Framing truth and testimony: the interrogation of justice in 'The Thin Blue Line'

Just after midnight on 28 November 1976, during a routine traffic stop in Dallas, police officer Robert W Wood was murdered by a man whom police investigators determined to be Randall Dale Adams. Adams was sentenced to death and imprisoned; twelve years later, documentary maker Errol Morris re-examined his story in his film 'The Thin Blue Line' (1988). The discoveries uncovered in this film caused the case to be re-opened: Adams was found innocent and was released the following year. Aside from the remarkable fact that his movie helped save the life of a man wrongly convicted of a crime, Morris' documentary marks a crucial point in the history of documentary film. With its focus on the crime itself and the subsequent investigation, The Thin Blue Line introduced many thematic and stylistic elements that have since become commonplace, not only in other documentary feature films but also in related areas such as television documentary.