Browse content similar to The Thin Blue Line. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
This film contains some strong language. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:10 | |
In October, my brother and I left Ohio. | 0:01:23 | 0:01:26 | |
We were driving to California. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:29 | |
We got into Dallas on a Thursday night. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:31 | |
Friday morning, while I'm eating eggs and drinking coffee, | 0:01:31 | 0:01:35 | |
I get a good job. I mean, it's... | 0:01:35 | 0:01:37 | |
All these people are supposedly out of work. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:41 | |
I'm not in town a half a day, and I've got a job. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:44 | |
Just everything clicked. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:46 | |
It's as if I was meant to be here. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:48 | |
I'd run away from home a couple of times. Once or twice. I don't know. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:59 | |
And this all started, David is running away from home. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:03 | |
And he takes... I took a pistol of my dad's and a shotgun. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:06 | |
Took a neighbour's car. | 0:02:07 | 0:02:09 | |
I had broken into their house and got the keys to it. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
I forget exactly what it was. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
Ended up coming to Dallas. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:23 | |
I went to work and no-one showed up. | 0:02:30 | 0:02:33 | |
Being a weekend, sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:36 | |
On the way home, I ran out of gas. | 0:02:36 | 0:02:40 | |
And as I was walking down the street with the gas can... | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
..a person, at that time, pulled over. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:47 | |
I guess, since I had the gas can, | 0:02:47 | 0:02:49 | |
he figured I was out of gas. I wasn't 100 yards from the car. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:53 | |
And being Thanksgiving weekend, there was no gas stations open. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:57 | |
So he stopped and asked me if I needed any help. | 0:02:57 | 0:02:59 | |
I'm driving down some street somewhere in Dallas. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:06 | |
I'd just turned 16. | 0:03:06 | 0:03:08 | |
And there was a guy over there, I think he'd run out of gas. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:13 | |
I took him to get some gas. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:15 | |
This was Randall Adams. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:17 | |
Ended up following him to his room | 0:03:21 | 0:03:23 | |
where him and his brother were staying. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:25 | |
Eventually, that evening... | 0:03:25 | 0:03:28 | |
we went out and got some beer and what have you, | 0:03:28 | 0:03:32 | |
and we smoked a little marijuana and what have you. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
Went to a movie that night. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
I get up, I go to work on Saturday. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
Why did I meet this kid? I don't know. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:46 | |
Why did I run out of gas at that time? I don't know. But it happened. | 0:03:46 | 0:03:49 | |
It happened. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:50 | |
SQUEALING TYRES | 0:04:35 | 0:04:38 | |
GUNSHOTS | 0:04:42 | 0:04:44 | |
The day they picked me up, December 21st. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:34 | |
They took me upstairs. What floor, I don't know. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
But they put me in a little room. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:41 | |
Gus Rose walked in. | 0:05:44 | 0:05:45 | |
He had a confession there he wanted me to sign. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:52 | |
He...said that I would sign it. | 0:05:54 | 0:05:57 | |
He didn't give a damn what I said. | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
I would sign this piece of paper he's got. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:03 | |
I told him I couldn't. | 0:06:03 | 0:06:05 | |
"I don't know what the hell you people expect of me. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:12 | |
"But there's no way I can sign that." | 0:06:12 | 0:06:14 | |
He left. He came back in ten minutes.... | 0:06:15 | 0:06:18 | |
and threw a pistol on the table. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:20 | |
Asked me to look at it. Which I did. I looked. | 0:06:22 | 0:06:26 | |
He asked me to pick it up. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:30 | |
I told him no, I wouldn't do that. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:33 | |
He threatened me. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:36 | |
Again, I told him no. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:38 | |
He pulled his service revolver on me. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:41 | |
We looked at each other for... to me, it seemed hours. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:48 | |
I do not like looking down the barrel of a pistol. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:52 | |
I do not like being threatened. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:54 | |
When he finally saw that he would either have to kill me... | 0:06:56 | 0:07:00 | |
or forget the signature, | 0:07:00 | 0:07:02 | |
I guess he forgot the signature, because he put his pistol up. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
He took the pistol on the table, put it up and stormed out. | 0:07:05 | 0:07:11 | |
I had what I call a casual, friendly conversation with him to start with. | 0:07:11 | 0:07:15 | |
To try to size him up, to see what he liked and what he didn't like. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:20 | |
I found almost immediately that he didn't have much conscience. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:26 | |
Anything he had done, it never really bothered him. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:30 | |
He had done other things that he told me about, | 0:07:30 | 0:07:32 | |
that didn't seem to bother him in the least. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:35 | |
He showed no expression whatsoever. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
It's just like he's sitting here, | 0:07:39 | 0:07:41 | |
talking about the colour of this wall, | 0:07:41 | 0:07:43 | |
or the shooting of the police officer. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:46 | |
He showed no... | 0:07:46 | 0:07:48 | |
..no reaction to any of the questions. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:52 | |
He, of course... | 0:07:52 | 0:07:54 | |
..almost overacted his innocence. | 0:07:56 | 0:07:58 | |
He protested that he hadn't done anything. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
Couldn't imagine why we were bringing him in. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:05 | |
He didn't fight or he didn't resist, | 0:08:06 | 0:08:08 | |
he just protested his innocence. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:11 | |
I, of course, told them what happened that Saturday, | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
that I had met this kid. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:16 | |
I kept telling them the same thing, the same thing, the same thing, | 0:08:16 | 0:08:19 | |
they didn't want to believe me. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:23 | |
Never once was I allowed a phone call. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
Never once was an attorney there. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:28 | |
I don't know how long this had been. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:30 | |
I had smoked two packs of cigarettes and had been out for a long time. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:36 | |
Woods didn't take his ticket book out of the car. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:54 | |
He left it in the car, on the front seat, | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
which indicates that he was not going to write a ticket. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:00 | |
What he was probably going to do was have them turn on the headlights. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:03 | |
He didn't know that the car was stolen. | 0:09:03 | 0:09:07 | |
I think that there's a very good chance | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
that he was going to check the driver's licence, | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
and tell him to turn on his headlights, and let the guy be on his way. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
Officer Woods' wife had purchased him a bulletproof vest, | 0:09:16 | 0:09:21 | |
and had it under the Christmas tree. | 0:09:21 | 0:09:23 | |
Or had it stored away, to give to him at Christmas time. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
His partner was one of the first female police officers | 0:09:29 | 0:09:32 | |
that was assigned to patrol. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:33 | |
They were from the Northwest Station. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:36 | |
just patrol officers following the clock, | 0:09:36 | 0:09:38 | |
working the graveyard shift and everything. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:40 | |
They had been into a fast-food restaurant. And she had a malt. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:45 | |
This car came by, these two dudes in it, with no lights on. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:49 | |
It wasn't a serious problem, but he just pulled up, turned his lights on to stop him. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:04 | |
Just to warn the man that his lights were off. | 0:10:04 | 0:10:08 | |
Got out of the car and walked up, | 0:10:18 | 0:10:20 | |
and before he got to the window, where the driver was - | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
he was in the right position - | 0:10:23 | 0:10:25 | |
This man just turned around and just - pop, pop, pop, with a little small-calibre pistol. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:30 | |
The first shot hit him in the arm. He had his flashlight. | 0:10:36 | 0:10:40 | |
He hit the flashlight and went into his arm. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:42 | |
The next one hit him right in the chest. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:44 | |
The officer falls in the street and he was in the first traffic lane. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:56 | |
He lay there and bled to death. | 0:10:56 | 0:10:58 | |
-TYRES SQUEAL -So she's out of the car, | 0:10:58 | 0:11:00 | |
she empties her pistol at the fleeing suspect, | 0:11:00 | 0:11:03 | |
and she runs to his aid. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
Procedure says you grab the radio and call for an ambulance. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
Common sense would tell you that. But what do you do? | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
And that time, she's so... Just tore down. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:18 | |
Blood, an enormous amount of blood. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
I don't know. How do we hold her responsible | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
for not following procedure at that point? | 0:11:29 | 0:11:31 | |
But the main thing was, she couldn't remember the licence number. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
When we started putting facts together on how much information we had, | 0:11:53 | 0:11:58 | |
from the leads we had, we found out we didn't have anything. | 0:11:58 | 0:12:03 | |
The only thing that we knew we were looking for was a blue Vega. | 0:12:03 | 0:12:08 | |
Probably every Vega that was registered in the state of Texas | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
was stopped and checked. | 0:12:12 | 0:12:13 | |
We had people calling the office, | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
saying, "I've got a Vega and it's not blue. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:21 | |
