Randall Adams did not complain when Continental Flight 140 from Houston to Columbus took off 20 minutes behind schedule last Thursday. He was already twelve years late leaving Dallas County, Texas, which he says had become his "hell on earth." In 1976, several weeks after Adams found a job repairing pallets, he was arrested for the slaying of a Dallas policeman. At one point, with only three days to spare, he was saved from execution by a U.S. Supreme Court stay while the Justices considered a legal technicality.
Adams had been in jail for eight years when Errol Morris, an avant-garde...