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MeMory

8

Wrongly Convicted Man and His Accuser

Tell Their Story

NEW YORK, NY, January 5, 2010. St. Martin’s Press has an-

nounced the release of the paperback edition of Picking

Cotton, a remarkable true story described by novelist John

Grisham as an account of “violence, rage, redemption, and,

ultimately, forgiveness.”

The story began in 1987, in Burlington, North Carolina,

with the rape of a young white college student named

Jennifer Thompson. During her ordeal, Thompson swore to

Psychology in the news

Reconstructing the Past

The Three-Box Model of Memory

Suggestion

In Pursuit of Memory

The Three-Box Model of

Memory

Models of Memory

How We Remember

Why We Forget

Autobiographical Memories

Psychology in the News,

Revisited

Taking Psychology With

You: This Is Your Life

herself that she would never forget the face of her rapist, a

man who climbed through the window of her apartment and

assaulted her brutally. During the attack, she made an ef-

fort to memorize every detail of his face, looking for scars,

tattoos, or other identifying marks. When the police asked

her if she could identify the assailant from a book of mug

shots, she picked one that she was sure was  correct, and

later she identified the same man in a lineup.

Based on her convincing eyewitness testimony, a

22-year-old black man named Ronald Cotton was sentenced

to prison for two life terms. Cotton’s lawyer appealed the de-

cision, and by the time of the hearing, evidence had come to

light suggesting that the real rapist might have been a man

who looked very like Cotton, an imprisoned criminal named

Bobby Poole. Another trial was held. Jennifer Thompson

looked at both men face to face, and once again said that

Ronald Cotton was the one who raped her. Cotton was sent

back to prison.

Eleven years later, DNA evidence completely exonerated

Cotton and just as unequivocally implicated Poole, who con-

fessed to the crime. Thompson was devastated. “The man

I was so sure I had never seen in my life was the man who

was inches from my throat, who raped me, who hurt me, who

took my spirit away, who robbed me of my soul,” she wrote.

“And the man I had identified so emphatically on so many

occasions was absolutely innocent.”

Thompson decided to meet Cotton and apologize to him

personally. Remarkably, they were both able to put this trag-

edy behind them and became friends. Eventually they wrote

Ronald Cotton (left) was wrongly convicted of rape solely on the basis

of Jennifer Thompson’s eyewitness testimony. The real rapist, Bobby

Poole (right), was eventually identified by DNA tests.