"But would you come out and be sure to check it over, | 0:12:21 | 0:12:24 | |
"be sure it's not mine, because I don't want to get stopped any more. I'm afraid." | 0:12:24 | 0:12:28 | |
If you're the investigator assigned to the murder, | 0:12:33 | 0:12:36 | |
you get frustrated with other witnesses. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:38 | |
But when you got a police officer that witnessed it, | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
you expect that they would know a little more than she knew. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:45 | |
Procedure... When there's a two-person unit, | 0:12:46 | 0:12:49 | |
when either one approaches the car, | 0:12:49 | 0:12:51 | |
the other positions himself to the right rear, | 0:12:51 | 0:12:53 | |
where they can watch all the activity in the car. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
And if the man on the left of the driver gets in trouble, | 0:12:56 | 0:12:59 | |
their partner is in a position to help. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
Speculation was, at the time, that his partner was sitting in the car. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:10 | |
GUNSHOTS | 0:13:14 | 0:13:19 | |
That's where the discrepancies were. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
Just a matter of time, and whether or not she was out of the car. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:37 | |
Completely out of the car, or partially in the car, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
or just sitting in there with the door closed. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:43 | |
And the thing I think we did then that really helped... | 0:13:44 | 0:13:48 | |
It didn't really help anything at all. Let me back up. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:52 | |
But it was interesting, and it cost a lot of money, | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
but it was worthwhile. You got to cover every trail. | 0:13:55 | 0:13:57 | |
A guy out of California, | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
I don't recall his name, he was an expert in hypnosis. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
He came down, hypnotised her and questioned her. | 0:14:21 | 0:14:23 | |
The interesting thing was, she couldn't remember anything about the car. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:27 | |
She remembered getting a malt. They'd stopped for fast-food. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:30 | |
It was a Whataburger. Remembered all that, and stopping the car. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
Got back on the road. She didn't remember anything. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:36 | |
But she remembered a licence number off a hit-and-run vehicle | 0:14:36 | 0:14:39 | |
that they had worked earlier in the night. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:42 | |
It was getting awfully close to Christmas. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:09 | |
We'd never gone that long in Dallas without clearing a murder of an officer. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:13 | |
We'd had several killed, but we'd cleared them pretty quick. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
And this case had gone a month, or nearly a month, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
and we still hadn't cleared it. | 0:15:19 | 0:15:21 | |
However, we finally got the break that cleared it. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:23 | |
It came out of Vidor, Texas. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:25 | |
Mr Calvin Cunningham, who lives in Vidor, had his home broken into, | 0:15:29 | 0:15:33 | |
and his little Mercury Comet stolen. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:37 | |
We felt as though David had committed that crime. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
For several days, though, he was missing. We couldn't find him. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:45 | |
It was one afternoon, | 0:15:45 | 0:15:46 | |
one of our officers spotted Mr Cunningham's car | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
on North Main Street, here in Vidor. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
David abandoned the vehicle and ran on foot. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:54 | |
We started getting little bits of information, though, | 0:15:57 | 0:16:00 | |
that David had been involved in a shooting in Dallas | 0:16:00 | 0:16:02 | |
of a police officer. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:03 | |
We would always get third-hand rumour, fourth-hand rumour. | 0:16:03 | 0:16:07 | |
So we went back to a few of his other comrades in crime, | 0:16:08 | 0:16:12 | |
I guess we could call them. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:13 | |
They said, "Yeah, we thought he was just bragging. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:16 | |
"We didn't really take him seriously." | 0:16:16 | 0:16:18 | |
Sitting down, watching the evening news, well, the night news. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
My father was asleep on the couch. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:23 | |
Heard somebody knocking at the door. It was David Harris. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:27 | |
I let him in. He came in. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:29 | |
He was standing there beside the chair I was sitting in, | 0:16:29 | 0:16:31 | |
and a news broadcast advertised about | 0:16:31 | 0:16:34 | |
a police officer being shot in Dallas. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:36 | |
Right then and there, he starts swearing up and down. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:39 | |
He says, "I swear to God, I shot that fucking pig." | 0:16:39 | 0:16:42 | |
He says, "I'm the one that killed him." | 0:16:42 | 0:16:45 | |
Somewhere around Dallas, they got pulled over. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:48 | |
I think he said because they were checking out a stolen car. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:51 | |
He said that the cop had pulled him over, | 0:16:51 | 0:16:55 | |
and walked up to the window. | 0:16:55 | 0:16:56 | |
When the cop came, he rolled down the window, | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
and just pulled the gun up, and "pow" shot him. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:01 | |
He swore up and down. | 0:17:01 | 0:17:03 | |
I mean, he made a big scene about it. Jumped up and down, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
trying to get anybody and everybody to listen to him. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:09 | |
"Yeah, I shot that son of a gun." | 0:17:09 | 0:17:11 | |
And everybody said, "Sure you did, David(!) Sure." | 0:17:11 | 0:17:14 | |
"I swear to God, I killed that cop." | 0:17:14 | 0:17:17 | |
I asked him if he'd been to Dallas. He denied having been to Dallas. | 0:17:17 | 0:17:22 | |
I asked him if he'd been involved in any shooting, | 0:17:22 | 0:17:24 | |
or knew anything about a shooting, and he denied that to the end, | 0:17:24 | 0:17:28 | |
which is fairly consistent with David. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:30 | |
Even if he had some involvement, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:32 | |
his first way that he always treats you, he would deny. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
Then, if he felt as though you really knew he had done it, | 0:17:36 | 0:17:39 | |
then he would be truthful with you. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:41 | |
He give me a pistol, a .22 calibre pistol. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:44 | |
He showed it to me. He says, | 0:17:44 | 0:17:45 | |
"That's the one I shot him with, right here." | 0:17:45 | 0:17:49 | |
He gave me the pistol. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:50 | |
I didn't... I didn't really consider it that much. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:54 | |
I don't guess I really realised he did shoot the cop. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:58 | |
He led me to a swampy area | 0:17:58 | 0:18:00 | |
several hundred yards behind his residence in Rose City. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:03 | |
There was a sock under water. He said. "There it is." | 0:18:03 | 0:18:06 | |
And he had sprayed this sock with boot oil. | 0:18:06 | 0:18:10 | |
When we retrieved the gun, | 0:18:10 | 0:18:11 | |
I said, "I better do something with it. It's going to rust up." | 0:18:11 | 0:18:15 | |
Even the time that I saw the gun at the trial in Dallas, | 0:18:15 | 0:18:19 | |
it looked just as good as when I'd taken it out of the swamp. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:22 | |
So he'd taken good care of it, even though he put it underwater. | 0:18:22 | 0:18:25 | |
He got to thinking, | 0:18:29 | 0:18:31 | |
" Hey, I didn't do that and I've been saying that I did, | 0:18:31 | 0:18:35 | |
"and I'm in over my head now, so I better tell them what really happened. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:39 | |
"Because they are going to send me to the penitentiary for the rest of my life, | 0:18:39 | 0:18:43 | |
"if I don't tell them what really happened." | 0:18:43 | 0:18:45 | |
So he said, "Hey, I'm just bragging about this. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:49 | |
"I didn't do it, but I was there, and I know who did do it." | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
And, of course, he came clean then. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:56 | |
He tried to hide no facts. | 0:18:57 | 0:18:59 | |
And he just seemed like a friendly kid. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:02 | |
I may have talked to him 15 or 20 minutes, just on a friendly basis... | 0:19:04 | 0:19:09 | |
..just to keep him friendly. | 0:19:11 | 0:19:13 | |
We didn't want to make him mad. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
But we didn't want him to tell us something that he thought. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:24 | |
We wanted him to tell us what we knew. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:27 | |
It wasn't very long until I realised that what he knew... | 0:19:27 | 0:19:30 | |
..was the facts of the case, | 0:19:31 | 0:19:32 | |
and it matched perfectly with what we knew. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:35 | |
And it had to be right. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:37 | |
The story that I told was... | 0:19:37 | 0:19:40 | |
It was like 12 something, so it was the next day. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:45 | |
Early in the morning. We were stopped. | 0:19:45 | 0:19:48 | |
When we were stopped, the officer came up to the car, | 0:19:51 | 0:19:54 | |
and asked to see the driver's licence or whatever and he just started shooting. | 0:19:54 | 0:19:58 | |
I don't know why, but it's always seemed like time just stopped or something. | 0:20:03 | 0:20:07 | |
It didn't seem like any time passed, you know?. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:12 | |
It just seemed like it was... Boom! | 0:20:14 | 0:20:17 | |
Time stopped or something. I don't know what it is. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:19 | |
You know, er... | 0:20:19 | 0:20:21 | |
It's like a flash. | 0:20:25 | 0:20:26 | |
We went back to his room. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
He was supposed to ask his brother if I could stay there that night. | 0:20:31 | 0:20:35 | |
But he said that his brother don't like to do that or something, you know? | 0:20:35 | 0:20:40 | |
Anyhow, he went in and never came back out, so I left. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:43 | |
Ended up pulling into a parking lot. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:48 | |
I slept there I think, for a while. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:52 | |
Then, finally, the next morning, early or something. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
I found my way to Freeway 45... | 0:20:55 | 0:20:57 | |
..and went back home. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
After riding around with him, I come to find out he's got an arsenal. | 0:21:06 | 0:21:10 | |
He's got pistols. He's got rifles. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:14 | |
You know, he's got this pistol, | 0:21:14 | 0:21:16 | |
he's waving it around, he's doing this. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:18 | |
I told him, "Hey, why don't you put those in the trunk of the car?" | 0:21:18 | 0:21:23 | |
