 40 death penal­ty con­vic­tions and would halt exe­cu­tions, if nec­es­sary, to give the reviews time to pro­ceed. After an exon­er­a­tion of an inno­cent man in his first week in office and a total of 19 DNA-based (non-death penal­ty) exon­er­a­tions in his coun­ty, Watkins want­ed to ensure that no inno­cent peo­ple were exe­cut­ed dur­ing his tenure. ​“I don’t want some­one to be exe­cut­ed on my watch for some­thing they didn’t do,” explained Watkins. Texas leads the coun­try in exe­cu­tions with 414, includ­ing 9 this year.

(W. Hundley, ​“Collin County Court dis­miss­es mur­der charge in Ashley Estell Case”, Dallas Morning News, September 16, 2008; inno­cence list infor­ma­tion from DPIC). See also Innocence.

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