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Chapter 8
Remembering and Judging
She Was Certain, but She Was Wrong
In 1984 Jennifer Thompson was a 22-year-old college student in North Carolina. One night a man broke into her
apartment, put a knife to her throat, and raped her. According to her own account, Ms. Thompson studied her rapist
throughout the incident with great determination to memorize his face. She said:
I studied every single detail on the rapist’s face. I looked at his hairline; I looked for scars, for tattoos, for
anything that would help me identify him. When and if I survived.
Ms. Thompson went to the police that same day to create a sketch of her attacker, relying on what she believed was
her detailed memory. Several days later, the police constructed a photographic lineup. Thompson identified Ronald
Cotton as the rapist, and she later testified against him at trial. She was positive it was him, with no doubt in her
mind.
I was sure. I knew it. I had picked the right guy, and he was going to go to jail. If there was the possibility of
a death sentence, I wanted him to die. I wanted to flip the switch.
As positive as she was, it turned out that Jennifer Thompson was wrong. But it was not until after Mr. Cotton had
served 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit that conclusive DNA evidence indicated that Bobby Poole was
the actual rapist, and Cotton was released from jail. Jennifer Thompson’s memory had failed her, resulting in a
substantial injustice. It took definitive DNA testing to shake her confidence, but she now knows that despite her
confidence in her identification, it was wrong. Consumed by guilt, Thompson sought out Cotton when he was released
from prison, and they have since become friends (Innocence Project, n.d.; Thompson, 2000). [1]
Picking Cotton: A Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
Although Jennifer Thompson was positive that it was Ronald Cotton who had raped her, her memory was inaccurate.
Conclusive DNA testing later proved that he was not the attacker. Watch this book trailer about the story.
Jennifer Thompson is not the only person to have been fooled by her memory of events. Over the past 10 years,
almost 400 people have been released from prison when DNA evidence confirmed that they could not have
committed the crime for which they had been convicted. And in more than three-quarters of these cases, the cause of
the innocent people being falsely convicted was erroneous eyewitness testimony (Wells, Memon, & Penrod, 2006). [2]
Eyewitness Testimony