We stopped at a restaurant, | 0:21:24 | 0:21:26 | |
and ordered, and ate sandwiches in the car. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:29 | |
I bought a six-pack of beer. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:31 | |
He pulled this pistol back out. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:34 | |
And I ask him why he got the pistol out? | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
And he...kind of laughed, | 0:21:37 | 0:21:41 | |
rolled the window down, and fired the pistol outside the car. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:44 | |
And I asked him to please put it up. | 0:21:46 | 0:21:49 | |
I think he handed me the pistol, and I put it under the driver's seat. | 0:21:50 | 0:21:55 | |
He wanted to go to the movies, so we went to the movies. | 0:21:55 | 0:21:59 | |
We got there probably about seven o'clock. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
SCREAMS | 0:22:03 | 0:22:05 | |
He was the one that had picked the movie out. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:12 | |
I call them drive-in movies "beer-drinking movies". | 0:22:12 | 0:22:15 | |
You know, 50 cents, put them together and make a bunch of money, | 0:22:15 | 0:22:18 | |
with a bunch of people getting drunk at the drive-in. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:21 | |
Are you going to concede to my point? | 0:22:21 | 0:22:23 | |
-Please, sit down Miss Radcliffe. -What is this, Mr Brooks? | 0:22:23 | 0:22:26 | |
-Anybody can see it's an ashtray. -Wrong! | 0:22:26 | 0:22:29 | |
Anybody can plainly see it's a wall-breaker! | 0:22:29 | 0:22:32 | |
I'm trying to speak for you! | 0:22:32 | 0:22:34 | |
I'm trying to speak for all of you! I AM the student body! | 0:22:34 | 0:22:39 | |
'The show that was on was half over. We watched half of the one show. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:46 | |
'We had started watching the first part of the second show.' | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
# We want a victory, and we're gonna get it | 0:22:51 | 0:22:54 | |
# We want a victory, and we're gonna get it... # | 0:22:54 | 0:22:58 | |
Yay, team! | 0:22:58 | 0:22:59 | |
# We want a victory, and we're gonna get it. Yay! # | 0:22:59 | 0:23:05 | |
'I didn't really care for the second feature, | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
which is an R-rated, cheerleader-type thing. I don't know what it was. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:13 | |
May I have some wine? | 0:23:13 | 0:23:15 | |
It's good, Ross. I didn't know you could cook. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:34 | |
It is good, isn't it? You got to try my celery remoulade. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:39 | |
No... | 0:23:50 | 0:23:52 | |
(EXASPERATED): Ah! | 0:23:52 | 0:23:54 | |
I told him I wanted to leave. | 0:24:00 | 0:24:02 | |
"I don't really care to sit here and watch this. Let's go." | 0:24:02 | 0:24:06 | |
So he's acting kind of strange, | 0:24:06 | 0:24:09 | |
cos he wanted to watch the end of the movie. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
Anyway, we left. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:13 | |
And we drove back towards Dallas and the motel. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:17 | |
There's a little store. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:21 | |
I bought a pack of cigarettes and a newspaper. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
And when I left, this kid was still sitting there. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
I leaned against the car and we talked to him for a few minutes | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
and I told him that since he was looking for a job, | 0:24:31 | 0:24:35 | |
and there hadn't been anybody there at work, | 0:24:35 | 0:24:37 | |
that if he wanted to stop back Monday morning, | 0:24:37 | 0:24:40 | |
that, sure, he could ride out and follow me to work | 0:24:40 | 0:24:43 | |
and he could talk to the boss. And he would probably get a job. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:46 | |
I told him that I would catch him Monday morning, if he showed up. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:50 | |
I told him what time I went to work. Why, I left. | 0:24:50 | 0:24:53 | |
Walked around the store and went to the house. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:56 | |
When I walked in, the television was on and my brother was sleeping. | 0:24:56 | 0:25:00 | |
He had been home this whole time that I had been gone. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
So I made me a sandwich | 0:25:03 | 0:25:06 | |
and sat there and watched the end of the Carol Burnett Show. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:09 | |
When it went off, the news came on and I watched 15-20 minutes of it. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:18 | |
And that was it. I turned the TV off and went to sleep. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
Finally, they bring in a stenographer. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:39 | |
She sits down and I run the story. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:42 | |
I tell them what happened this Saturday. She leaves. She types. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:46 | |
She comes back in about 25-30 minutes with a copy of this statement. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:19 | |
I read through it, and when it was basically what I liked, | 0:26:19 | 0:26:26 | |
yes, I signed it. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:28 | |
He admits driving the car and taking a right on Inwood Road | 0:26:38 | 0:26:43 | |
off of, uh, Interstate 35 or Highway 183. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:49 | |
He admits driving it. | 0:26:52 | 0:26:54 | |
But he says after he made his right turn on Inwood Road, | 0:26:54 | 0:26:58 | |
this is where our statement ends. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:00 | |
He says he does not remember anything after that. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
He didn't remember anything about a shooting. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:10 | |
He didn't remember anything about a police officer stopping him. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:15 | |
That part of his mind just conveniently went blank. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:19 | |
He remembered driving the car. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:20 | |
He remembered approaching the scene of the shooting | 0:27:20 | 0:27:23 | |
and then, from that point, he blacks out and can't remember | 0:27:23 | 0:27:26 | |
until he gets to the motel room, which is some ten minutes later. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:30 | |
Everything else, he remembers vividly. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:32 | |
And that's just a convenient memory lapse, is all that is. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:35 | |
The Morning News in Dallas County stated that I had signed a confession | 0:27:39 | 0:27:44 | |
that I had confessed to the killing of Robert Wood, this and that | 0:27:44 | 0:27:47 | |
and they had their killer and they were ready to go with it. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:50 | |
The statement that I signed for Dallas County was never | 0:27:52 | 0:27:59 | |
- and never would have been - | 0:27:59 | 0:28:00 | |
anything as "a confession" in court. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:02 | |
But yet, they labelled it as such. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:06 | |
Of course, I couldn't dispute this because I didn't even know about it. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:11 | |
I heard no news. I knew nothing for two weeks. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:15 | |
They kept me completely away from everybody. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:17 | |
Several times we talked to her, trying to get her to recall. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:25 | |
"Do you recall the license number? Do you recall anything to help us?" | 0:28:25 | 0:28:30 | |
And she gave us a pretty good description of the car. | 0:28:30 | 0:28:32 | |
As it turned out, her description of the car was real close. | 0:28:32 | 0:28:35 | |
Of course, it comes out that we weren't looking for a blue Vega. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:48 | |
We were looking for a Comet. | 0:28:48 | 0:28:49 | |
No telling the man-hours we wasted, looking for a blue Vega. | 0:28:51 | 0:28:57 | |
There's a difference between a Vega and a Mercury Comet. | 0:29:03 | 0:29:08 | |
So in reality, in regard to cars, | 0:29:08 | 0:29:10 | |
every piece of information that was called in, | 0:29:10 | 0:29:14 | |
they were calling in regard to a Comet, I mean, a Vega. | 0:29:14 | 0:29:18 | |
The people that called in were truthful, trying to help. | 0:29:26 | 0:29:29 | |
They really were trying to help. | 0:29:29 | 0:29:31 | |
We just all had the wrong information. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:34 | |
TYRES SCREECH | 0:29:36 | 0:29:38 | |
TYRES SCREECH | 0:29:41 | 0:29:43 | |
GUNSHOTS | 0:29:49 | 0:29:51 | |
There wasn't a mark on this car that David Harris had stolen. | 0:29:54 | 0:29:57 | |
Wasn't a mark. | 0:29:57 | 0:29:59 | |
Do you think a car sitting still, starting from a stop, | 0:29:59 | 0:30:04 | |
heading up a hill, with a woman standing right behind it, | 0:30:04 | 0:30:08 | |
that is a very good shot with a pistol, | 0:30:08 | 0:30:10 | |
she should have hit the damn thing one time. She didn't. | 0:30:10 | 0:30:12 | |
I wish she had blown the driver's head off, | 0:30:12 | 0:30:16 | |
because I wouldn't have been here. | 0:30:16 | 0:30:19 | |
I went back several times, and with Mr Cunningham, | 0:30:22 | 0:30:25 | |
he and I both searched and could find no indications | 0:30:25 | 0:30:29 | |
that that car had been hit by gunfire. | 0:30:29 | 0:30:32 | |
Later on, he finally found one place | 0:30:34 | 0:30:36 | |
that he felt as though that a bullet had been creased on it. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:39 | |
But before he could tell me about it, his daughter totalled the car out. | 0:30:39 | 0:30:44 | |
Totally demolished it. | 0:30:44 | 0:30:46 | |
I was doing burglaries and some robberies, | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
and a few possession cases and stuff like that. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:58 | |
I think he just came up to me and said, | 0:30:58 | 0:31:00 | |
"Are you Edith James? I'd like to talk about my case." | 0:31:00 | 0:31:04 | |
That's the way I remember it, anyhow. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:06 | |
And I said, "Sure." And I said, "What sort of a case is it?" | 0:31:06 | 0:31:09 | |
He said, "It's a capital murder." And I said, "Ooh!" | 0:31:09 | 0:31:12 | |
Inside, I kind of thought, "I've never done one, | 0:31:12 | 0:31:14 | |
"but I can surely talk to him about it." | 0:31:14 | 0:31:18 | |
I hate to be considered, uh, some kind of dummy | 0:31:20 | 0:31:24 | |
that believes in the innocence of her clients, whatever. | 0:31:24 | 0:31:29 | |
A lot of people think, "A woman lawyer, | 0:31:29 | 0:31:32 | |
"she's bound to stupidly believe anything she's told." | 0:31:32 | 0:31:37 | |
I admit, I'm sort of a gullible person. | 0:31:37 | 0:31:40 | |
But on the other hand, I've seen an awful lot of people | 0:31:40 | 0:31:43 | |
who admitted guilt or were found guilty | 0:31:43 | 0:31:46 | |
and all but Randall turned out to be guilty, in my opinion. | 0:31:46 | 0:31:51 | |
Douglas Mulder had a perfect win record. | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
I believe he resigned from the DA's office without any defeats. | 0:31:57 | 0:32:02 | |
That's why he's legendary. | 0:32:02 | 0:32:05 | |
Everything, as I recall, that Mulder ever said | 0:32:05 | 0:32:08 | |
was about what a great guy Mulder was | 0:32:08 | 0:32:10 | |
and how marvellous it was that he was getting all these convictions. | 0:32:10 | 0:32:15 | |
I wanted somebody else in on it, so I got Dennis interested in it | 0:32:17 | 0:32:20 | |
because Dennis has a lot more trial experience | 0:32:20 | 0:32:23 | |
and Dennis wins practically all of his jury cases. | 0:32:23 | 0:32:27 | |
And Dennis was very enthusiastic about the Randall Adams case | 0:32:27 | 0:32:30 | |
because he kept saying, "This is one we can win. | 0:32:30 | 0:32:32 | |
"They don't have substantial evidence. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:34 | |
