FIRST OFF . . .

The former accuser of Randall Dale Adams--the man who has spent 11 years in prison for the murder of a Dallas police officer, a story chronicled in the film “The Thin Blue Line”--recanted his testimony in a Dallas courtroom Thursday. Instead, David Ray Harris--who had testified in 1977 that Adams had killed police officer Robert Wood a year earlier--said, “I feel like it’s my responsibility to step forward, to be a man, and admit my part in it,” a statement Judge Larry Baraka took to mean that Harris admitted to committing the crime. Adams has maintained his innocence throughout his prison term, and “The Thin Blue Line,” a Public Broadcasting Service production released to selected theaters this summer, questioned his conviction and the prosecution’s case against him.