Video Clip: Picking Cotton—Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption

Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption (Macmillan), by Open Society Institute fellows Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Ronald Cotton, and Erin Torneo, involves an improbable friendship forged between a woman and the man she misidentified as her rapist and sent to prison for 11 years.  The book, published by St. Martin’s Press and supported in part through a 2008 Soros Justice Media Fellowship, is about their ordeal and the problems with eyewitness misidentification—a leading cause of wrongful conviction.

In 1984, a man broke into 22-year-old Jennifer Thompson's Burlington, North Carolina, apartment while she was sleeping and raped her at knifepoint. During the ordeal, she says she studied every detail on her attacker's face, every tattoo and every scar, so that if she survived, he would be found. Jennifer worked with the police on a composite sketch that was put out almost immediately.

Authorities brought to the lineup a busboy named Ronald Cotton. Jennifer identified him in the lineup and in a previous photo array. A North Carolina jury sentenced him to life in prison plus 54 years in 1985. Only a decade before in North Carolina, Ronald would have been eligible for the death penalty.

In 1995, Ronald was exonerated after DNA tests proved his innocence. Two years later, Jennifer and Ronald met face to face. Jennifer has said that Ronald's forgiveness gave her the strength to live, and she has committed her life to speaking out on criminal justice reform. They speak to legislators, bar associations, and their advocacy helped the passage of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. Lawyers have said that after hearing Jennifer speak, they would never again try cases the same way.