The Thin Blue Line

This film was literally a life changing documentary. This documentary saved a man from the potential of the Texas death penalty. For a simple documentary to do that is simpy mind boggling. The two suspects in the case were Randall Adams and David Harris. At the time of the murder Adams was in his late twenties while Harris was 16 years of age. Adams was the man that was convicted of the murder after a long trial, but Harris was the actual one that commited the crime. The reason they did not try to convict Harris was because he could not receive the death penalty, and Texas judges seemed to love the death penalty around this time.

The film used three different types of material for its footage. There would be the reenactments of the murder, the interviews of many of the people involved in the case, and arch able material such as news papers and crime scene photos. The director did a great job of showing both sides of this trial through his footage. He would interview Adams about how he felt the legal system was, and then he would go to Harris who was bragging about all the crimes he commited. If Harris was not talking about the crimes he did then he would talk about the trial. Errol Morris also did a great job of not showing any preferances of the two men that were suspects. He gave each of them a substantial amount of time to fight for their innocence until the end. The ending of this film was what saved Randall Adams' life from receiving the electric chair. The final interview with David Harris was what set Randall's freedom in stone. The astounding part of this documentary was that it was originally supposed to be on Dr. Death, a psychologist that decides if criminals deserve the death penalty. Were it not for Errol Morris stumbling onto this case then we would have one innocent dead man burried beneath us.