Randall Dale Adams

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Randall Dale Adams (born in 1949) is an anti-death penalty activist. He served 12 years (including 4 years on death row) in a Texas prison for the 1976 murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas, Texas police officer. His conviction was overturned in 1989 with help of the documentary film The Thin Blue Line.

At one point Adams came within 72 hours of being executed for a crime he did not commit.

The film's director, Errol Morris, was later sued by Adams. The matter was settled out of court after Adams was granted sole use of anything written or made on the subject of his life.

Adams's case came before the United States Supreme Court (Adams v. Texas 448 U.S. 38 (1980) [1]), which overturned his death sentence by an 8-1 majority on the grounds that Texas's jury selection process excluded persons who had objections to the death penalty. As a result, the governor commuted Adams's sentence to life imprisonment, rather than have the case re-tried. Adams was finally freed after habeas corpus proceedings led the Texas Court of Appeals to grant him a re-trial in (1989), at which point Adams was found not guilty.

Adams's conviction wasn't overturned after David Ray Harris (who testified against Adams in the trial) recanted and said in a recorded interview for the documentary that Adams was innocent, but the Court of Appeal's decision is instead based on perjurious inconsistencies in the testimony of another key witness, Emily Miller, and the inappropriate actions of then District Attorney Douglas Mulder. ((Ex parte Adams) (768 S.W.2d 281))

David Ray Harris was later executed on separate charges for the murder of Mark Mays.

At a legislative hearing, Adams said:

“The man you see before you is here by the grace of God. The fact that it took 12 and a half years and a movie to prove my innocence should scare the hell out of everyone in this room, and if it doesn’t, then that scares the hell out of me.”