The Thin Blue Line Page #7

that they will commit

violent crimes in the future.

You can't tell what

somebody's gonna do years from now.

Not really.

Except based on your past record,

which anybody can do.

Randall never had any prior record.

And as far as we know, he never had

any history of violence whatever.

Grigson testified for...

two and a half hours

about all these degrees he's got.

He's been here, and he's been there,

and he's studied here.

He called me Charlie Manson.

He called me Adolf Hitler.

He said I'm the type of personality...

that can work all day and creep all night.

He testified, Grigson...

that the future seriousness...

of my mental state...

would be such that if they released me...

I would go crazy and

probably butcher half of Dallas County.

Even though he talked to me 15 minutes...

I have no prior convictions,

no prior arrests...

I was nonviolent for 28 years.

On one instance...

and that's saying if I did this,

which I didn't...

he's stating that, that's enough...

For the rest of my life, watch me.

Don't ever turn your back on me.

And he talked to me 15 minutes.

He's crazy.

You can understand why a man

might steal if he needs money...

to put food on the table.

I can understand why a 17-year-old

boy who doesn't have a car...

would steal one to ride around in.

I can understand

why the heroin addict needs heroin.

But it's very hard to understand

why anybody has to kill a police officer.

It just doesn't have to be.

When I'm asleep

and I close my eyes and think...

"Why would he do it?

"He had no background

that would lead to murder...

"no reason to commit a murder. "

And I look at the facts of the case and say...

David Harris knew the car was stolen,

knew the guns were there...

knew the guns were stolen...

was on a crime spree...

had had a criminal record prior to

stealing this car and these guns.

He was the one

that wanted to commit the murder...

and get away from the scene.

He was the one that,

after the murder was committed...

went right back home

and bragged about it to his friends.

I looked at all the evidence...

and I found that I believed

that David Harris committed murder.

The jury looked at the same evidence...

and found they believed that

Randall Adams committed murder.

And it was their verdict that counted.

You have a D. A...

he doesn't talk about...

when they convict you

or how they convict you...

he's talking about

how he's going to kill you.

He don't give a damn if you're innocent.

He don't give a damn if you're guilty.

He's talking about killing you.

You get numb. You get...

It's like a bad dream. You want

to wake up, but you can't do it.

Fifteen times, 20 times a day,

I hear this same story...

about what happens

when a man is electrocuted.

His eyeballs pop out.

His fingernails pop out.

His toenails pop out.

He bleeds out of every orifice he's got.

They don't care...

They don't care.

All they want to do is talk about

how they're going to kill you.

That's the only thing that they cared

about and talked about.

At that point, that's all they're wanting.

I didn't have any idea

what happened to him.

After I testified, I was gone.

I never really concerned myself with it.

Maybe I didn't want to know. I don't know.

I didn't have any interest in knowing...

otherwise I might have tried to find out.

Dennis filed the motion for a new trial...

then we filed an amended motion

for a new trial.

About 20 days later,

we were to have a hearing on it.

Both Robert Miller and his wife

testified there.

But we could not bring out the fact...

that they had said that they were

gonna get that reward money...

and that they didn't care

whether they saw anything or not...

but their car was too steamed up.

We were not allowed to get any of that in...

because it was held

that it was impeaching testimony...

and therefore it came too late.

We kept running into blank walls.

A reporter from the Dallas Morning News...

discovered that one week

after the trial was over with...

the daughter of this woman

had a robbery case in this court.

She offered her testimony...

at a time when her daughter

was in danger of going to jail for life...

and got her daughter out of jail.

How can you believe her...

when the very next week

the same judge dismisses that case?

The Millers are the kind of people

that would do anything...

if there was something to be gained...

such as her daughter not being sent

to the penitentiary for armed robbery...

or for money.

When we went to court that day,

the District Attorney was hard-nosed.

Wouldn't let me answer any questions.

He'd ask me questions,

but then he'd cut me off real short.

And that's when he said something

about my big fat nose.

If I'd kept my big fat nose

out of their business...

the Millers would be better off.

When I started to leave

out of the courtroom...

he started laughing, like:

"Didn't do you any good to get up here. "

It really didn't. Didn't help the guy at all.

To the best of my recollection...

the brief conversations

I have had with Mr. Adams...

and they have been brief...

I don't even recall ever asking him,

or my having told me...

that he did not do it.

Because, for my purposes,

representing him on appeal...

it's totally irrelevant.

When the Court of Criminal Appeals

of Texas...

voted 9-0 against us,

I was a little upset about that.

I felt we, A:
Should have won...

B:
Certainly shouldn't have been

slapped so hard...

with the unanimous decision against us.

I was with my family in an ice-cream parlor...

and the judge and his family

happened to come at the same time.

And he came over to me

and made the comment...

"I see where the Court of Criminal

Appeals gave me an 'A'...

"in the Adams case. "

Our highest state appellate court...

the Court of Criminal Appeals

in Austin affirmed the case, 9-0.

Then it was reversed by the

United States Supreme Court, 8-1...

When the Appellate Court reverses a case...

they are never saying

the trial judge was right or wrong.

They are saying

they disagree with the judge.

You can't, for instance,

in the Adams appeals...

say the appellate courts

were saying I was right or I was wrong.

After all, if in Austin...

in our state appeals court,

I was 9-0 correct...

and in Washington, I was 1-8 incorrect.

If you tally all those votes, I come out 10-8.

Yet the case was reversed.

Eight justices of the Supreme Court

were the first people to agree with me.

They're the only people anywhere

that ever agreed about that statute...

were eight justices of the Supreme Court.

The Dallas Morning News

had a very nice front-page story...

either the same day...

or the day after the reversal was

announced by the Supreme Court...

in which Henry Wade, the District Attorney...

vowed a retrial of Randall Dale Adams...

because there was no room

in his book for a cop-killer...

getting off with anything less

than the death penalty.

I took that to heart. I thought

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