COLUMBUS — Twelve years after he was freed from death row in Texas, an Ohio native says his campaign against the death penalty is a less popular cause these days.

        Wednesday is the 25th anniversary of the death of Dallas police officer Robert Wood. Randall Dale Adams was sentenced to death in 1977 for the crime he denied committing.

        Mr. Adams, who grew up in suburban Grove City, was freed in 1989, thanks to a campaign by his mother and a filmmaker.

        Errol Morris' 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line raised questions about Mr. Adams' trial and ended with a possible confession to Mr. Wood's killing by David Harris, another death row inmate.

        The film swayed public sentiment. An appeals court judge ordered a new trial. Texas dropped the charges three days before the scheduled execution.

        Mr. Adams, 52, said his lost time and close shave with death still haunt him, as do changes in that state's death-penalty law that have reduced appeals.

        “Under Texas' new law, I'd be dead,” he said.

        Since his release, Mr. Adams has campaigned against the death penalty.

        Death penalty opponents had at last persuaded the Texas legislature to reconsider the issue, but recent events slowed the movement, Mr. Adams said.

        “Everything changed with the execution of Timothy McVeigh,” he said.

        The wrath against terrorists and clamor for the death of Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11 attacks also impedes protests, he said.

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