Randall Adams

In America, you can go to jail for hitting a police officer, even if it was a minor injury. In 1977, Randall Dale Adams was given a death sentence for murdering a police patrolman in Dallas, Texas. The murder, which occurred one year previously, was actually performed by one David Harris, who blamed Adams for the shooting of Patrolman Robert Wood (Adams, 27, was catching a ride from Harris, 16, a few days before the shooting). Adams was explicitly innocent; he had a few eyewitnesses giving evidence that it couldn't be him, he had no knowledge of the incident whatsoever, yet the prosecution was hellbent on murdering him. Given the death sentence, he was to be executed in 1979, and in between the time that passed before the execution was scheduled, one Doctor James Grigson (a psychiatrist whom the prosecution had hired to testify against Adams during his trial) set out to make a documentary about the case, in order to validate his own personal qualms concerning his practice and whether what he was doing was right. After learning more about David Harris' background, including his extensive criminal record, Grigson also discovered that the prosecution had left out key information about eyewitnesses, and had even bribed certain witnesses into giving false testimony about Adams in court. After releasing the documentary, Adams was granted a new trial and, eventually, his freedom. Though never tried for the murder of Patrolman Wood, Harris was executed for a separate murder incident.

What I took away from this particular court case were multiple elements of how the court system worked further south of the states. First and foremost, the death penalty's presence continues to serve as a deadly reminder for how inhumane a human being can be treated (even if that human being is inhumane in the first place). It also nearly cost an innocent man his life, and with certain scenarios, such as the Adams case, you can never be too careful. I truly appreciated the intrinsic value, however, of the involvement of the psychiatrist, whose documentary went on to become the famous "Thin Blue Line". His interference with the case saved Adams his life and his dignity, and the fact that that courts did recognize their error is a tremendously uplifting factor to consider as well. They could have simply argued that the overwhelming evidence presented by Doctor Grigson was irrelevant and possibly even false, yet they knew that something foul was present. The court system almost failed us here, and yet in the end, justice was delivered.

To find out the fine details on Randall Adams' case, visit this link:

http://www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/txAdamsSummary.html