After 12 years behind bars for a murder he didn`t commit, Randall Adams insists he isn`t bitter.
”Psychiatrists like to meet me,” says the subject of the acclaimed 1988 movie documentary ”The Thin Blue Line.” ”Everyone comments on my sense of peace, my gentleness. I do have a sense of peace. I came 72 hours from being executed. At that point, you better make peace with yourself.”
The Ohio native is embarking on a nationwide tour to discuss his new book, ”Adams vs. Texas,” an account of a nightmare that lasted from November 1976 until March 1989.
Adams, now 42, was convicted of killing a Dallas police officer. The guilty verdict and death sentence came after a trial in which prosecutors suppressed evidence and used perjured testimony. The key witness against Adams was a 16-year-old criminal who, years later while imprisoned for a separate murder conviction, virtually confessed to killing the officer.
It has been a long, bewildering road for Adams. He lost a dozen years of his life, a time he calls ”wasted.” But he didn`t lose his sanity or his perseverance. He never stopped proclaiming his innocence and never abandoned his cries for a fair trial.
”You`re mad at the world,” he recalls of his time in prison. ”You`re disgusted. Everything you were taught to believe had been crushed. We knew what Dallas had done to us, but nobody seemed to care.”
Occasionally, Adams even refers to himself in the third person. It`s as if he can`t quite believe what he went through.
He was driving with his brother from Columbus, Ohio, to California in 1976 when they decided to stay in Dallas. Adams had just landed a job there when, heading home one day, he ran out of gas. He was walking along a road, gas can in hand, when he was picked up by David Harris, a teenage criminal driving a stolen car filled with stolen weapons.
The two went to a mall and a movie before Harris dropped Adams off at his motel. Later that night, Dallas Police Officer Robert Wood, 27, routinely pulled over a car and was shot to death by the driver.
Harris` testimony, as well as that of three supposed witnesses uncovered at the last minute, put Adams in prison. It wasn`t until the release of ”The Thin Blue Line” that their lack of credibility was widely exposed.
The Texas Court of Appeals overturned his conviction, citing prosecutorial misconduct, and ordered a new trial. The Dallas County district attorney dropped the murder charge, and Adams was freed in March 1989.
Adams` book, written with William and Marilyn Mona Hoffer, took more than a year to complete.
”To some extent, it was very therapeutic,” he says. ”I`ve been speaking about my case for 15 years. I believe it`s a case the American people need to hear, read, watch, whatever. If anything, I`d like the public to realize this could happen to anybody, in any city, given the circumstances.” Adams, who lives in Columbus, has spent much of the last two years lecturing at colleges and participating in death-penalty seminars. ”If I can speak about Adams vs. Texas and pay my bills,” he says, ”that`s what I want to do.”
He`s interested in discussing legal issues. ”Why can one man commit one crime and get a life sentence and another commit the same crime and get five years? The justice system is not perfect. It`s got a lot of cracks.”
Adams faced a sentence of death for more than three years. In 1980 he was only days away from being executed when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction on a technicality.
Adams credits his release to the documentary about his case, to the film`s director, Errol Morris (with whom he has since had a falling out), to his attorney and, especially, to the support of his family. He says he never lost his Christian faith while in prison, though more than a few times he questioned why it all had happened to him.
He has gradually adjusted to life outside prison, most notably the
”skyrocketed” cost of living, the growth of cities and the widespread use of computers.
”I didn`t know what a Pac-Man was when I came out,” he admits with a laugh.
His case is much more sobering.
”People get railroaded all the time,” he says. ”What sets my case apart was the severity of the railroad.”
