0:00 Eyewitness misidentification has played a role in more than two-thirds of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence.0:10 Last week, we heard the stories of lives rebuilt after the fight for freedom was finally won.0:17 But what does that fight actually look like from the inside?0:22 When you’re the one person in the room who believes, and everyone else is sure you’re wrong.0:30 The flashing lights cut through the Dallas night in November, 1976.0:36 A police officer, Robert Wood, was dead.0:39 Shot during a routine traffic stop.0:42 The investigation moved fast, as it always does when a cop is killed.0:48 They had a suspect.0:49 A sixteen-year-old drifter named David Harris, who’d been bragging about the crime.0:56 But when they cornered him, Harris had a story.1:00 A very convincing story.1:02 It wasn’t him, he said.1:04 It was the man who gave him a ride that night.1:08 A twenty-eight-year-old man named Randall Dale Adams.1:12 And just like that, the entire weight of the state shifted.1:17 David Harris, the actual killer, became the star witness.1:22 In exchange for his testimony, he got immunity.1:26 Randall Adams, who had a steady job and no criminal record, was now facing the death penalty.1:33 I sat in that courtroom.1:35 I watched them put David Harris on the stand.1:39 He was just a kid.1:41 He seemed believable.1:42 Then other witnesses came forward, people who claimed they saw Adams.1:48 Their stories were shaky, full of holes the prosecution just papered over.1:54 But it didn't matter.1:56 You could feel the jury leaning in.1:59 They wanted to believe.2:01 The pressure to solve the murder of a police officer was immense.2:06 And then came the moment.2:08 That terrible, theatrical moment that the late Justice William Brennan wrote about.2:15 A witness takes the stand… points a finger… and says, “That’s the one.” In that instant, the truth doesn’t matter anymore.2:25 A story has been told.2:27 A target has been chosen.2:29 Randall Adams was convicted.2:32 He was sentenced to death.2:34 And for those of us who knew it was wrong, the world just… stopped.2:39 The system we were told to trust had swallowed an innocent man whole.2:45 Years went by.2:46 Appeals failed.2:48 Hope was worn down to a nub.2:50 And then, something impossible happened.2:53 A filmmaker named Errol Morris showed up.2:57 He wasn't a lawyer.2:58 He was just a man with a camera who thought the official story didn't add up.3:05 He started interviewing everyone.3:07 The lawyers, the questionable witnesses, and David Harris himself.3:13 He just let them talk.3:15 And on tape, the lies began to unravel.3:18 Harris, so confident and poised in court, was now almost bragging about how he got away with it.3:26 He was practically confessing.3:28 The film, The Thin Blue Line, came out in 1988.3:32 It wasn't just a movie.3:34 It was the appeal we never got.3:37 It laid out the whole, rotten truth for the world to see.3:42 A judge recommended a new trial.3:44 And finally, years after he’d sealed Randall’s fate, David Harris came close to admitting the truth.3:52 In 1989, Randall Dale Adams walked out of prison.3:57 He had spent twelve years behind bars, many of them on death row, for a crime he did not commit.4:05 He was free.4:06 But you don’t get those years back.4:08 The case proved that a single, confident lie can be more powerful than the truth in a courtroom.4:16 But it also proved that the truth, no matter how long it takes, can be just as powerful in setting a person free.4:26 The finger that pointed him into a cell was a lie, but the camera that pointed at the truth… that was his salvation.
