Michael Blair Case Study

Michael Blair was convicted of kidnapping and strangling a young girl named Ashley Estell. Ashley was only seven years old when she disappeared from the park her and her family were attending. The state had three eyewitnesses, but none claimed to have seen Estell and Blair together at the Plano, Texas park. The disappearance occurred on September 4, 1993 and Michael Blair’s car was spotted by both police and city employees before he was called in for questioning which eventually lead to his conviction in 1994.

There were many different reasons Michael Blair was wrongly convicted of the young girls death. First and foremost, he had a previous criminal record of sexual assault which likely caused prejudice with police and and bias jury at trial. The state claimed,“Three eyewitnesses told police they saw him in the park that day, although two admitted they had seen Blair’s photo on TV before identifying him to police.” What the jury failed to take into account is at least two of the three eyewitness admitted to have seen a photo of Blair on the news before the police line-up. Witnesses tainted by outside sources is the reason jury’s have to be carefully selected and the same should be considered with eye witnesses as they are notoriously unreliable and easily influenced.

Crime scene investigators noted signs of a struggle left under Estelle’s nails. After it was already too late, DNA testing determined the skin found under her fingernails was not a match to Blair but rather a match to the other suspect at the time of the original investigation. The expert DNA testimony at Blair’s trial consisted of fibers and hair found in his vehicle, on his person, and at an unrelated park was circumstantial and eventually disproven by DNA