March 26, 2018 • 62 mins
In July 1984, an assailant broke into Jennifer Thompson-Cannino’s apartment and sexually assaulted her; later that night, the assailant broke into another apartment and sexually assaulted a second woman. Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, then a 22-year-old college student, made every effort to study the perpetrator’s face while he was assaulting her. Ms. Thompson-Cannino first chose Ronald Cotton as her attacker in a photo lineup. Soon after, she chose him again in a live lineup – she was 100% sure she had the right man. In January 1985, Ronald Cotton was convicted by a jury of one count of rape and one count of burglary. In a second trial, in November 1987, Ronald was convicted of both rapes and two counts of burglary. He was sentenced to life in prison plus fifty-four years. Ronald was unsuccessful overturning his conviction in several appeals, but in the spring of 1995, his case was given a major break: the Burlington Police Department turned over all evidence, which included the assailant’s semen for DNA testing, to the defense. When the DNA test results were reported in May 1995, the district attorney and the defense motioned to dismiss all charges. On June 30, 1995, Ronald Cotton was officially cleared of all charges and released from prison after serving over 10 years. In July 1995, the governor of North Carolina officially pardoned him. Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton met for the first time after his exoneration and immediately became good friends. They appear together on *Wrongful Conviction *and travel around the country working to spread the word about wrongful convictions and reforms – especially for eyewitness identification procedures – that can prevent future injustice.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
America has two point two million people in prison. If
just one percent is wrong, that's twenty two people. That's
a lot of people's lives destroyed. If the system wants
to take you out of society, they will do it
no matter what lords they have to break, saying that
(00:23):
they are enforcing the lords, but they're breaking the lord.
Having to hear those people say that I was guilty
of a crime that I did not commit, and then
here my family break down behind me and not be
able to do anything about it. I can't describe the
crushing weight that was. I'm not anti police, I'm just
anti corruption. A lot of times we look and we
(00:46):
see something happened to somebody, and that's the first thing
we said, that could never happen to me, But they can.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
(01:16):
Jason Flam. Today's episode is one of a kind because
I have two people here who are truly one of
a kind, both individually and together. Their story begins in
when Jennifer was a college student in North Carolina, a
man broke into her apartment even as she was being raped.
(01:37):
Jennifer summoned the strength to study her attacker. She tried
to memorize his face, his eyes, his hair. Jennifer eventually escaped,
eventually made her way to the police, where she used
that image burned in her mind for an artist to
create this sketch. That guy, she says she was one
sure about, was Ronald Cotton. Ronald Cotton was two years
(02:00):
old and worked at a seafood restaurant near Jennifer's home.
Ronald went to trial Jennifer again, I did him in court.
It took a jury four hours to convict him, and
a judge sentenced him to life. Eleven years went by.
Cotton maintained his innocence. Scientists were able to isolate a
tiny fragment of sperm that they could test. The results
(02:21):
confirmed what he had been saying all along. The DNA
did not match. On June, Ronald Cotton walked out of
the Alamance County Courthouse a freeman without further ado. Ronald Cotton.
Welcome conviction, Thank you, pleedg just be here today, and
with him is Jennifer Thompson. Welcome to raw conviction. Thank you. Jason.
(02:46):
Let's go back to the beginning first of all, but
talking about North Carolina and Jennifer's that where you grew up. Yes, yes,
I grew up in Winston Sale in North Carolina. But
the crime happened in Burlington, North Carolina when I was
a college student. And of course it's a client that
Ronald was wrongfully convicted of, but at the time, it
(03:06):
seemed like an open and shut case. And that's one
of the things that makes this story so important. Again,
let's go back to that time. You were twenty two
year old girl becoming a woman. You sort of had
the the world at your feet, so to speak, right,
and everything to look forward to until one horrible night. Yes,
(03:29):
and can you tell us about that night and how
this all started. Sure? Sure, I had gone to bed
on July alone. I had had a headache that evening,
so my boyfriend that I was dating at the time,
we were talking about getting married, took me home. I
went to sleep around nine o'clock and I didn't really
(03:50):
hear anything that was going on the community. There was
police kind of circling the neighborhood. They were looking for
someone who had attempted to break into a neighbor's house.
