Weber State College Comment, July 1989, Page 5 Convocati4sns Satirist delights WSC audience 6 ‘B elieve me ladies and gentle- men, when I tell you it’s been a life-long ambition of mine to appear live, on the stage of the Browning Center of Weber State College in Ogden, Utah, on a Wednesday.” With that political satirist Mark Russell opened a two hour, non-stop barrage of barbs and piano playing. “T toured your fair city today, and took a walk on the wild side. 25th Street—I’ve never seen a place which was a combina_ tion brokerage firm, tatoo parlor and Mexican restaurant all under one roof,” Russell said. The satirist took shots at Dan Quayle (“A guy that looks like the kid on the front of Mad Magazine and talks like Tommy Smothers.”’), 1988 Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Dukkais (“The one bland Greek in the world and he was running for president?”) USA Today (“The Chicken McNuggetts of news.”), Mormons (“It’s sucha joy being back here in the garment district.”), and a host of other events and people. “Yes I’m a political satirist, and there’s a thin line between the satire and the original event,” he said. For example, Congress recently cancelled funding to translate Playboy Magazine into braille, he said. “The next day, though, they put back the funding because they realized that the blind are the only ones who really read the articles.” In the same style that has made his PBS television show popular he moved quickly through a myriad of topics, machinegunning joke after joke. “When George Bush was elected he knew that Ronald Reagan would be a tough act to follow. Bush knows he’s not the gipper. He’s the giplet.” “Which proves my theory,” he rapid fired, “that the biggest oxymoron in the English language is Utah Jazz.” Russell stood at the piano, and sang a number of familiar songs with adapted words. “When I was young I wanted to play the piano in the worst way. . . and I think most of you would agree I accomplished that,” he said. His appearance at the college in May was part of Weber State’s centennial year activities, and the capacity crowd in the Austad Auditorium brought him back for three encores. “The (Mormon) temple in Washington, Randall Adams (left) and his lawyer, Randy Schaffer (right) detail how Adams, though innocent, was convicted for the murder of a Texas policeman. Death row inmate speaks to students andall Adams made a simple mistake in 1976 that cost him 12 years on death row in a Texas prison—-he ran out of gas on the way home from work. Adams and his attorney, Randy Schaffer, spoke recently to students at Weber State and said that running out of gas was the first in a chain of events that would lead to Adams’ arrest, conviction and death penalty sentence for the 1976 Thanksgiving weekend killing of a Dallas police officer. “Randall Adams made a convenient target,” Schaffer said. As Adams was walking to find an open gas station he was picked up by David Harris, a 16-year-old boy who had stolen a car, a gun and a rifle and had driven to Dallas, Schaffer said. Later that night someone, driving the same vehicle, shot a Dallas police officer five times when he was stopped by the officer. The Dallas policeman had pulled the car over to warn the driver the headlights were not on, he said. After a month the police found Harris, who had confessed the killing to his friends. “The police were extremely disappointed when they found outa juvenile had confessed, because a juvenile could not get the death penalty,” Schaffer said. Harris later changed his story, implicating Adams, and in exchange for naming Adams the Dallas district attorney agreed to drop a number of previous burglary charges against Harris, Schaffer said. “Randall Adams was a convenient subject. He had long hair, he was a drifter, and most important, he was someone who could get the death penalty,” he said. The police arrested Adams at his work, gave him a preliminary hearing and put him in an interrogation room. “I was taken upstairs. I was not allowed a phone call, not allowed to speak to anyone. I was kept in the interrogation room a very long time, at least two days,” Adams said. “T felt that the police officers and I had a problem, but that if we discussed it we Political satirist Mark Russell performed as part of the centennial celebration D.C., is outside the beltway and when you come around the corner the building seems to come up out of your hood, shimmering like Oz, and at the pinnacle is a statue of Willard Marriott blowing his trumpet,” he said. Russell said he was particularly pleased to play in Ogden, noting that the former WSC student Mark Evans Austad, for whom the auditorium is named, gave him his first chance at a television show when the rest of Washington shunned his political comedy as too controversial. “Tt’s wonderful to be back in one of the largest cities in Utah,” he said. “I don’t know anything about cold fusion, but it seems to be hard enough to get a cold beer in this state.” could solve the problem,” he added. After a long series of questions the interrogating officer gave Adams a typed confession, a confession he had not made, and ordered Adams to sign it, pointing his service revolver at him when he refused to do so, Adams said. “T then realized that we did not have a problem, I had a problem,” he said. What followed was a trial where witnesses lied for reward money and were then spirited away by the district attorney to avoid cross examination; suppression of Harris’ past criminal record and _ his tendency to violence; manipulated police testimony; and a host of other illegal maneuvers on the part of the Dallas district attorney and the court judge, “who was in the district attorney’s pocket,” Schaffer said. “Innocent people go to jail all the time, but those are usually cases of mistaken identity that are soon rectified. This case was not. There was malice, ill will and intent. They really set out to frame someone,” Schaffer said. The ego of some lawyers grows beyond control, Schaffer observed, and Douglas Mulder, the Dallas district attorney, was protecting a perfect 23 for 23 death penalty conviction record, Schaffer said. Don Metcalfe, the trial judge, was no saint either, he added. “This kind of thing can’t happen unless a trial judge lets them get away with it. It’s not the system that doesn’t work, it’s the people who are in the system,” Schaffer said. “Every police officer in Dallas must have been in that courtroom,” Adams said. “To hear your mother cry, to know you were headed for death row, to be slandered and have to stand there—I would not wish that on anyone,” Adams said. Adams maintained his innocence throughout the experience and pursued every legal avenue available to change his circumstances. His initial execution date of May 8, 1979 was passed because the United States Supreme Court agreed to review the case. ‘When you’re tossed ‘into a grave you either try to crawl out or you let them cover you up. I wanted to show my family that their love and trust was justified,” Adams said. What finally proved to be Adams’ salvation was a New York movie company that was doing a documentary on capital punishment for PBS, Schaffer said. The movie company came to Dallas, became interested in the case, and obtained truthful accounts from witnesses and from Harris. They were also able to get documents from the district attorney that contained suppressed and unaltered testimony, testimony that was dramatically different from that presented during the hearings, Adams’ lawyer said. The resulting movie, “The Thin Blue Line,” made it impossible for the Dallas district attorney to “run and hide,” Schaffer said. In March of this year Adams was released, twelve-and-a-half years after he was sentenced. “T had to give up the hate, the anger, the feelings of revenge. I had to give that up to be at peace with myself,” Adams said. In the weeks since his release Adams has traveled across the U.S. speaking to college students, especially law students. “I hope people are shocked and that it causes them to question their system,” Adams said. “Before Dallas I was very pro death sentence,” he added. “I’m still pro death sentence, but what scares me is the system itself. There’s too much chance for error.”