Inmate Profiled in Documentary Put to Death

A man whose false testimony sent an innocent man to death row before the 1988 documentary “The Thin Blue Line” cast doubt on the evidence was executed Wednesday for an unrelated murder.

“Sir, in honor of a true American hero: Let’s roll,” David Ray Harris said when asked if he had a final statement. “Let’s Roll” were the words a passenger was heard saying over a cellphone before attacking the hijackers aboard doomed Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. I’m done, warden,” Harris said.

With his eyes closed, he took a deep breath and gasped as the lethal drugs took effect.

Harris, 43, was sentenced to death for a 1985 shootout that killed Mark Mays after Harris tried to abduct Mays’ girlfriend.

He was the 10th Texas inmate executed this year.

A federal judge Tuesday had blocked the lethal injection procedure Texas uses for executions, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling Wednesday. The U.S. Supreme Court later rejected Harris’ appeals.

Harris gained notoriety for implicating Randall Dale Adams, a hitchhiker he had picked up in a stolen car, in the 1976 death of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer.

Adams, who had no previous criminal record, served 12 years in prison and came within three days of execution before his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

Adams was released from prison in 1989, a year after the release of Errol Morris’ documentary “The Thin Blue Line,” which suggested he had been wrongly convicted.

Harris had initially said he and Adams were both in the car when it was stopped by the officer.

He later testified he had lied about Adams’ involvement, though he stopped short of saying he committed the murder himself.

Harris was never charged in the officer’s death.