We know now that they couldn't find him because he
was hiding out in my apartment. So around three am
on July nine, I heard a noise in the bedroom,
like feet moving across the carpet because I lived alone,
(04:12):
and as I kind of woke up and that in
between place of being awake and asleep, I saw the
top of a person's head beside my mattress, and I quickly,
you know, asked who was that? Who's there? And a
man jumped up on my bed. I screamed. He covered
my mouth with the gloved hand and put a knife
to the left side of my throat and told me
to shut up. He was going to kill me. It's
(04:33):
literally a horror movie like this. Oh yeah, it's it's
a horror movie. There are several things going on, right,
I mean, you're trying to figure out what's happening. It's
that that that place where you're wondering if this is
a dream or this is really happening, and then you
realize that you are in terrible danger. I knew, I
knew that he was going to write me. That was
(04:54):
very clear. But what you don't know on no survivor
ever knows is was he going to kill me? And
I honestly believe that I'd probably not live, um, that
he would slip my throat, that he would beat me.
And you start wondering in those moments, how quickly will
I be able to die? And while I feel it
as I'm dying, will it be painful? Will it? You know?
(05:15):
Will it just be quick and over with? And you
start thinking about your parents, You start thinking about your future.
You start thinking about the things that you're gonna miss,
and you you know, the things you wish you had
said and that was what was happening, and that you
know that moment when when you realize that this could
be the last thing that ever touches your skin. Eat
(05:36):
cliche about your life, whole life flashing before your eyes.
It's really true, isn't It's really true. It's really true.
And I know you've spoken about how you at that
moment you made a commitment to do everything you could
not only to survive, but to memorize every detail of
your assailant, your attack, or your your torturer so that
(06:01):
you could identify him. I mean, that's some very um
amazingly sort of clear thinking at a time of utmost terror. Right,
you were a clear eyed college student. You weren't high
or stoned. You hadn't been out drinking that night. You
were perfect for this particular task that now lay in
(06:28):
front of you. When this attack finally ended, and how
long did it go on for? By the way, well,
from the beginning of when he woke me up to
when I was able to escape was probably around twenty minutes.
The assault lasted probably five um and I was able
to talk him off of me after part of the
assault had happened, because I knew that I needed to
(06:52):
find a way to escape. But during that time, when
I was trying to figure out a plan, I was
able to stand close to him, to gauge his height,
to gauge his weight, to remember his clothing. I mean,
everything became important to me that night. And I'm glad
you said task because that's exactly what was happening in
my head. I was very task driven, I mean a survive,
(07:12):
find a way to live, and be watch him rotten
hell for the rest of his life. So I was
making a very concerted effort to pay attention to everything,
even listening to his voice as he began to talk
to me, trying to pick up any details he might,
you know, kind of drop, and I could remember and
getting myself into different positions of light. Um, it was all,
(07:33):
you know, part of that need to survive, and that
task gave me that need and will to survive until
I was able to escape after about twenty minutes. You
made this amazing commitment to this process right when I
think most people would have just been focused on getting
out of there. Right. And if this wasn't enough of
(07:55):
a horror movie scenario, your assailant had cut the phone
lines as well. Right, He had cut the phone line.
He had been in my apartment for our smoking cigarettes,
drinking beer out of my refrigerator. He'd stolen money out
of my wallet. He'd even gone through a photo album
and taken photographs of me out and I actually asked permission.
He said, I hope you don't mind, but I took
(08:16):
some of the photographs of you to keep. I mean,
it was it was a mental, physical torture, and you
know it was sexual assault and violence. Um, it is
a forever thing. He changed me that night in ways
(08:37):
that I that you know. The girl was just the
girl died that night. She she was gone. Um. You
did manage to escape, obviously and run down the road,
which was a very brave thing to do, not knowing
you know, he could have come after you, and he
(08:57):
did come after me. He chased me through you know,
through the dark. Unreal. Um, But you out random? Is
that basically how to come down? I out random. The
trick for me was, I knew I had to get
to light, and I knew he wouldn't come under light
with me. So I found a cardboard that was on
at a house that I didn't know who lived there.
