Picking Cotton Summary and Reflection Paper
Throughout many decades, eyewitness identifications have jeopardized many innocent people’s lives. “Picking Cotton,” is a memoir that is co-written by Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton. In the memoir, Cotton was mistakenly identified as Jennifer’s rapist. As a result, he served jail time until he was exonerated by DNA evidence. The human brain works in a variety of ways that we, today, still do not fully comprehend. An eyewitness testimony, most of the time, is blurry. Everything around then happens so quickly that the brain does not fully understand the entire scenery. Besides, one’s brain can create a false memory to ‘fill in the blanks.’
“Picking Cotton” is a memoir of both Jennifer and Ronald (Moore et al., 2017, p.771). It is divided into three sections to elaborately explain both sides of the story and how they came together in the end. Jennifer was an intelligent young woman that attended Elon University in Burlington, North Carolina. However, all her hopes and dreams were torn apart one July night in 1984. An intruder went into her home and raped her. Thompson ‘studied’ her aggressor’s height, scars, eye color, weight, etc. She then managed to flee, but with a sense of loss…loss of her dignity and loss of her life. Thompson’s world began to fall apart slowly. She dropped out of school; no one felt any sympathy for her and was forced to not talk about the occurrences of that day and get over it. She would not rest until her attacker was sentenced to jail or even dead. During the lineup, Jennifer was presented with seven different men who matched her description. Picking Cotton (no pun intended) ease her sense of mind as her family celebrated Cotton’s arrest. However, the same cannot be said towards Cotton’s family.
Ronald Cotton was an African American man that was falsely incriminated and imprisoned for life with an additional fifty years for two rape and burglary counts (Thompson, 2018, p.677). During his prison time, Cotton meets a man named Booby Poole, who continuously bragged to other prison mates about raping two women and getting away with it. This is when Cotton begins to talk to his lawyer and send him a picture of Poole. Preparing for his appeal, the second rape victim identifies Cotton as her rapist. Cotton continuously kept in touch with his lawyer(s). The idea of DNA testing was relatively new; however, after the O.J. Simpson case, Cotton decides to test himself. The DNA tests positive, resulting in his release, which concludes part 2 of the story. Part 3 focuses on the friendship that grew between the two after Ronald Cotton’s act of forgiveness, how they both faced the media, and their journey in campaigning against wrongful convictions.
One of the main ideas presented in the book is the effectiveness of DNA testing. Since DNA testing made its courtroom debut in the 1980s, it has been of great help, and it has saved many from wrongful convictions. Based on the information contained in the Indian Institute of law’s journal, DNA testing is now an established part of the process of criminal justice. Ever since there has never been a controversy about its effectiveness and the ability to do away with suspicion in those cases where DNA of the suspect doesn’t match that of the sample provided as the evidence.
Mostly what DNA testing does is placing the suspect at the crimes’ scene (Wells, 2018). However, this adoption of ‘forensic biologic evidence’ in the determining of the identity of criminals in almost all courts case has often raised many debates as in many criminal cases; the issue isn’t just criminal identification, but identification of the committed crime, which DNA testing does provide any form of assistance. Therefore, others feel that because it isn’t entirely effective, it shouldn’t be used in courtrooms.
DNA testing has saved many innocent people from being incarcerated as a result of an eye witness misidentification. After a crime has been committed, although the victim will try to memorize the perpetrator, there is a slight chance that the victim will remember the tone of voice, face, etc. The problem with this is memorizing. In school, we have always been told to learn and not memorize because if we memorize, our brains won’t retain all the information.
Memory alternations can affect identifications and innocence risk. In an experiment executed by Loftus, eyewitnesses were presented with the mug shot photos before the lineup. As the victim was at the lineup, she chose an innocent man. Viewing some sort of photo over and over again can trick the mind to creating a memory that never happened or placing a person in a memory who was never there. Therefore, DNA testing is far much effective.
Conclusively, this story is just a manifestation of how eye witnessing can be hazardous, how poisonous racism can be on the enforcement of law and trials, how wrong the justice system can be at times, the effectiveness of DNA testing, and the power of forgiveness. It is irrefutable that the story should be recommended for students of criminal justice, fans of memoir, and anyone who has an interest in racism issues.
References
Moore, J., Yaroshefsky, E., & Davies, A. L. (2017). Privileging public defense research. Mercer L. Rev., 69, 771.
Thompson, J. (2018). Concentric Circles of Harm. Loy. L. Rev., 64, 677.
Wells, G. L. (2018). Eyewitness identification.