The Thin Blue Line

The Thin Blue Line is a 1988 documentary film about Randall Dale Adams, a man convicted and sentenced to die for a murder he did not commit. The success of this film led to the review of Adams' case and his release from prison.^[1]

Synopsis

The film concerns the November 28, 1976 murder of Dallas police officer, Robert W. Wood, during a traffic stop. The Dallas Police Department was unable to make an arrest until they learned of information given by a 16-year-old resident of Vidor, Texas who had told friends that he was responsible for the crime.^[2] The juvenile, David Ray Harris, led police to the car driven from the scene of the crime, as well as a .22 caliber revolver he identified as the murder weapon. He subsequently identified 28-year-old Ohio resident Randall Dale Adams as the murderer. Adams had been living in a motel in Dallas with his brother. The film presents a series of interviews about the investigation and reenactments of the shooting, based on the testimony and recollections of Adams, Harris, and various witnesses and detectives. Two attorneys who represented Adams at the trial where he was convicted of capital murder also appear: they suggest that Adams was charged with the crime despite the better evidence against Harris because, as Harris was a juvenile, Adams alone of the two could be sentenced to death under Texas law.

The film's title comes from the prosecutor's comment during his closing argument that the police are the "thin blue line" separating society from anarchy. This is a re-working of a line from Rudyard Kipling's poem Tommy in which he describes soldiers as the "thin red line", from the colour of their uniforms.

Production

Morris was originally going to film a documentary about prosecution psychologist, Dr. James Grigson – known as Doctor Death^[3][4], who testified in more than 100 trials that resulted in death sentences.^[5] Grigson told the jury that Adams would remain an ongoing menace if kept alive but Morris, after meeting Adams, became skeptical that he committed the crime.

The film contained re-enactment scenes built carefully from witnesses' statements, which became common in later documentaries.^[6] Interestingly, while the film recreates several versions of the shooting, it does not recreate one in which David Harris shoots the officer, the interpretation which it argues is true.

Aftermath

The film was directed by Errol Morris and scored by Philip Glass. The film was marketed as "nonfiction" rather than as a documentary which disqualified it from being considered in that category for an Academy Award. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, Program Development Company Productions Inc., public television stations, and The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies funded the documentary. ^[7] The Thin Blue Line has domestically grossed $1,209,846.00. On its opening weekend, which included only one theatre, it took in $17,814.00. Although The Thin Blue Line is the 72nd highest grossing documentary film released since 1982 ^[8] Morris says he lost money on the production.^[9] The film has had a considerable influence on later television and documentary film and is often credited with pioneering the style of modern crime-scene reenactments.

Morris' investigation demonstrated that five witnesses had committed perjury.^[10] As a result of publicity around the film, Adams (whose death sentence had been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 and commuted to life in prison) had his conviction overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the case returned to Dallas County for a retrial. The district attorney's office declined to prosecute the case again and Adams was subsequently ordered released as a result of a habeas corpus hearing in 1989.

Harris had testified in the original trial that he was the passenger in the stolen car that he allowed Adams to drive and that Adams committed the murder. He recanted this testimony at Adams' habeas corpus hearing, but never admitted guilt in a judicial setting and was never charged in the case. In 2004, Harris was executed by lethal injection for the unrelated 1985 murder of Mark Mays in Beaumont, Texas, which occurred during an attempted abduction of Mays' girlfriend.^[11][12][13]

After Adams' release from prison, he ended up in a legal battle with Morris concerning the rights to his story. The matter was settled out of court after Adams was granted sole use of anything written or made on the subject of his life.^[14] Adams himself said of the matter: "Mr. Morris felt he had the exclusive rights to my life story. ... I did not sue Errol Morris for any money or any percentages of The Thin Blue Line, though the media portrayed it that way."^[15]

Morris, for his part, remembers: "When he got out, he became very angry at the fact that he had signed a release giving me rights to his life story. And he felt as though I had stolen something from him. Maybe I had, maybe I just don't understand what it's like to be in prison for that long, for a crime you hadn't committed. In a certain sense, the whole crazy deal with the release was fueled by my relationship with his attorney. And it's a long, complicated story, but I guess when people are involved, there's always a mess somewhere."^[16]

Awards

The Thin Blue Line won Best Documentary honors from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Kansas City Film Critics Circle, the National Board of Review, and the National Society of Film Critics. Morris himself won an International Documentary Association Award and an Edgar Award. In 2001, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

References

External links

• The Thin Blue Line from ErrolMorris.com
• David Harris Offender Information
• The Thin Blue Line at the Internet Movie Database
• The Thin Blue Line at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Thin Blue Line at Box Office Mojo
• Officer Robert W. Wood at The Officer Down Memorial Page, Inc
• Academic Review of The Thin Blue Line