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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.