in 1981. Following the appeals court decision, the case was returned to Dallas County for a retrial, but the district attorney's office decided not to prosecute the case again based on the length of time since the original crime, and Adams was subsequently released. Despite being wrongly imprisoned for twelve years, Adams received no compensation from the State of Texas. It is said that if Adams had been found to be wrongly convicted under present-day Texas law, he would be entitled to receive $80,000 for each year of incarceration. Additionally, at the time his conviction was thrown out, wrongly convicted prisoners could get a lump sum payment of $25,000 if pardoned by the governor. However, since Adams was released because his case was dismissed, and not because he was pardoned, he received no payment from the state after his release. David Ray Harris David Ray Harris had testified in the original trial that he was the passenger in the stolen car, that he allowed Adams to drive, and that Adams committed the murder. He recanted this testimony at Adams' habeas corpus hearing, but never admitted guilt in a judicial setting and was never charged in the case. On June 30, 2004, Harris was executed by lethal injection for the unrelated 1985 murder of Mark Mays in Beaumont, Texas, which occurred during an attempted abduction of Mays' girlfriend. Lawsuit After his release from prison, Adams ended up in a legal battle with Errol Morris, the director of The Thin Blue Line, concerning the rights to his story. The matter was settled out of court after Adams was granted sole use of anything written or made on the subject of his life. Adams said of the matter: "Mr. Morris felt he had the exclusive rights to my life story. ... I did not sue Errol Morris for any money or any percentages of The Thin Blue Line, though the media portrayed it that way." Morris, for his part, recalled: "When he got out, he became very angry at the fact that he had signed a release giving me rights to his life story. And he felt as though I had stolen something from him. Maybe I had, maybe I just don't understand what it's like to be in prison for that long, for a crime you hadn't committed. In a certain sense, the whole crazy deal with the release was fueled by