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He was trying to show to his friends that he was able to commit a crime, but when he was seized by the police, Harris told them that he was just playing around and that he had not committed the crime, but that his friend Adams, was actually the one who pulled the trigger. The entire case was built on this statement, yet the weapon that was used belonged to Harris, the car that the crime was committed in was stolen by Harris, and the one with the most motivation to shoot the officer was Harris. Harris was involved with various burglaries around the state and was in a sociopathic crime spree that could have easily triggered him to murder the officer.
The documentary clearly depicts the Texas's justice system's eagerness to blame someone with the crime, and their inability to want to charge a minor with a crime that most likely than not, he committed. David Harris was a sixteen-year-old boy, who although had something to do with the crime, if not actually committed the crime himself, would have not been subject to the death penalty because of his age. Knowing that someone had to get charged for the murder, and in the case, the murder of a cop, the system was looking for someone to hold accountable, although the evidence was not concrete in any way and was entirely based on hearsay and the statement of an offender. Even the other female officer that was with the officer that was murdered could not identify anything viable about the suspects, the situation, or even the car that was used. She could...
All this would have been at least a good lead to catching who it actually was. There was also not even enough physical evidence for the prosecutor to blame Adams for the crime, but since they needed a scapegoat to close the case, they chose to go with Adams who was 28 years old, was at least thought to be present at the scene of the crime, and was old enough to prosecute fully and be subject to the death penalty, and that is exactly what ended up occurring.
As the movie concludes, the truth comes out. Harris admits that Adams was not the one who committed the crime, that indeed it was himself. It is ironic that this occurred given that no one believed Adams when he said that it was not him who killed the officer and Harris actually went on to commit another murder for which he was sentenced to jail for and given the death penalty. Had the jury made a better judgement, had there been more concrete evidence to go by, Adams would have never gone to jail. So many discrepancies occurred in this trial and the fact that everyone was so eager to close it because it dealt with a cop, an innocent man was put behind bars for twelve years for a crime that he did not commit.
References:
Fuller, B. (Producer) & Morris, E (Director). (1988). The thin blue line (documentary). United States: American Playhouse Productions.
undefined. (undefined). The thin blue line synopsis. In Errol Morris. Retrieved August 12, 2011, from http://www.errolmorris.com/film/tbl.html.
Maslin, J. (August 26, 1988). Review/Film; Anatomy of a Murder: A Real-Life Whodunit. In The New York Times. Retrieved August 12, 2011, from http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=940DE2DA1F30F935A1575BC0A96E948260.
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