"All they've got is David Harris." | 0:32:34 | 0:32:36 | |
I prepared a motion for a continuance to get more time to try the case | 0:32:36 | 0:32:41 | |
and, in doing that, had to lay out my schedule for several weeks | 0:32:41 | 0:32:45 | |
as to exactly what time I'd be in Vidor, Texas. | 0:32:45 | 0:32:49 | |
Vidor is headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan for the state of Texas. | 0:32:49 | 0:32:53 | |
It's a city where black people will not spend the night. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:56 | |
Black people won't even stop there to get their car filled with gasoline. | 0:32:56 | 0:33:00 | |
And furthermore, the people of Vidor were under the impression | 0:33:00 | 0:33:04 | |
that the policeman that was murdered was a black man. | 0:33:04 | 0:33:07 | |
I had to stop at a motel on the way. | 0:33:07 | 0:33:09 | |
My wife and I stayed in one room, the lady lawyer in another room. | 0:33:09 | 0:33:12 | |
We arranged to get up very early, go to Vidor and start our investigation. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:18 | |
At about six in the morning, Edith James, the lady lawyer, got up | 0:33:18 | 0:33:23 | |
and was looking for me. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:24 | |
While she went out in the parking lot to find me, she went to one room | 0:33:24 | 0:33:28 | |
and someone in the parking lot said, | 0:33:28 | 0:33:30 | |
"If you're looking for the lawyer from Dallas, | 0:33:30 | 0:33:33 | |
"he's in room..." And he gave her the room number! | 0:33:33 | 0:33:35 | |
I immediately began to suspect, from the time I was | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
that close to Vidor, I was being followed and observed. | 0:33:38 | 0:33:41 | |
Doug Mulder had been there the week before I had | 0:33:41 | 0:33:45 | |
and had told the people in Vidor | 0:33:45 | 0:33:47 | |
that I was an Eastern-educated civil liberties attorney | 0:33:47 | 0:33:51 | |
and that I was down there to discredit David Harris. | 0:33:51 | 0:33:55 | |
And then I had been recommended to see one particular policeman | 0:33:58 | 0:34:01 | |
who had been led to the solution of this case. | 0:34:01 | 0:34:04 | |
And I had the impression | 0:34:04 | 0:34:06 | |
he was the one honest policeman I could trust in Vidor. | 0:34:06 | 0:34:09 | |
He told me that, after the policeman was killed, | 0:34:12 | 0:34:14 | |
David Harris went back to Vidor. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:17 | |
But before he was arrested, he committed a robbery down there | 0:34:17 | 0:34:21 | |
and had someone on the floor of a 7-11 type of store | 0:34:21 | 0:34:24 | |
with a shotgun at her throat. | 0:34:24 | 0:34:27 | |
Got back there, robbed O'Bannion's 7-11 with a .22 rifle. | 0:34:27 | 0:34:34 | |
Committed some other burglaries, and what have you. | 0:34:34 | 0:34:37 | |
All this time I was on probation. Juvenile probation. | 0:34:37 | 0:34:41 | |
Eventually I turned myself in for this stuff in Vidor. | 0:34:43 | 0:34:46 | |
Uh... | 0:34:48 | 0:34:49 | |
I think I made a confession. I can't even remember exactly. | 0:34:52 | 0:34:56 | |
So I'm told I did. | 0:34:56 | 0:34:58 | |
He had told us he had robbed stores, and we laughed. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:07 | |
"Sure, we know you have." I give him one of my hats. | 0:35:07 | 0:35:10 | |
It's an old Bonnie-and-Clyde-looking hat, turned sideways. | 0:35:10 | 0:35:14 | |
We said, "We'll draw you a little moustache, walk in with that gun. | 0:35:14 | 0:35:17 | |
"Nobody'll know who you are." | 0:35:17 | 0:35:19 | |
About 2 o'clock that morning, | 0:35:19 | 0:35:21 | |
I was asleep, and the phone rings. I said, "Hello?" | 0:35:21 | 0:35:23 | |
He said, "This is David." "This is David Harris?" | 0:35:23 | 0:35:26 | |
"Yeah," he said, "I did it. Will you come and get me?" | 0:35:26 | 0:35:29 | |
I said, "Man, I'm not coming to get you. I'm asleep." | 0:35:29 | 0:35:31 | |
He didn't have a conscience. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:37 | |
You know, if I do something bad, it kind of gets to me. | 0:35:37 | 0:35:41 | |
I feel, "Shucks, I shouldn't have done that. I feel bad about it." | 0:35:41 | 0:35:46 | |
But it didn't bother him. Didn't bother him at all. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
We asked the DA In Vidor, Texas, what they were going to do with David. | 0:36:04 | 0:36:08 | |
They said, "We'll send him to the Texas Youth Council." | 0:36:08 | 0:36:12 | |
And we sort of tried to inquire, didn't he think it was strange | 0:36:12 | 0:36:15 | |
that there was a robbery committed with that same pistol? | 0:36:15 | 0:36:19 | |
And here it was David Harris's pistol, | 0:36:19 | 0:36:22 | |
David Harris's automobile that picked up Randall Adams, | 0:36:22 | 0:36:25 | |
Didn't he think it was a little odd that all the utensils | 0:36:25 | 0:36:29 | |
for committing this so-called murder, were furnished by David Harris | 0:36:29 | 0:36:35 | |
who got off scot-free and was being a witness for the prosecution? | 0:36:35 | 0:36:40 | |
And all he said was, "Well, ho-hum, don't feel that way in Vidor, Texas. | 0:36:40 | 0:36:44 | |
"Our people just are not that, | 0:36:44 | 0:36:45 | |
"we're not that keen on ruining a young man's life." | 0:36:45 | 0:36:50 | |
I tried to introduce the crime spree theory. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:56 | |
The theory that David Harris was on this series of crimes | 0:36:56 | 0:36:59 | |
both before and after the killing of the policeman. | 0:36:59 | 0:37:02 | |
That he would be the person who had | 0:37:02 | 0:37:05 | |
the heart filled with malice most apt to commit a murder. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
But the judge would not allow me to introduce any of those crimes. | 0:37:08 | 0:37:12 | |
They'd had a 28-year-old man. | 0:37:13 | 0:37:15 | |
The only alternative would be prosecuting a 16-year-old | 0:37:15 | 0:37:19 | |
that could not be given the death penalty under Texas law, | 0:37:19 | 0:37:23 | |
where a 28-year-old man could. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:24 | |
That's always been the predominant motive, in my opinion, | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
for having a death penalty case against Randall Adams. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:34 | |
Not that they had him so dead to rights, | 0:37:34 | 0:37:36 | |
but just that he was a convenient age. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:38 | |
The judge is supposed to have said, that Don Metcalfe supposedly said | 0:37:43 | 0:37:50 | |
to Jeanette White, Dennis White's wife, "What do you care? | 0:37:50 | 0:37:53 | |
"He's only a drifter." | 0:37:53 | 0:37:54 | |
I grew up in a family | 0:37:58 | 0:38:00 | |
where I was taught a great respect for law enforcement. | 0:38:00 | 0:38:04 | |
I became acutely aware | 0:38:04 | 0:38:06 | |
of the dangers that police officers go through, | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
law enforcement officials go through, | 0:38:09 | 0:38:11 | |
that I think much of the public is not really sensitive to. | 0:38:11 | 0:38:15 | |
My father was an FBI man, | 0:38:15 | 0:38:18 | |
probably at the worst possible time to be in the FBI. | 0:38:18 | 0:38:22 | |
It was from 1932-1935 in Chicago. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:25 | |
He was at the Biograph Theatre the night Dillinger was killed. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:31 | |
It was a hot summer evening. | 0:38:33 | 0:38:35 | |
Little air conditioning in Chicago, and people were out for a walk. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:39 | |
My father would tell me that when Dillinger was killed, | 0:38:54 | 0:38:57 | |
within a matter of two minutes, | 0:38:57 | 0:38:59 | |
people dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood, to get souvenirs. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:04 | |
And he vividly remembered one lady who, all she had was a newspaper, | 0:39:04 | 0:39:08 | |
held it up and said, | 0:39:08 | 0:39:09 | |
"I bet I'm the only lady from Kansas City with John Dillinger's blood." | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
He told me, the "Woman in Red", she had on an orange dress. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:21 | |
This is trivia, OK? It looked red under the lights. He said it was really orange. | 0:39:21 | 0:39:26 | |
So she got to be known as the "Lady in Red" that fingered Dillinger. | 0:39:26 | 0:39:29 | |
He said, "It was really the Lady in Orange." | 0:39:29 | 0:39:33 | |
As her reward, she got a new fur coat | 0:39:33 | 0:39:36 | |
and a one-way ticket back to her native Romania. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:39 | |
His whole story, from the start, was two hours late. | 0:39:46 | 0:39:51 | |
I met this kid at around ten in the morning. He says we met at noon. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:58 | |
I say we were at the Bronco Bowl at 2 or 3 o'clock. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:02 | |
He says it was 5 or 6 o'clock. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:04 | |
Everything that we did coincide with, he was two hours late. | 0:40:06 | 0:40:10 | |
Two hours later. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:13 | |
Two hours into the night. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:15 | |
His testimony is that, as we were getting off the freeway | 0:40:17 | 0:40:21 | |
on Inwood Avenue, | 0:40:21 | 0:40:23 | |
he stated that I'm driving the car, that we're pulled over. | 0:40:23 | 0:40:28 | |
He gets scared and he slumps down in the seat of the car. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:31 | |
That as the officer walks up and shines his flashlight, | 0:40:41 | 0:40:45 | |
and I roll down my window... | 0:40:46 | 0:40:48 | |
FOOTSTEPS APPROACH | 0:40:48 | 0:40:50 | |
..I pull the pistol out and blow this man away. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:54 | |
TYRES SCREECH | 0:40:54 | 0:40:56 | |
His testimony is, when I finally do drive to the motel, I get out. | 0:41:01 | 0:41:07 | |
I tell him, "Don't worry about it. Forget this ever happened." | 0:41:07 | 0:41:11 | |
Well, that's crazy. That's crazy. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
The police officer was killed at 12:30, | 0:41:16 | 0:41:18 | |
which is about two and a half hours after he last saw me. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:21 | |
Just before he went into the motel, | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
he'd gone across the motel courtyard | 0:41:27 | 0:41:30 | |
to a little store over there and bought some cigarettes. | 0:41:30 | 0:41:33 | |
And I was supposed to go and find out if the man remembered him, | 0:41:33 | 0:41:37 | |
coming in there just before 10 o'clock, to buy the cigarettes. | 0:41:37 | 0:41:41 | |
Well, I didn't get over there to Fort Worth for a long time. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
We got pictures from his family that didn't show him in jail clothes. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:50 | |
I took the pictures in to show them to the man behind the counter. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:54 | |
He was very co-operative, and he wanted to help us. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:58 | |
But he honestly said, "I don't remember anything | 0:41:58 | 0:42:00 | |
"about this guy coming in there, | 0:42:00 | 0:42:03 | |
"might've been that night or any other night, | 0:42:03 | 0:42:05 | |
"cos they were always coming for cigarettes." | 0:42:05 | 0:42:08 | |
His brother, at first, | 0:42:08 | 0:42:14 | |
was saying that, at the time of the murder, | 0:42:14 | 0:42:18 | |
that he was home, watching, I believe it was a wrestling match on TV. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:26 | |
And he said, "Me and my brother likes wrestling matches. He was with me." | 0:42:26 | 0:42:31 | |
"Randall, my brother, was with me all night long. He couldn't have done it." | 0:42:31 | 0:42:35 | |
He was trying to cover for his brother. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:38 | |
Later, as I recall, he changed, | 0:42:39 | 0:42:42 | |
because he said, "Well, hey. If I get down there and perjure myself, | 0:42:42 | 0:42:48 | |
"there's nothing that they can do because they've got the case." | 0:42:48 | 0:42:53 | |
This is the way I think that he thought. | 0:42:53 | 0:42:57 | |
"They know that my brother did it. | 0:42:57 | 0:42:59 | |
"If I get up there and lie, they are going to have me for perjury. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:03 | |
"I'll be in the penitentiary with him, | 0:43:03 | 0:43:05 | |
