Randall Adams

At age 27, Randall Adams was wrongfully convicted of murdering a police officer, then served 13 years under a death sentence in Texas. Documentary film maker Errol Morris, a former private detective, investigated the case for 3 years, and came to believe the quiet, even-tempered Adams a very unlikely suspect. In Morris' award-winning movie The Thin Blue Line (1988), a former suspect, David Ray Harris, said Randall Adams was innocent. Harris admitted the murder at a hearing for a re-trial, granted as a result of the film. Harris was a juvenile at the time of the murder, and thus ineligible for the death penalty in Texas. Adams was granted a re-trial and found not guilty. David Harris was later executed for an unrelated murder. Since his release, Randall Adams has worked against the death penalty. He has no arrests since his 1989 release.