8 Documentaries That Literally Changed The World

7. The Thin Blue Line Freed Someone Wrongfully Imprisoned For Murder

Errol Morris's 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line focuses on Randall Dale Adams, a man wrongly imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit. Adams was accused of murdering a police officer by the name of Robert W. Wood. It's not uncommon to hear about people who have been wrongly imprisoned, but this tends to be after they've already served a lengthy sentence. In the case of The Thin Blue Line, Morris investigated the case while Adams was still in prison. Originally, the documentary was supposed to be about a prosecution psychiatrist by the name of Dr. James Grigson (commonly referred to as Doctor Death). Grigson's job was to analyse the mental stability of people up for death row, as under Texas law it's only possible to carry out the death penalty if it's considered medically certain that the criminal will continue to commit violent crimes if left alive. Over the course of his career, Grigson testified in more than one-hundred trials that ultimately resulted in death. Grigson, then, testified that Randall Dale Adams was mentally unstable. It was only when Morris met Adams while making the documentary about Grigson that he started believing Adams was innocent. After the release of the film, Adam's trial was reopened by Dallas County and the district attorney declined to prosecute the case again. Morris was convinced that several witnesses had falsified information. In the end, this turned out to be true, as prosecutor Douglas D. Mulder was found guilty of malfeasance and witness Emily Miller was found guilty of fabricating her testimony in court. In the end, then, Adams was released after twelve years of being wrongly imprisoned, and it was entirely down to Erurol Morris's documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2-3McbAxVk