"and it ain't going to do any good. | 0:43:05 | 0:43:07 | |
"So I just ain't going to testify. I ain't gonna say nothing." | 0:43:07 | 0:43:10 | |
So he backed off of his story completely | 0:43:10 | 0:43:13 | |
and Adams was left without any witnesses. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:17 | |
Her in-court testimony and original statement, which should be the best, | 0:43:23 | 0:43:27 | |
you're talking 15-20 minutes after the killing, | 0:43:27 | 0:43:30 | |
should be the best eyewitness testimony she's got. | 0:43:30 | 0:43:34 | |
It doesn't match. Doesn't match at all. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:37 | |
In court, she testified, | 0:43:53 | 0:43:56 | |
he got out of the car, she got out of the car. | 0:43:56 | 0:43:59 | |
She positioned herself at the back of the automobile. | 0:43:59 | 0:44:02 | |
FOOTSTEPS APPROACH | 0:44:02 | 0:44:05 | |
FOOTSTEPS GET LOUDER | 0:44:10 | 0:44:12 | |
Her original statement, 15 minutes after the killing, | 0:44:16 | 0:44:19 | |
"a fur-lined collar on the killer." | 0:44:19 | 0:44:21 | |
In court, "It might have been bushy hair." | 0:44:21 | 0:44:26 | |
The kid testified that I had a Levi jacket on, | 0:44:26 | 0:44:29 | |
which is the same type collar, basically, the same as this. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:33 | |
He testified at pre-trial that he had a fur-lined parka. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:36 | |
She's telling you who killed the man. | 0:44:36 | 0:44:39 | |
One person in the car with a fur-lined collar. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:42 | |
Very convenient that the driver happened to have bushy hair. | 0:44:53 | 0:44:57 | |
All she's got to do is look at a picture they took of me. | 0:44:57 | 0:45:00 | |
But that is not her original statement. | 0:45:00 | 0:45:02 | |
It's a hell of a big difference from "fur-lined collar" to "bushy hair." | 0:45:02 | 0:45:06 | |
It's crazy. It's crazy. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:09 | |
She went through two weeks' Internal Affairs. | 0:45:11 | 0:45:14 | |
When she comes out, her testimony changes. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:16 | |
She goes in saying one thing, she comes out saying another. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:19 | |
Something happened. What? | 0:45:19 | 0:45:21 | |
"Ah well, you know, we refreshed her memory." | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
Friday afternoon, I think it was Good Friday, | 0:45:30 | 0:45:33 | |
we came back in the courtroom that afternoon | 0:45:33 | 0:45:36 | |
and we were sort of elated because we thought, well, he's gonna walk. | 0:45:36 | 0:45:40 | |
And there's nothing really in that evidence. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:44 | |
There's just little David Harris, and nobody believes him. | 0:45:44 | 0:45:48 | |
And so we were very optimistic about his chances | 0:45:48 | 0:45:50 | |
until we walked into the courtroom and here were all these people | 0:45:50 | 0:45:53 | |
standing in front of the bench. Three of them, anyway. | 0:45:53 | 0:45:56 | |
They were taking the oath to be sworn as witnesses. | 0:45:56 | 0:46:00 | |
Mrs Miller got on the stand that last afternoon. | 0:46:00 | 0:46:05 | |
And she said, "That's the man, I saw that man! | 0:46:05 | 0:46:08 | |
"I saw Randall Adams' face just right after..." She said, | 0:46:08 | 0:46:13 | |
"I saw the gun sticking out of the car when he shot that police officer. | 0:46:13 | 0:46:18 | |
"And that's the man!" | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
And she waved her finger toward Randall Adams. She's the one that got him convicted. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
When I was a kid, I used to want to be a detective | 0:46:26 | 0:46:28 | |
because I used to watch all the detective shows on TV. | 0:46:28 | 0:46:31 | |
When I was a kid, they used to show these movies with Boston Blackie. | 0:46:35 | 0:46:39 | |
He always had a woman with him. | 0:46:43 | 0:46:45 | |
I wanted to be a wife of a detective | 0:46:46 | 0:46:48 | |
or be a detective, so I always watched detective stories. | 0:46:48 | 0:46:51 | |
I'm always looking because I never know what might come up. | 0:46:55 | 0:46:58 | |
Or how I could help. | 0:46:58 | 0:47:01 | |
I like to help in situations like that. I really do. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:05 | |
It's always happening to me, everywhere I go, lots of times, | 0:47:08 | 0:47:12 | |
there's killings or anything. Even around my house. Wherever. | 0:47:12 | 0:47:16 | |
I'm always looking or getting involved, to find out who did it, what's going on. | 0:47:16 | 0:47:20 | |
I listen to people. And I'm always trying to decide who's lying | 0:47:28 | 0:47:32 | |
or who killed who...before the police do, see if I can beat them. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:37 | |
Yeah. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:38 | |
I was working at a gas station. My husband and I both. | 0:47:50 | 0:47:54 | |
We weren't getting along well at all. | 0:47:56 | 0:47:59 | |
We were arguing back and forth. This is why we didn't want to go home | 0:47:59 | 0:48:03 | |
because we would rather talk it out in the car | 0:48:03 | 0:48:05 | |
than go home with the kids and fight. Had to listen to them, too. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:09 | |
So we were really arguing | 0:48:09 | 0:48:11 | |
and we decided to go get something to eat. | 0:48:11 | 0:48:14 | |
About that time, a police came out of a restaurant on the right hand side of the road... | 0:48:14 | 0:48:18 | |
and he went to pull the man over. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:22 | |
She turned around. She was looking hard. She looked... | 0:48:31 | 0:48:34 | |
I didn't think she seen the guy, but she did. | 0:48:34 | 0:48:37 | |
I said, "What you looking at?" Cos I knew something had went wrong. | 0:48:37 | 0:48:40 | |
She said, "You just shut up and drive." | 0:48:40 | 0:48:42 | |
And I kept telling my husband, "Slow down, slow down so I can see." | 0:48:45 | 0:48:49 | |
He said, "Come on, we're getting out of here. You're too nosey. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:53 | |
"You don't even know what's going on." | 0:48:53 | 0:48:55 | |
I had no idea that somebody was going to get killed or shot. | 0:48:57 | 0:49:02 | |
So I just drove on. | 0:49:02 | 0:49:03 | |
He was one of these kind that didn't like getting involved in nothing. | 0:49:07 | 0:49:10 | |
He wanted to go on. He told me to shut up and turn around, don't look. | 0:49:10 | 0:49:14 | |
I turned around and looked anyway. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:16 | |
So we heard something, like backfire or firecrackers. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:26 | |
And so we drove over the bridge and I got to thinking. | 0:49:26 | 0:49:30 | |
I said, "Em, there're no firecrackers this time of the year." | 0:49:30 | 0:49:33 | |
GUNSHOTS | 0:49:33 | 0:49:36 | |
I was thinking to myself, "That couldn't be somebody shooting." | 0:49:38 | 0:49:43 | |
GUNSHOTS | 0:49:43 | 0:49:45 | |
It was real dark, and it was cold. | 0:49:47 | 0:49:50 | |
It was hard to see in that car. But, see, his window was down. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:55 | |
The driver's window was down. And this is how I got such a good look. | 0:49:55 | 0:50:00 | |
I couldn't see anything inside. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:09 | |
It was kind of...shadows on the window and stuff. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:13 | |
But when he rolled down the window, it made his face stand out so, | 0:50:13 | 0:50:16 | |
the car was dark blue. | 0:50:16 | 0:50:18 | |
He had a beard, moustache, kind of dishwater-blond hair. | 0:50:23 | 0:50:28 | |
But, like I said, when he was in court, | 0:50:30 | 0:50:33 | |
he sure looked a lot different. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:34 | |
All I could just tell by this and this, that it was him. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:39 | |
I knew that there was some shots over there. | 0:50:43 | 0:50:46 | |
But I didn't want to be involved in it | 0:50:46 | 0:50:48 | |
because West Dallas is a high-crime neighbourhood. One of the biggest. | 0:50:48 | 0:50:52 | |
He was more scared of it than I was. | 0:50:52 | 0:50:55 | |
But, see, when you have black people like that... | 0:50:55 | 0:50:58 | |
they don't like getting involved in nothing. That's just common. | 0:50:58 | 0:51:02 | |
Like here, nobody wants to see nothing or hear nothing. | 0:51:02 | 0:51:07 | |
And they'll stay completely in the background. | 0:51:07 | 0:51:10 | |
That's why they were having such a hard time over there, | 0:51:10 | 0:51:12 | |
finding anybody that would come forward. | 0:51:12 | 0:51:15 | |
Because it was in a totally black neighbourhood. | 0:51:15 | 0:51:17 | |
She just believe in - see somebody done something wrong, she tell it. | 0:51:20 | 0:51:26 | |
Cos she told on me... | 0:51:26 | 0:51:28 | |
..a couple of times. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:34 | |
She said that I was hauling drugs out of El Paso. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:38 | |
Called the sheriff down there, going make me open my trunk. | 0:51:39 | 0:51:43 | |
So I ended up opening it but there was nothing in it. | 0:51:43 | 0:51:47 | |
Oh, man. She's... Good grief. | 0:51:50 | 0:51:53 | |
She's always, if she find out you done something, she sure turn you in. | 0:51:55 | 0:51:58 | |
GUNSHOT | 0:52:03 | 0:52:05 | |
Mrs Miller had testified at the trial | 0:52:05 | 0:52:08 | |
that she had gotten off early from her gas station job | 0:52:08 | 0:52:12 | |
and gone down to pick up her husband to help him with the bookwork. | 0:52:12 | 0:52:16 | |
We found out that she was not doing bookkeeping for that station | 0:52:16 | 0:52:19 | |
because she had been fired from her job two weeks earlier | 0:52:19 | 0:52:22 | |
for till-tapping, for stealing. | 0:52:22 | 0:52:24 | |
The reason that they were talking to the police at all | 0:52:24 | 0:52:29 | |
was that there had been a three-day running knife fight in their apartment | 0:52:29 | 0:52:33 | |
and they were all booked for disorderly and drunk behaviour in there, | 0:52:33 | 0:52:37 | |
including assault with knives and all kinds of stuff. | 0:52:37 | 0:52:41 | |
When they were down at the police station, | 0:52:41 | 0:52:43 | |
they suddenly decided to volunteer all this information about what they had seen, | 0:52:43 | 0:52:47 | |
about the police officer's killing. | 0:52:47 | 0:52:49 | |
A woman called me and said that she knew this woman | 0:52:51 | 0:52:53 | |
who had testified and identified Randall Adams from a passing vehicle | 0:52:53 | 0:52:57 | |
and that this woman had never told the truth in her life. | 0:52:57 | 0:53:00 | |
She also told me that she had tried to call the DA during the trial | 0:53:05 | 0:53:09 | |
and give this evidence that this woman was not believable, | 0:53:09 | 0:53:12 | |
that if their case hinged on this testimony, this was not believable testimony. | 0:53:12 | 0:53:16 | |
They were scum. | 0:53:16 | 0:53:18 | |
They were just, um... | 0:53:18 | 0:53:21 | |
actually scum. | 0:53:21 | 0:53:23 | |
He was a black man and she was a white woman. | 0:53:23 | 0:53:26 | |
He came to work the day after. | 0:53:26 | 0:53:29 | |
He told me about the policeman that had gotten shot the night before. I hadn't heard anything about it. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:35 | |
And I thought it was another one of his stories. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:39 | |
And he brings in these newspapers. | 0:53:39 | 0:53:42 | |
And he says he didn't see a damn thing. He couldn't see nothing, it was too dark. | 0:53:42 | 0:53:46 | |
Wheels started rolling in his head about money. | 0:53:48 | 0:53:51 | |
That's when he got the idea. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:55 | |
Let me put it in his words. | 0:53:56 | 0:53:58 | |
For enough money, he would testify to what they wanted him to say. | 0:53:58 | 0:54:03 | |
He would say anything they wanted him to say. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:07 | |
He would see anything that they wanted him to see. | 0:54:07 | 0:54:11 | |
Those were his words. | 0:54:11 | 0:54:12 | |
I was shocked that he did go ahead | 0:54:15 | 0:54:17 | |
and get up and tell that he saw the actual shooting | 0:54:17 | 0:54:21 | |
and-and recognised the boy. Identified him. | 0:54:21 | 0:54:26 | |
That's when I called Dennis White. I told him, "That man's lying." | 0:54:28 | 0:54:31 | |
Nobody has that good of eyesight. | 0:54:33 | 0:54:36 | |
