The Thin Blue Line Page #5

because he said:

"If I get down there and perjure myself...

"there's nothing that they can do

because they've got the case. "

This is the way I think that he thought.

"They know that my brother did it.

"If I get up there and lie,

they are going to have me for perjury.

"I'll be in the penitentiary with him,

and it ain't going to do any good...

"so I just ain't going to testify.

I ain't gonna say nothing. "

So he backed off of his story completely...

and Adams was left without any witnesses.

Her in-court testimony

and her original statement...

which should be the best.

You're talking 15 to 20 minutes

after the killing.

Should be the best eyewitness

testimony she's got.

It doesn't match. Doesn't match at all.

In court, she testified...

he got out of the car, she got out of the car.

She positioned herself

at the back of the automobile.

Her original statement,

"a fur-lined collar on the killer. "

In court, "It might have been bushy hair. "

The kid testified that I had a Levi jacket on...

which is the same type collar,

basically the same as this.

He testified at pretrial

that he had a fur-lined parka.

She's telling you who killed the man.

One person in the car

with the fur-lined collar.

Very convenient that the driver

happened to have bushy hair.

All she's got to do

is look at a picture they took of me.

But that is not her original statement.

It's a hell of a big difference

from "fur-lined collar" to "bushy hair. "

It's crazy.

She went through

two weeks Internal Affairs...

when she comes out,

her testimony changes.

She goes in saying one thing,

she comes out saying another.

Something happened. What?

"We refreshed her memory. "

Friday afternoon,

I think it was Good Friday...

we came back in the courtroom

that afternoon...

and we were sort of elated

because we thought...

"He's gonna walk. "

And there's nothing really in that evidence.

There's just little David Harris,

and nobody believes him.

And so we were very optimistic

about his chances...

until we walked into the courtroom...

and here were all these people

standing in front of the bench.

Three of them, anyway.

They were taking the oath

to be sworn as witnesses.

Mrs. Miller got on the stand

that last afternoon.

And she said,

"That's the man, I saw that man!

"I saw Randall Adams' face

just right after... "

She said, "I saw the gun

sticking out of the car...

"when he shot that police officer.

And that's the man. "

And she waved her finger

right toward Randall Adams.

She's the one that got him convicted.

When I was a kid,

I used to want to be a detective...

because I used to watch

all the detective shows on TV.

When I was a kid they used to show

these movies with Boston Blackie...

and he always had a woman with him.

I wanted to be a wife of a detective

or be a detective...

so I always watched detective stories.

I'm always looking because

I never know what might come up.

Or how I could help.

I like to help in situations like that.

I really do.

It's always happening to me,

everywhere I go...

lots of times there's killings or anything.

Even around my house. Wherever.

I'm always looking or getting involved,

to find out who did it, what's going on.

I listen to people.

And I'm always trying to decide

who's lying, or who killed who...

before the police do. See if I can beat them.

Yeah.

I was working at a gas station.

My husband and I both.

We weren't getting along well at all.

We were arguing back and forth.

We didn't wanna go home, because

we'd rather talk it out in the car...

than go home with the kids and fight.

Had to listen to them, too.

So we were really arguing,

and decided to get something to eat.

About that time,

a police came out of a restaurant...

on the right hand side of the road...

and he went to pull the man over.

She turned around.

She was looking hard. She looked.

I didn't think she seen the guy, but she did.

Because I said, "What you looking at?"

I knew something had went wrong.

She said, "You just shut up and drive. "

And I kept telling my husband:

"Slow down so I can see. "

He said, "Come on,

we're getting out of here.

"You're too nosy.

You don't even know what's going on. "

I had no idea that somebody

was gonna get killed or shot.

So I just drove on.

He was one of these kind

that didn't like getting involved.

He wanted to go on. He told me

to shut up and turn around. Don't look.

I turned around and looked anyway.

So we heard something,

like backfire or firecrackers.

And so we drove over the bridge,

and I got to thinking.

I said:
"Em, there're no firecrackers

this time of the year. "

I was thinking to myself:

"That couldn't be somebody shooting. "

It was real dark, and it was cold.

It was hard to see in that car.

But his window was down.

The driver's window was down.

This is how I got such a good look.

I really couldn't see anything inside.

It was kind of... shadows on the window

and stuff.

But when he rolled down the window,

what made his face stand out so.

The car was dark blue.

He had a beard, mustache...

kind of dishwater-blond hair.

But, like I said, when he was in court,

he sure looked a lot different.

All I could just tell by this and this,

that it was him.

I knew that there was some shots over there.

But I didn't want to be involved in it...

because West Dallas

is a high-crime neighborhood.

One of the biggest.

He was more scared of it than I was.

But when you have black people like that...

they don't like getting involved in nothing.

That's just common.

Like here, nobody wants

to see nothing or hear nothing.

And they'll stay completely

in the background.

That's why they were having

such a hard time there...

finding anybody that would come forward.

Because it was in

a totally black neighborhood.

She believe in, see somebody done

something wrong she should tell it.

'Cause she told on me...

a couple of times...

that I was hauling drugs out of El Paso.

Called the sheriff down there,

going to make me open my trunk.

So I ended up opening it,

but there was nothing in it.

Good grief.

She's a ho, but she find out

you done something, she turn you in.

Mrs. Miller had testified at the trial...

that she had gotten off early from her

gas station job...

and gone down to pick up her husband

to help him with the bookwork.

We found out that she was not doing

any bookkeeping for that station...

because she had been fired

from her job two weeks earlier...

for till-tapping, for stealing.

The reason that they were

talking to the police at all...

was that there'd been a three-day

running knife fight in their apartment.

And they were all booked...

for disorderly and drunk behavior in there...

including assault with knives,

and all kinds of stuff.

When they were at the police station,

they suddenly decided to volunteer...

all this information

about what they had seen...

about the police officer's killing.

A woman called me at my home...

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