Randall Dale Adams

Randall Dale Adams (December 17, 1948 – October 30, 2010^[1]) was an American man wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death after the 1976 shooting of Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood.^[2][3] His conviction was overturned in 1989.^[4]

Throughout his legal ordeal, Adams maintained his innocence. He insisted that the man he believed to be Wood's killer, David Ray Harris, had offered him a ride on the day of the shooting after his own car had run out of gasoline. Under an immunity agreement, Harris testified for the prosecution that Adams was the shooter of Officer Wood. Based on this testimony and other alleged eyewitnesses, Adams was found guilty and imprisoned on death row. In 1980, his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

While incarcerated for the crime, Adams was the subject of the 1988 documentary film The Thin Blue Line,^[5] which was cited as being instrumental in his exoneration the following year. Writer-director Errol Morris knew that Harris had, on multiple occasions, bragged about shooting a police officer.^[6] He later uncovered evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and eyewitness misidentification.^[7] Six months after the film's release, Adams's conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and prosecutors declined to retry the case. Adams received no compensation from the State of Texas for the 12 years he spent in prison. He died of a brain tumor in 2010.