I mean, you know... | 0:54:36 | 0:54:38 | |
Oh... From where the policeman was supposed to have been shot | 0:54:38 | 0:54:43 | |
and from where they were at, um... | 0:54:43 | 0:54:45 | |
I doubt if you could have even seen them with binoculars. | 0:54:45 | 0:54:49 | |
I'm a salesman. And you develop something like a total recall. | 0:54:53 | 0:54:58 | |
I don't forget places, things...or streets. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:04 | |
Because it's a habit, something I just picked up. | 0:55:04 | 0:55:07 | |
I just stare intensely at people and try to figure them out. | 0:55:07 | 0:55:11 | |
Being nosy, I just stare. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:15 | |
I was leaving the Plush Pub one night... | 0:55:19 | 0:55:22 | |
driving a...1977 Cadillac... | 0:55:22 | 0:55:27 | |
heading west on Hampton. | 0:55:27 | 0:55:30 | |
I noticed an officer had two individuals pulled over... | 0:55:30 | 0:55:35 | |
to the kerb in a blue... | 0:55:35 | 0:55:37 | |
some type of vehicle. | 0:55:37 | 0:55:39 | |
It was a blue... | 0:55:39 | 0:55:41 | |
It was a blue Ford... | 0:55:42 | 0:55:44 | |
It was a blue something. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:46 | |
The driver, I think, had long hair and a moustache. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:53 | |
And the other one didn't have no hairs on his face. | 0:55:53 | 0:55:56 | |
A person that is white going through that area at night, | 0:56:01 | 0:56:04 | |
he's a sore thumb, he stick out for the first reason. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:09 | |
And if they don't look right, they're going to stop you. | 0:56:09 | 0:56:11 | |
The officer, he walked up to the vehicle. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:17 | |
His car was behind... I don't know if it was behind or in front, | 0:56:18 | 0:56:22 | |
but I know he had him pulled over, and he was up to the car. | 0:56:22 | 0:56:25 | |
I think he was up to the car. | 0:56:25 | 0:56:28 | |
Let me think. Yeah, he was up to the car. | 0:56:28 | 0:56:32 | |
As we was coming by, he had to have been up to the car. | 0:56:33 | 0:56:36 | |
I didn't see no bullet. I didn't see no gunfire. Because I went on. | 0:56:43 | 0:56:48 | |
GUNSHOT | 0:57:00 | 0:57:02 | |
We have three people that testified and identified him, positively, | 0:57:02 | 0:57:08 | |
as being the driver at the time that Wood was walking up, | 0:57:08 | 0:57:11 | |
right beside the car. | 0:57:11 | 0:57:13 | |
So we know that he was the driver from the witnesses | 0:57:13 | 0:57:17 | |
and we also know that it was the driver that shot Officer Wood, coming from his partner. | 0:57:17 | 0:57:23 | |
We couldn't have made a case with the voluntary statement that we got from Adams. | 0:57:24 | 0:57:28 | |
We had to rely on witnesses. And this is what we did. | 0:57:28 | 0:57:32 | |
I always try very hard - every judge I know of does - | 0:57:33 | 0:57:38 | |
to not show emotion on the bench. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:41 | |
The reason, if you do show emotion, | 0:57:41 | 0:57:44 | |
the jury might take it that you're favouring one side or another. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:47 | |
So you try to remain passive, emotionless, objective. | 0:57:47 | 0:57:51 | |
I do have to admit that in the Adams' case, | 0:57:51 | 0:57:54 | |
and I've never really said this, | 0:57:54 | 0:57:56 | |
Doug Mulder's final argument was one I'd never heard before, | 0:57:56 | 0:58:00 | |
about the thin blue line of police that separated the public from anarchy. | 0:58:00 | 0:58:05 | |
I have to concede that my eyes kind of welled up when I heard that. | 0:58:06 | 0:58:11 | |
It did get to me emotionally, but I don't think I showed it. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:14 | |
In death penalty cases, we have a question, or we did at the time, | 0:58:36 | 0:58:40 | |
of whether or not that person is of a dangerous mentality, | 0:58:40 | 0:58:45 | |
and might be expected to commit other crimes. | 0:58:45 | 0:58:47 | |
To answer that question, the Dallas District Attorney | 0:58:47 | 0:58:50 | |
sends psychiatrists to the defendant's cell, | 0:58:50 | 0:58:54 | |
to discover whether he is without remorse, | 0:58:54 | 0:58:57 | |
and therefore is a dangerous and psychopathic personality. | 0:58:57 | 0:59:00 | |
Of course, in the instance of a person | 0:59:00 | 0:59:03 | |
who did not commit the crime, they're not going to show remorse. | 0:59:03 | 0:59:07 | |
There were two psychiatrists that appeared again and again. | 0:59:07 | 0:59:11 | |
Holbrook and Grigson, the "Killer Shrinks." | 0:59:11 | 0:59:14 | |
There was certain criticism directed against these two people. | 0:59:15 | 0:59:20 | |
Because, in effect, whenever they showed up, | 0:59:20 | 0:59:24 | |
the purpose of their visit was to kill the defendant. | 0:59:24 | 0:59:28 | |
It was April 15th, tax day. | 0:59:28 | 0:59:33 | |
I think I was filling out my taxes at the time. Afraid I might be late. | 0:59:33 | 0:59:37 | |
A guard walks up to the door and tells me, | 0:59:39 | 0:59:42 | |
"There's someone out here who wants to talk to you." | 0:59:42 | 0:59:44 | |
I ask him who it was. | 0:59:47 | 0:59:49 | |
He said he didn't know, but the court ordered me to talk to him. | 0:59:49 | 0:59:52 | |
I said, "All right." | 0:59:52 | 0:59:53 | |
And in comes this real tall, ostrich-looking dude. | 0:59:53 | 0:59:56 | |
He introduced himself as Dr Grigson. | 0:59:56 | 0:59:59 | |
He pulled a pad out of his coat pocket | 1:00:01 | 1:00:04 | |
that had a line drawn across it. | 1:00:04 | 1:00:07 | |
On this pad, on the upper half, he had six images. | 1:00:07 | 1:00:12 | |
I will say a box, a square, a circle with a diamond in it. | 1:00:12 | 1:00:16 | |
I don't know. It's been a while. | 1:00:16 | 1:00:18 | |
He slides this piece of paper across to me and he hands me a pencil. | 1:00:19 | 1:00:24 | |
He says, "I'm going to get a cup of coffee." | 1:00:24 | 1:00:26 | |
"Please copy what's on this piece of paper." | 1:00:26 | 1:00:29 | |
I'm looking at this man. | 1:00:32 | 1:00:35 | |
I said, "What? You want it copied just the same way you did?" | 1:00:35 | 1:00:38 | |
"You want me to change them around? What do you want me to do?" | 1:00:38 | 1:00:41 | |
He said, "Just do whatever you think you want to do." And he left. | 1:00:41 | 1:00:45 | |
So on the bottom half of this piece of paper, | 1:00:47 | 1:00:50 | |
I made my boxes and Xs, and zeros with diamonds in it, | 1:00:50 | 1:00:54 | |
exactly like his. | 1:00:54 | 1:00:55 | |
He asked me, | 1:00:58 | 1:01:00 | |
"What's the meaning of 'A rolling stone gathers no moss?"' | 1:01:00 | 1:01:04 | |
I'm looking at this man. I said, "Are you kidding? Is this a joke? | 1:01:04 | 1:01:09 | |
He said, "No, I really want to know your answer to that question." | 1:01:09 | 1:01:13 | |
I said, well, "A rolling stone gathers no moss. To me, it would | 1:01:15 | 1:01:20 | |
represent that a person that doesn't stand still long enough, | 1:01:20 | 1:01:23 | |
it's kind of hard for people to cling to him. | 1:01:23 | 1:01:27 | |
"If he keeps moving around, it's hard to get close to him." | 1:01:27 | 1:01:30 | |
He shook his head. | 1:01:31 | 1:01:33 | |
He said, "What about 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"'? | 1:01:33 | 1:01:38 | |
I said, "If you have a hold of something, why give it up for | 1:01:38 | 1:01:42 | |
a chance of getting something that might be a little better?" | 1:01:42 | 1:01:45 | |
"It doesn't make sense. You've got something good, why let go of it?" | 1:01:45 | 1:01:48 | |
"If you can get the other one, get it if you can, | 1:01:48 | 1:01:51 | |
"but don't let go of what you got to try to get something else." | 1:01:51 | 1:01:55 | |
He asked about my family. He asked about my background. | 1:01:55 | 1:02:01 | |
And he left. | 1:02:01 | 1:02:03 | |
Total time we had talked, maybe 15, 20 minutes. | 1:02:03 | 1:02:06 | |
Dr Grigson was up there testifying he would commit violent crimes | 1:02:09 | 1:02:13 | |
in the future if he was released. | 1:02:13 | 1:02:15 | |
Grigson is known as "Dr Death" because he always testifies that way. | 1:02:15 | 1:02:20 | |
In about 99% of the trials | 1:02:20 | 1:02:21 | |
that he's been a witness for the prosecution, he always testifies | 1:02:21 | 1:02:25 | |
that they will commit violent crimes in the future. | 1:02:25 | 1:02:28 | |
You can't tell what somebody's going to do years from now. Not really. | 1:02:28 | 1:02:35 | |
Except based on your past record, which anybody can do. | 1:02:35 | 1:02:38 | |
Randall never had any prior record. | 1:02:42 | 1:02:45 | |
And as far as we know, he never had any history of violence whatever. | 1:02:45 | 1:02:49 | |
Grigson testified for two and a half hours | 1:02:52 | 1:02:54 | |
about all these degrees he's got. | 1:02:54 | 1:02:58 | |
He's been here, and he's been there, and he's studied here. | 1:02:58 | 1:03:01 | |
He called me Charlie Manson. He called me Adolf Hitler. | 1:03:02 | 1:03:07 | |
He said I'm the type of personality | 1:03:07 | 1:03:11 | |
that can work all day and creep all night. | 1:03:11 | 1:03:13 | |
He testified, Grigson, | 1:03:15 | 1:03:17 | |
that the future seriousness of my mental state | 1:03:20 | 1:03:26 | |
would be such that if they released me, | 1:03:26 | 1:03:30 | |
I would go crazy and probably butcher half of Dallas County. | 1:03:30 | 1:03:33 | |
Even though he talked to me 15 minutes, | 1:03:33 | 1:03:36 | |
I have no prior convictions, no prior arrests. | 1:03:36 | 1:03:40 | |
I was non-violent for 28 years. | 1:03:40 | 1:03:42 | |
And in one instance, | 1:03:42 | 1:03:44 | |
and that's saying if I did this, which I didn't, | 1:03:44 | 1:03:47 | |
he's stating that, that's enough. For the rest of my life, watch me. | 1:03:47 | 1:03:51 | |
Don't ever turn your back on me. And he talked to me 15 minutes. | 1:03:51 | 1:03:55 | |
He's crazy. | 1:03:57 | 1:03:58 | |
You can understand why a man might steal if he needs money | 1:04:02 | 1:04:07 | |
to put food on the table. | 1:04:07 | 1:04:08 | |
I can understand why a 17-year-old boy who doesn't have a car | 1:04:08 | 1:04:12 | |
would steal one to ride around in. | 1:04:12 | 1:04:14 | |
I can understand why the heroin addict needs heroin. | 1:04:14 | 1:04:17 | |
But it's very hard to understand why anyone has to kill a police officer. | 1:04:17 | 1:04:21 | |
It just doesn't have to be. | 1:04:21 | 1:04:23 | |
When I'm asleep and I close my eyes and think, "Why would he do it?" | 1:04:34 | 1:04:37 | |
He had no background that would lead to murder, | 1:04:37 | 1:04:40 | |
no reason to commit a murder. | 1:04:40 | 1:04:42 | |
And I look at the facts of the case and say, | 1:04:42 | 1:04:45 | |
David Harris knew the car was stolen, knew the guns were there, | 1:04:45 | 1:04:49 | |
knew the guns were stolen, was on a crime spree, | 1:04:49 | 1:04:52 | |
had had a criminal record prior to stealing this car and these guns. | 1:04:52 | 1:04:56 | |
He was the one that wanted to commit the murder | 1:04:56 | 1:04:58 | |
and get away from the scene. | 1:04:58 | 1:05:00 | |
He was the one that, after the murder was committed | 1:05:00 | 1:05:03 | |
went right back home and bragged about it to his friends. | 1:05:03 | 1:05:07 | |
I looked at all the evidence, | 1:05:07 | 1:05:09 | |
and I found that I believed that David Harris committed murder. | 1:05:09 | 1:05:14 | |
The jury looked at the same evidence, | 1:05:14 | 1:05:16 | |
and found they believed that Randall Adams committed murder. | 1:05:16 | 1:05:19 | |
And it was their verdict that counted. | 1:05:19 | 1:05:22 | |
You have a DA. | 1:05:45 | 1:05:47 | |
He doesn't talk about | 1:05:49 | 1:05:51 | |
when they convict you or how they convict you, | 1:05:51 | 1:05:54 | |
he's talking about how he's going to kill you. | 1:05:54 | 1:05:58 | |
He don't give a damn if you're innocent. | 1:05:58 | 1:06:00 | |
He don't give a damn if you're guilty. | 1:06:00 | 1:06:02 | |
He's talking about killing you. | 1:06:02 | 1:06:05 | |
You get numb. You get... | 1:06:12 | 1:06:14 | |
It's like a bad dream. You want to wake up, but you can't do it. | 1:06:16 | 1:06:20 | |
15 times, 20 times a day, I hear this same story | 1:06:24 | 1:06:28 | |
about what happens when a man is electrocuted. | 1:06:28 | 1:06:31 | |
His eyeballs pop out. | 1:06:33 | 1:06:35 | |
His fingernails pop out. His toenails pop out. | 1:06:35 | 1:06:38 | |
He bleeds out of every orifice he's got. | 1:06:38 | 1:06:41 | |
They don't care. | 1:06:47 | 1:06:48 | |
They don't care. | 1:06:50 | 1:06:52 | |
All they want to do is talk about how they're going to kill you. | 1:06:52 | 1:06:55 | |
That's the only thing that they cared about and talked about. | 1:06:55 | 1:06:58 | |
