In 1986, Adams told Errol Morris what he had told the police—that Harris had dropped him off, and therefore Harris was clearly the killer. Turko had initially said there was just one man in the car. Harris told police that he had ducked down in the passenger seat when the car was stopped. Morris came out of Huntsville Prison intrigued.
“[Adams] told me a story which I found to be unintelligible,” the director recalls. So Morris fell back on his recently gained detective skills. In the basement library of the Austin Criminal Appeals Court he found the trial transcripts. “After that I understood much, much better what he was telling me.” Morris knew what he had to do—talk to “the kid.”
Nine years had passed since the trial, and Morris discovered that Harris was in Vidor on parole from a charge in California. They met in a bar outside Vidor. “One of the most bizarre evenings of my life,” Morris says. Harris was 25 and edgy. After a conversation that yielded little more than Harris’ wish to sleep with the waitress, the two parted. “He kept saying to me when I left, ‘Be very careful driving home, Errol,’” Morris says. “I was terrified.”
Morris’ gut fear of Harris was justified when he pieced together how he’d spent the previous nine years. After the Adams trial, Harris had joined the U.S. Army and been sent to Germany. Once there, Morris found, he had attempted to “kill his commanding officer” and had been dishonorably discharged. Back in the States, he stole a car and took a joyride to California. He picked up a hitchhiker whom he dragged into a number of armed robberies, one of which culminated in a police shootout. Harris tried to fire at one of the cops, but his gun jammed; he later blamed the hitchhiker for the robbery. “It was almost the same goddamn set-up,” Morris says.
Unable to shake the developing story, Morris settled in Dallas. First he went to the police, telling them he was directing a film on cop killers and wanted to discuss the Adams case. The result, as shown in The Thin Blue Line, is a stream of detectives and prosecutors relating with gusto their conviction of Adams. The three Dallas detectives featured—Gus Rose, Jackie Johnson and Marshall Touchton—are particularly strident. “He almost overacted his innocence,” Rose says on camera before describing Adams suffering a “convenient memory lapse.” Less involved in the prosecution was a fresh-faced detective from Vidor named Sam Kittrell; it was Kittrell who originally brought Harris to the Dallas Police, and he talks in the film of Harris’ untrustworthiness.
Randall Adams mug shot
When Morris tracked down the Millers and Michael Randell, he found them more than happy to be filmed. “You’d think that being an investigator with a camera would be an incredible impediment,” Morris says, “but that certainly wasn’t true with The Thin Blue Line.” R.L. Miller gave Morris a shifty rendition of the night’s events before describing his wife as a serial caller of the local police who had once falsely reported him for “hauling drugs out of El Paso.”
In the film, Morris splices the Miller interviews with the thoughts of a middle-aged Dallas woman named Elba Carr, a former co-worker of the Millers. She describes them as “actually scum” and says she once wrote to the District Attorney to reveal that R.L. Miller had confessed to her he knew nothing of the Wood shooting. (Further impugning the Millers, district attorney Dennis White later tells Morris of Emily Miller’s daughter, who had robbery charges against her dropped after her mother’s testimony in the Adams case.)
Prosecution witness Michael Randell started his interview with Morris by calmly stating he had “total recall” of the event, but he subsequently proved unable to remember the model of the stolen car or where officer Wood had been standing when he was shot. He could remember that he had been in his own car with a woman who shouldn’t have been there; in court, however, he’d testified that he was alone. Morris remembers handing Randell a copy of his police statement following the interview. “He read this statement and he’d completely fucked up,” Morris says. “It was totally different.”
Morris had documented proof that the state’s eyewitnesses were, at best, “a bunch of wackos” and at worst part of a conspiracy. There was, of course, one other eyewitness: David Harris.
By now, two years had passed since Morris met Harris in the Vidor bar. Harris had failed to show for further meetings and had fallen silent. Morris soon found out why. In September 1985, Harris had been arrested for drunk driving and was soon after charged with the murder of a Vidor man named Mark Mays, for which he was now in Dallas County jail. After a protracted negotiation process, Morris got face-time with Harris on the evening of Friday, Dec. 5th, 1986. In the film, Harris is reflective, intelligent and offers more than enough information to exonerate Adams without expressly admitting to the Wood murder himself.
Morris had his movie.
The Thin Blue Line was released by Harvey Weinstein in 1988 to critical acclaim. A few rogue death threats were called in to Morris’ office, but in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Adam’s conviction, which sent the case back to Dallas County for an expected retrial. The district attorney’s office declined to prosecute the case again and Adams was released from jail as a result of a 1989 habeas corpus hearing. “He said once he’d have gotten out anyway,” Morris says today. “Believe me when I say that he wouldn’t.”
There would be no victorious reunion between Adams and the man who spent three years working on the film that would secure him his freedom; the two men have not spoken for more than 20 years. Morris blames Adams’ lawyer. “I thought he was an out and out liar amongst other things,” Morris says. “It started over the Millers and Michael Randall. He claimed he’d tracked them down [for the film] and he just hadn’t.” Morris says that, when he finally found them, it was clear the attorney had never spoken to them.
Morris stopped talking to Adams’ lawyer, and believes he was waiting to drive a wedge between the director and Adams. Morris himself provided the opportunity. “The release that [Adams] originally signed gave me complete rights over his story, and I felt guilty about that. I don’t want to look like too much of a good guy here—I wanted to write a book with him, but I wanted him to be compensated for that. So I suggested rewriting the release… and all hell broke loose.”
Adams has spoken on record about the subject only once since then, for a 2000 interview with The Touchstone, an anti-death penalty newsletter. “After my release, Mr. Morris felt he had the exclusive rights to my life story. He did not,” Adams said. “Therefore, it became necessary to file an injunction to sort out any legal questions on the issue. The matter was
resolved before having to go before a judge. Mr. Morris reluctantly conceded that I had the sole rights to my own life.”
Morris says the legal problems with Adams were a surprise, but others were more predictable. He was sued by the three eyewitnesses (the Millers and Michael Randell), plus three childhood friends of Harris, who featured in the film. Morris laughs at the memory. “They sued me because I’d juxtaposed their interviews with the Vidor detective using the phrase ‘David Harris’ partners in crime.’ In fact, every single one of them had committed crimes with Harris and it was on their record. I told my lawyer, ‘We’re not going to pay any of these things; this is bullshit.’ My crazy attorney said it wasn’t my choice… so they got nuisance amounts of money. I think they got 12 to 14 thousand each.” Insurance paid up, but Morris wound up covering some of the deductables.
Between low studio remuneration (“After my expenses, I never saw any money from Harvey for that movie,” Morris says), the cost of three years spent working on the movie and the legal expenses, Morris claims that The Thin Blue Line actually cost him money. “I still achieved something quite remarkable” he says. “But I’m really sad that it destroyed my relationship with Randall Adams.”