At that point, that's all they're wanting. | 1:07:00 | 1:07:03 | |
I didn't have any idea what happened to him. | 1:07:09 | 1:07:12 | |
After I testified, I was gone. | 1:07:14 | 1:07:16 | |
I never really concerned myself with it. | 1:07:18 | 1:07:21 | |
Maybe I didn't want to know. I don't know. | 1:07:26 | 1:07:29 | |
I didn't have any interest in knowing, | 1:07:30 | 1:07:32 | |
otherwise I might have tried to find out. | 1:07:32 | 1:07:35 | |
Dennis filed the motion for a new trial, | 1:07:38 | 1:07:40 | |
then we filed an amended motion for a new trial. | 1:07:40 | 1:07:43 | |
About 20 days later, we were to have a hearing on it. | 1:07:43 | 1:07:45 | |
Both Robert Miller and his wife testified there. | 1:07:45 | 1:07:49 | |
But we could not bring out the fact, | 1:07:49 | 1:07:51 | |
that they had said that they were going to get that reward money, | 1:07:51 | 1:07:55 | |
and that they didn't care whether they saw anything or not, | 1:07:55 | 1:07:58 | |
but their car was too steamed up. | 1:07:58 | 1:08:00 | |
We were not allowed to get any of that in, | 1:08:01 | 1:08:03 | |
because it was held that it was impeaching testimony | 1:08:03 | 1:08:06 | |
and therefore it came too late. | 1:08:06 | 1:08:08 | |
We kept running into blank walls. | 1:08:08 | 1:08:11 | |
A reporter from the Dallas Morning News, | 1:08:13 | 1:08:16 | |
discovered that one week after the trial was over with, | 1:08:16 | 1:08:19 | |
the daughter of this woman had a robbery case in this court. | 1:08:19 | 1:08:24 | |
She offered her testimony | 1:08:24 | 1:08:26 | |
at a time when her daughter was in danger of going to jail for life, | 1:08:26 | 1:08:29 | |
and got her daughter out of jail. | 1:08:29 | 1:08:31 | |
How can you believe her, | 1:08:31 | 1:08:33 | |
when the very next week the same judge dismisses that case? | 1:08:33 | 1:08:36 | |
The Millers are the kind of people that would do anything | 1:08:39 | 1:08:42 | |
if there was something to be gained, | 1:08:42 | 1:08:46 | |
such as her daughter not being sent to the penitentiary | 1:08:46 | 1:08:49 | |
for armed robbery or for money. | 1:08:49 | 1:08:51 | |
When we went to court that day, the District Attorney was hard-nosed. | 1:08:51 | 1:08:55 | |
Wouldn't let me answer any questions. | 1:08:55 | 1:08:57 | |
He'd ask me questions, but then he'd cut me off real short. | 1:08:57 | 1:09:02 | |
That's when he said something about my big fat nose. | 1:09:03 | 1:09:06 | |
If I'd kept my big fat nose out of their business, | 1:09:06 | 1:09:09 | |
the Millers would be better off. | 1:09:09 | 1:09:11 | |
When I started to leave out of the courtroom, | 1:09:11 | 1:09:14 | |
he started laughing, like, "Didn't do you any good to get up here." | 1:09:14 | 1:09:19 | |
It really didn't. Didn't help the guy at all. | 1:09:19 | 1:09:22 | |
To the best of my recollection, | 1:09:29 | 1:09:31 | |
the brief conversations I have had with Mr Adams, | 1:09:31 | 1:09:34 | |
and they have been brief, | 1:09:34 | 1:09:35 | |
I don't even recall ever asking him, or my having told me | 1:09:35 | 1:09:39 | |
that he did not do it. | 1:09:39 | 1:09:40 | |
Because, for my purposes, representing him on appeal | 1:09:42 | 1:09:46 | |
it's totally irrelevant. | 1:09:46 | 1:09:48 | |
When the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas voted 9-0 against us, | 1:09:49 | 1:09:58 | |
I was a little upset about that. | 1:09:58 | 1:10:00 | |
I felt we, a) should have won, | 1:10:00 | 1:10:02 | |
b) certainly shouldn't have been slapped so hard | 1:10:02 | 1:10:05 | |
with the unanimous decision against us. | 1:10:05 | 1:10:08 | |
I was with my family in an ice-cream parlour, | 1:10:08 | 1:10:12 | |
and the judge and his family happened to come at the same time. | 1:10:12 | 1:10:16 | |
And he came over to me and made the comment, | 1:10:16 | 1:10:19 | |
I see where the Court of Criminal Appeals | 1:10:21 | 1:10:26 | |
gave me an 'A' in the Adams case. | 1:10:26 | 1:10:27 | |
Our highest state appellate court, | 1:10:27 | 1:10:30 | |
the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin, affirmed the case, nine to nothing. | 1:10:30 | 1:10:34 | |
Then it was reversed by the United States Supreme Court, eight to one. | 1:10:34 | 1:10:38 | |
When an Appellate Court reverses a case, | 1:10:39 | 1:10:42 | |
they are never saying the trial judge was right or wrong. | 1:10:42 | 1:10:46 | |
They are saying they disagree with the judge. | 1:10:46 | 1:10:49 | |
You can't, for instance, in the Adams appeals | 1:10:49 | 1:10:52 | |
say the appellate courts were saying that I was right or I was wrong. | 1:10:52 | 1:10:57 | |
After all, if, in Austin, | 1:10:57 | 1:11:00 | |
in our state appeals court, I was nine to nothing correct | 1:11:00 | 1:11:03 | |
and in Washington, I was one to eight incorrect. | 1:11:03 | 1:11:06 | |
If you tally all those votes, I come out ten to eight, | 1:11:06 | 1:11:09 | |
and yet the case was reversed. | 1:11:09 | 1:11:12 | |
Eight justices of the Supreme Court | 1:11:14 | 1:11:16 | |
were the first people that ever agreed with me. | 1:11:16 | 1:11:19 | |
They're the only people anywhere that ever agreed with me about that statute, | 1:11:19 | 1:11:23 | |
were eight justices of the Supreme Court. | 1:11:23 | 1:11:26 | |
The Dallas Morning News had a very nice front-page story - | 1:11:28 | 1:11:33 | |
either the same day or the day after the reversal was announced by the Supreme Court - | 1:11:33 | 1:11:38 | |
in which Henry Wade, the District Attorney, | 1:11:38 | 1:11:42 | |
vowed a retrial of Randall Dale Adams. | 1:11:42 | 1:11:45 | |
Because there was no room in his book for a cop-killer | 1:11:45 | 1:11:49 | |
getting off with anything less than the death penalty. | 1:11:49 | 1:11:52 | |
I took that to heart. I thought I was going to get my chance. | 1:11:52 | 1:11:57 | |
For reasons that were never really made public... | 1:11:57 | 1:12:00 | |
..Mr Wade requested the governor to commute | 1:12:01 | 1:12:05 | |
Mr Adams's death penalty to life. | 1:12:05 | 1:12:07 | |
And that eliminated the possibility of a retrial, based on the reversal. | 1:12:08 | 1:12:13 | |
I was shocked, I was absolutely shocked. | 1:12:13 | 1:12:17 | |
I can't help but believe | 1:12:17 | 1:12:19 | |
that some of the motivation behind that decision was a fear that... | 1:12:19 | 1:12:24 | |
Adams may be vindicated at a retrial. | 1:12:24 | 1:12:28 | |
I felt they prosecuted the wrong person and I don't know why. | 1:12:28 | 1:12:32 | |
I felt that some policeman, whether in Vidor or in Dallas | 1:12:32 | 1:12:36 | |
made a decision about who to prosecute | 1:12:36 | 1:12:38 | |
and set the wheels of justice in motion in the wrong direction | 1:12:38 | 1:12:42 | |
and they got going so fast no-one could stop them. | 1:12:42 | 1:12:45 | |
I felt it was up to me to stop them and I didn't, | 1:12:45 | 1:12:47 | |
then I felt it was up to the Supreme Court, | 1:12:47 | 1:12:49 | |
they did what they could, but then... | 1:12:49 | 1:12:51 | |
it's all gotten messed up and derailed again. | 1:12:51 | 1:12:54 | |
Since his trial, I have given up my practice of criminal law. | 1:12:54 | 1:13:00 | |
I have not had a jury trial | 1:13:03 | 1:13:05 | |
since I heard the verdict of this jury in this case, | 1:13:05 | 1:13:08 | |
and don't intend to. | 1:13:08 | 1:13:10 | |
I just feel like... | 1:13:11 | 1:13:13 | |
I'll let other people handle these problems for a while. | 1:13:13 | 1:13:18 | |
Because if justice can miscarry so badly, | 1:13:18 | 1:13:24 | |
I'd rather do something else. | 1:13:24 | 1:13:26 | |
Prosecutors in Dallas have said for years, | 1:13:26 | 1:13:30 | |
"Any prosecutor can convict a guilty man. | 1:13:30 | 1:13:33 | |
"It takes a great prosecutor to convict an innocent man." | 1:13:33 | 1:13:36 | |
To this day, I think Mr Mulder | 1:13:39 | 1:13:42 | |
believes the Randall Dale Adams conviction | 1:13:42 | 1:13:45 | |
was one of his great victories, | 1:13:45 | 1:13:47 | |
probably because of some reservations he has | 1:13:47 | 1:13:50 | |
about Randall Dale Adams's guilt. | 1:13:50 | 1:13:52 | |
I got a call one morning that a lady here in Vidor | 1:13:57 | 1:14:00 | |
had been hit over the head with a rolling pin | 1:14:00 | 1:14:03 | |
and the attacker thought she'd been knocked unconscious | 1:14:03 | 1:14:07 | |
when, in reality, she wasn't. | 1:14:07 | 1:14:10 | |
And she recognized the attacker to be David Harris. | 1:14:10 | 1:14:12 | |
He voluntarily came to the police station. | 1:14:15 | 1:14:18 | |
I told him, "David, this girl knows who you are. | 1:14:18 | 1:14:21 | |
"I don't even have to tell you I know the truth. | 1:14:21 | 1:14:24 | |
"You know I know the truth this time." He said, "I was wrong. | 1:14:24 | 1:14:28 | |
"I smoked marijuana, I was drinking. | 1:14:28 | 1:14:30 | |
"I don't know what got over me but something came over me." | 1:14:30 | 1:14:33 | |
But he forgot to mention one thing - that he was only wearing underwear. | 1:14:33 | 1:14:38 | |
I felt as though the attack was sexually oriented. | 1:14:40 | 1:14:43 | |
He never wanted to admit that | 1:14:43 | 1:14:45 | |
and, as I recall, he never really finally admitted it. | 1:14:45 | 1:14:48 | |
He'd just get to the point he wouldn't deny it. | 1:14:48 | 1:14:51 | |
He posted his bond and went to Germany. | 1:14:51 | 1:14:54 | |
We had a crime with basically the same MO as his | 1:14:54 | 1:14:57 | |
and so it led me to want to check and see if he was in town. | 1:14:57 | 1:15:01 | |
I contacted the Worldwide Military Locator | 1:15:01 | 1:15:04 | |
to see if, through the military, I could locate him. | 1:15:04 | 1:15:07 | |
I did, and found out he was in prison at the time. | 1:15:07 | 1:15:09 | |
He really didn't remember what happened. | 1:15:11 | 1:15:13 | |
He said he woke up in the stockade | 1:15:13 | 1:15:15 | |
and he'd been told he beat up one of his ranking officers. | 1:15:15 | 1:15:18 | |
We had another occasion to have a crime that fit his MO a lot, | 1:15:18 | 1:15:22 | |
so I started looking for him again, | 1:15:22 | 1:15:24 | |
this time I found him in prison in California. | 1:15:24 | 1:15:27 | |
So I realised again, unfortunately, he hadn't straightened up. | 1:15:27 | 1:15:30 | |
He was still having a lot of problems. | 1:15:30 | 1:15:33 | |
I was 16 years old. | 1:15:40 | 1:15:42 | |
I'd really had no real dealings with the court systems, etcetera. | 1:15:42 | 1:15:47 | |
Didn't know how they worked, really. | 1:15:48 | 1:15:51 | |
Didn't know much about the law. | 1:15:51 | 1:15:53 | |
Just a young, dumb kid. | 1:15:53 | 1:15:55 | |
Police give you the time of this and the time this happened | 1:15:57 | 1:16:01 | |
and you just correlate from those events. | 1:16:01 | 1:16:03 | |
You just estimate from that event what time it was. You don't know. | 1:16:03 | 1:16:08 | |
You're taking a guess. | 1:16:08 | 1:16:10 | |
Police tell you, "It was 12:30 when this crime happened." | 1:16:12 | 1:16:17 | |
"What time did you leave the movie?" | 1:16:21 | 1:16:24 | |
"I know it was somewhere around midnight." | 1:16:24 | 1:16:27 | |
"It might have been before then. I don't know. | 1:16:32 | 1:16:34 | |
"I didn't have a watch on." | 1:16:34 | 1:16:36 | |
He went over my testimony with me pretty extensively. | 1:16:47 | 1:16:52 | |
How I should answer certain questions... | 1:16:52 | 1:16:55 | |
..things of this nature. | 1:16:57 | 1:16:59 | |
That's what you call coaching the witness. | 1:16:59 | 1:17:02 | |
Let's get this evidence in a spectrum | 1:17:02 | 1:17:05 | |
where it's going to be most effective. | 1:17:05 | 1:17:08 | |
At the time, I didn't really ponder on it, you know. | 1:17:13 | 1:17:18 | |
But he was deceiving the jury. He wanted to deceive justice. | 1:17:22 | 1:17:26 | |
That's why I think that statue with the scales... Justice? | 1:17:26 | 1:17:31 | |
What is she called? I don't know what she's called. | 1:17:31 | 1:17:34 | |
She's got that blindfold on. | 1:17:34 | 1:17:36 | |
We don't see what goes on behind closed doors. | 1:17:36 | 1:17:40 | |
'I had another woman in the car. I didn't tell them about that. | 1:17:40 | 1:17:45 | |
'My wife would kill me.' | 1:17:45 | 1:17:47 | |
She would've tore my head off if she knew I was out with another woman. | 1:17:47 | 1:17:51 | |
Would you tell? | 1:17:51 | 1:17:52 | |
That's what happened. I was trying to get her home. | 1:17:52 | 1:17:56 | |
The driver's side was down because... | 1:17:59 | 1:18:02 | |
the lady was a little sick. | 1:18:02 | 1:18:04 | |
Decided she needed some air. | 1:18:04 | 1:18:06 | |
Because she was pretty drunk. | 1:18:06 | 1:18:08 | |
'See, the Millers, one is black and one is white.' | 1:18:15 | 1:18:18 | |
They said I was going with, the reason I was over that night, | 1:18:18 | 1:18:22 | |
I was over there messing with this man's wife. | 1:18:22 | 1:18:25 | |
'And I ain't never gone with her in my life, she was too old and ugly.' | 1:18:25 | 1:18:29 | |
Like I said, the DA will put something into their mouth. | 1:18:29 | 1:18:32 | |
They could've prefabricated the whole story. | 1:18:32 | 1:18:36 | |
They sure could've. | 1:18:36 | 1:18:38 | |
But what I saw is just what I saw. That was it. | 1:18:38 | 1:18:41 | |
So if they got paid, they got paid for lying. | 1:18:41 | 1:18:44 | |
They already decided what to do with you in the hall. | 1:18:47 | 1:18:50 | |
That's why they call it the Hall of Justice, | 1:18:50 | 1:18:52 | |
the scales are not balanced. | 1:18:52 | 1:18:54 | |
The scales are in the hall, and they go up and down. | 1:18:54 | 1:18:57 | |
They might go up for you, favour one way, they might go down against you. | 1:18:57 | 1:19:02 | |
So if the DA wants you to hang for 15, 20 years, you're hung. | 1:19:02 | 1:19:06 | |
I had all these charges still pending in Orange County. | 1:19:08 | 1:19:12 | |
I could have been certified as an adult... | 1:19:15 | 1:19:18 | |
..maybe given a life sentence. I don't know. | 1:19:19 | 1:19:23 | |
I'm 16 years old. I know I don't want that. | 1:19:23 | 1:19:25 | |
That District Attorney told me, "Don't worry about them charges." | 1:19:27 | 1:19:31 | |
"I'm going to ask your... Defence Attorney is going to ask you | 1:19:31 | 1:19:36 | |
"if you had any kind of deal, or anything of that nature | 1:19:36 | 1:19:41 | |
"in exchange for your testimony in this case | 1:19:41 | 1:19:45 | |
"as relating to those charges," you know? | 1:19:45 | 1:19:48 | |
"Don't answer that yes, answer it no." | 1:19:50 | 1:19:53 | |
My husband, he didn't get that good a look at him. | 1:19:58 | 1:20:01 | |
He wasn't sure, they put a bunch of them there that looked alike. | 1:20:03 | 1:20:08 | |
They had about three or four in the line-up that had bushy hair, | 1:20:08 | 1:20:12 | |
but he had his combed down, | 1:20:12 | 1:20:13 | |
different to what it was in the killing. | 1:20:13 | 1:20:17 | |
I didn't pick him out right then... | 1:20:17 | 1:20:19 | |
because I picked out this bushy-haired man. | 1:20:19 | 1:20:22 | |
I understand one of the other witness did pick out the man at the line-up. | 1:20:25 | 1:20:29 | |
I'm not sure, but I think he did. | 1:20:29 | 1:20:32 | |
Of course I picked out Randall Adams just like that. | 1:20:32 | 1:20:35 | |
I don't know about the others. | 1:20:37 | 1:20:39 | |
Evidently they did at that time. | 1:20:40 | 1:20:43 | |
GUNSHOTS | 1:20:55 | 1:20:58 | |
CAR SCREECHES | 1:21:02 | 1:21:04 | |
'I just took off.' | 1:21:05 | 1:21:07 | |
It's like, kids run away, | 1:21:07 | 1:21:08 | |
they don't think about where they're going to stay, | 1:21:08 | 1:21:11 | |
how they're going to eat, all these things, you know? | 1:21:11 | 1:21:15 | |
They had that roof over their head all their lives. | 1:21:18 | 1:21:21 | |
They don't really think about those things | 1:21:21 | 1:21:23 | |
till you get out there and you say, "Hey! My stomach's growling now." | 1:21:23 | 1:21:28 | |
Or, "It's getting cold out here. It's raining." | 1:21:28 | 1:21:32 | |
ENGINE SCREECHES | 1:21:32 | 1:21:33 | |
There was ice on the road. | 1:21:33 | 1:21:36 | |
I remember there was a car coming pretty fast up the road behind me | 1:21:36 | 1:21:41 | |
and didn't see me or something... | 1:21:41 | 1:21:44 | |
or was in one lane and came into the other and I was in that lane | 1:21:44 | 1:21:48 | |
and tried to stop me, went off the side of the road. | 1:21:48 | 1:21:50 | |
I remember this car went off the side of the road. | 1:21:50 | 1:21:53 | |
I'm just looking back... | 1:21:53 | 1:21:54 | |
I remember that. | 1:21:59 | 1:22:00 | |
I got a call at my house, about 3:30 one morning. | 1:22:06 | 1:22:10 | |
One of the patrolmen in my department called | 1:22:10 | 1:22:13 | |
and said, "We arrested this boy named David Harris | 1:22:13 | 1:22:16 | |
"and he won't even tell us his name. He said he wants to talk to you." | 1:22:16 | 1:22:19 | |
They told me something that really made me interested. He'd been shot. | 1:22:19 | 1:22:24 | |
David had initially told me that he had gone to a bar in Houston | 1:22:24 | 1:22:29 | |
and was flirting with a young lady and her boyfriend became upset | 1:22:29 | 1:22:32 | |
and chased him out the bar with a pistol, shooting at him. Shot him several times. | 1:22:32 | 1:22:36 | |
We knew that wasn't true. | 1:22:40 | 1:22:42 | |
I said, "David, I know you're lying to me. | 1:22:42 | 1:22:45 | |
"We go through this all the time, | 1:22:45 | 1:22:47 | |
"all my dealings with you in the past. | 1:22:47 | 1:22:49 | |
"I don't know what you've done just yet. I know you were shot. | 1:22:49 | 1:22:52 | |
"I know you were shot doing something you shouldn't have been. | 1:22:52 | 1:22:55 | |
"We know you burglarized the gun shop. We know you were driving drunk. | 1:22:55 | 1:22:59 | |
"Got witnesses who can identify you, who can identify your truck." | 1:22:59 | 1:23:04 | |
I said, "You're caught. So tell the truth." | 1:23:04 | 1:23:07 | |
And David said, "OK, I killed him." | 1:23:07 | 1:23:09 | |
Their home was entered while this man and his girlfriend were there alone. | 1:23:13 | 1:23:18 | |
The man was sent into the bathroom at gunpoint and told to stay there. | 1:23:19 | 1:23:24 | |
David took the girl and was starting to leave. | 1:23:25 | 1:23:29 | |
The man exited the apartment with a gun. | 1:23:29 | 1:23:33 | |
The man fell to the ground, or near the ground | 1:23:33 | 1:23:35 | |
holding onto a pole there in the parking lot of the apartment complex | 1:23:35 | 1:23:39 | |
and these last, whether it be two, three, or how many shots, | 1:23:39 | 1:23:43 | |
were fired at point-blank or near point-blank range. | 1:23:43 | 1:23:46 | |
David thought the one that was really at fault that night | 1:23:51 | 1:23:54 | |
was the guy that got killed. He said, "That guy's crazy. | 1:23:54 | 1:23:57 | |
"He came after me with a gun." | 1:23:57 | 1:23:59 | |
I told him, "David, you'd broken into his house, | 1:23:59 | 1:24:01 | |
"you abducted his girlfriend, what was he supposed to do?" | 1:24:01 | 1:24:05 | |
He said, "Man shouldn't come out with a gun. That dude's crazy. | 1:24:05 | 1:24:08 | |
"He should have been killed." | 1:24:08 | 1:24:10 | |
When we went to retrieve the pistol, | 1:24:12 | 1:24:15 | |
I had to go into the water to get it. | 1:24:15 | 1:24:16 | |
It was a bayou and it was grassy, snaky-looking area. | 1:24:16 | 1:24:19 | |
I wasn't real pleased about being there myself | 1:24:19 | 1:24:22 | |
but David enjoyed watching me having to go down there and look for that gun. | 1:24:22 | 1:24:25 | |
I'd been searching several minutes, he was up on the bridge | 1:24:25 | 1:24:29 | |
and probably 25 feet from me, | 1:24:29 | 1:24:30 | |
directing me to where he thought the gun had landed in the water. | 1:24:30 | 1:24:34 | |
He was handcuffed. | 1:24:38 | 1:24:39 | |
Traffic would come by, and he would turn around | 1:24:39 | 1:24:42 | |
and show them his handcuffs and holler at them, "Help me! | 1:24:42 | 1:24:45 | |
"The officials will throw me in this water and drown me." | 1:24:45 | 1:24:48 | |
Anything he could do to make a joke and cut up out there. | 1:24:48 | 1:24:51 | |
He was really having a good time. | 1:24:51 | 1:24:53 | |
The kid scares me. The kid scares me. | 1:24:57 | 1:25:00 | |
To think that he could actually be out there, walking the streets, | 1:25:00 | 1:25:04 | |
and Dallas County let him go. | 1:25:04 | 1:25:07 | |
The kid had seven crimes coming down on him. He had armed robberies. | 1:25:07 | 1:25:12 | |
He had firing on a peace officer. | 1:25:12 | 1:25:15 | |
He had breaking and enterings, aggravated assaults. | 1:25:15 | 1:25:18 | |
God knows what all this kid had. | 1:25:18 | 1:25:20 | |
And Dallas County gives him complete immunity for his testimony. Just lets him walk. | 1:25:20 | 1:25:24 | |
My mom had a good phrase. | 1:25:35 | 1:25:37 | |
She said the first night she pulled into Dallas, it was raining | 1:25:37 | 1:25:41 | |
and that it was lightning and they're coming into Dallas | 1:25:41 | 1:25:45 | |
and she said, "if there was ever a hell on earth, it's Dallas County." | 1:25:45 | 1:25:49 | |
(SIGHS) You know, she's right. She's right. | 1:25:49 | 1:25:54 | |
You deal with people who you sense bad vibrations, more or less. | 1:26:04 | 1:26:09 | |
You feel, this guy doesn't like me anyway because I'm a policeman. | 1:26:09 | 1:26:12 | |
You can just kind of sense something. | 1:26:12 | 1:26:14 | |
Maybe I shouldn't be saying it because police shouldn't take these things to the bank. | 1:26:14 | 1:26:19 | |
When you deal with people over and over, you sense a lot of things. | 1:26:19 | 1:26:22 | |
Talking to David, | 1:26:22 | 1:26:24 | |
you don't ever feel hostile feelings coming from him. | 1:26:24 | 1:26:28 | |
I have never seen David any way other than cordial, | 1:26:28 | 1:26:32 | |
friendly to me as he could be, "Yes, sir. No, sir." | 1:26:32 | 1:26:35 | |
Never disrespectful. I've never seen the bad side. | 1:26:35 | 1:26:41 | |
I've seen the results and talked to him about it, he's aware of it. | 1:26:41 | 1:26:44 | |
He remembers the bad side. | 1:26:44 | 1:26:46 | |
But I've never seen him committing a crime, | 1:26:46 | 1:26:50 | |
or in a violent or volatile state. | 1:26:50 | 1:26:54 | |
When his crimes were confessed to, | 1:26:56 | 1:26:59 | |
he seemed to feel better and do better during those times | 1:26:59 | 1:27:02 | |
than any other times I've known him. | 1:27:02 | 1:27:04 | |
His parents would tell me he would do better at home, | 1:27:04 | 1:27:06 | |
he seemed to get along better with the people in town, | 1:27:06 | 1:27:09 | |
his neighbours and friends. | 1:27:09 | 1:27:10 | |
But something happens to David, I don't know what it is. | 1:27:10 | 1:27:13 | |
I don't know if anybody can put their finger on it. | 1:27:13 | 1:27:16 | |
But there's no other indication of anything in the family | 1:27:20 | 1:27:24 | |
that would lead you to believe he had exposure to these activities or anything. | 1:27:24 | 1:27:30 | |
David's got at least one other brother and sister that I know of. | 1:27:35 | 1:27:38 | |
And he had one brother that drowned numerous years ago. | 1:27:38 | 1:27:42 | |
I was...three years old. | 1:27:48 | 1:27:50 | |
I had a four-year-old brother | 1:27:50 | 1:27:53 | |
and he drowned in 1963, | 1:27:53 | 1:27:57 | |
right after President Kennedy was assassinated, I believe. | 1:27:57 | 1:28:01 | |
Sometime right after that, during the summer. | 1:28:01 | 1:28:04 | |
We was living in Beaumont, on Harrison Street, | 1:28:04 | 1:28:08 | |
and my dad was working on his truck out in the yard | 1:28:08 | 1:28:11 | |
and Mom was in the house doing her housework or fixing dinner. | 1:28:11 | 1:28:16 | |
Me and my brother, we had one of these little blow-up pools | 1:28:16 | 1:28:20 | |
and we were playing in that. | 1:28:20 | 1:28:23 | |
My dad was supposed to be watching us | 1:28:23 | 1:28:26 | |
or keeping an eye on us or something. | 1:28:26 | 1:28:28 | |
My brother wandered off down the street | 1:28:28 | 1:28:31 | |
and these people had a swimming pool in their backyard | 1:28:31 | 1:28:34 | |
and they were elderly people. They never used the pool. | 1:28:34 | 1:28:37 | |
I guess it had a bunch of leaves and stuff in it. | 1:28:37 | 1:28:41 | |
And he evidently fell in there and drowned. | 1:28:41 | 1:28:44 | |
I used to sit up in my room at night and talk to him and he wasn't there. | 1:28:48 | 1:28:52 | |
So I guess that might have been | 1:28:55 | 1:28:58 | |
some kind of a traumatic experience for me, at that age. | 1:28:58 | 1:29:01 | |
I guess my dad... | 1:29:02 | 1:29:03 | |
I don't know, maybe he couldn't... | 1:29:05 | 1:29:07 | |
get rid of the responsibility or the guilt or something. | 1:29:07 | 1:29:11 | |
I don't know what it was. | 1:29:11 | 1:29:13 | |
I was there and I guess maybe I reminded him of that | 1:29:15 | 1:29:19 | |
all the time, growing up. | 1:29:19 | 1:29:20 | |
It was hard for me to get any acceptance from him. | 1:29:21 | 1:29:25 | |
When my younger brother was born | 1:29:25 | 1:29:28 | |
it was kind of like he was Daddy's favourite or something, I don't know. | 1:29:28 | 1:29:33 | |
Everybody's life is going to take some kind of path, | 1:29:35 | 1:29:38 | |
regardless of what happens. | 1:29:38 | 1:29:40 | |
I think maybe that a lot of the things I did when I was younger | 1:29:42 | 1:29:46 | |
was an attempt to get back at him or something, | 1:29:46 | 1:29:51 | |
for the way he treated me. | 1:29:51 | 1:29:54 | |
But I wasn't doing nothing but hurting myself. | 1:29:54 | 1:29:57 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 1:33:49 | 1:33:52 | |
Email [email protected] | 1:33:52 | 1:33:54 |