(09:18):
I just kind of prayed that people were there, but
I knew he wouldn't come underneath that car board because
if someone was home, they would see him. So that
kept him away from me. As I banged on the door,
and you know, fortunately the husband and wife and the
family were there, and the woman recognized me. She was
a professor at the college I was attending. I didn't
(09:39):
take any of her classes, but she had seen me
on campus and they let me in and basically saved
my life. Wow, what a story. I don't have any
words now, Ronald. Let me turn to you for a second.
So did you live in the same town I did, Yes,
And in the days and weeks p to your arrest,
(10:02):
were you aware of this? Was this big local news. Well,
I guess it was the week before I got arrested.
Me and my brother was standing on a sweet corner
and I let a newspaper, local newspaper down and in
the wrapper pulled it doutor rapper on the front page,
and there was this sketch of a guy and it
described him and showing a pitch of and instruction on
(10:26):
that he committed a crime upon this female and it
was Jennifer. I didn't know Jennifer, you know, I just
read the article. And I told my brother then that
I don't know who the guy here, but when they
get him, I said, he's through, you know, he's done.
And uh. Well, that following Monday, I went home from
not staying in the hotel with my girlfriend, and my
(10:47):
mother's boyfriend told me as I approached the door that
the police have been looking for me. And I went
down and find out for that particular crime. Now, prior
to this nightmare unfolding in your life, how was your
life before that? How old were you? I was the
same age. Well, I had been working at local restaurants
(11:13):
and uh, you know, seafood places and uh and at
the particular moment in the time I was not working.
I was unemployed. I was in the process of been
an application here and there, you know, trying to become implored.
But that particular time, I had been in the fast
lane running to bars. And you know, I had quit
(11:33):
school and and I was working. I was just enjoying
life in general. Once my mother boyfriend and scrubted me
that the cops were looking for me. I had walked
inside the department. I noticed a paper there on the television.
It had named on it or I took the paper.
I read it, and I instruction on it was how
(11:53):
this individual had entered and stops from apartment and committed
to describe upon her. And I said, no, they got
the wrong guy. And some of my mother boyfriend said, well,
you're all gonna get it straight now. And and so
I walked outside, and I looked across the road, and
I noticed my neighbor Patricia was standing on the front
board sweeping, and uh. I walked over, and I saw
go to bar her car to drive down the police
(12:15):
department and see what's going on in this matter. U.
I said, well, I take my sister tuted with me,
just in case they locked me up. And that way
she can bring your car back. So on our way there,
be buried off and went by my girlfriend Teresa's place,
and she come running to the car crying holding rhyn Ryn.
And police been over here looking for you, saying that
you raped this woman, and she said, I know you didn't.
(12:37):
I said, no, I did not. I said, baby. We
are getting ready to go to the police department right
now and try to get this matter taken care of.
So so I want to ride. So we all hopped
in the car and went down and pulled in the
parking lot. Was I exited the Carron was prosing the
police department and I looked up. You know, it was
about two or three stories high and all the cops
(12:58):
that was I saw him looking at the one of
us away from the wonder and run downstairs. They met
me at the door, and out the door pops Mike Golden,
and uh, he's something, Detective Mike gold Or. I said, yes,
I heard you. I've been looking for me for a
crime in the community that I need to commit. Uh.
He said, well, come on inside and let's talk about it.
And uh, you know, trying to get this thing worked out.
(13:19):
So I went inside and the alibi that I gave
them was totally different, because you know, I parted a
lot that was keeping up with everything. So how long
after the actual crime was this taking place at the
first three days? Yeah, I was a short time as
the first round bout twit or thirty. And we went
upstairs and they've begun and asked me a question about Jennifer.
(13:41):
You want saying that I wanted this warming part man
committed all the acts fun her, and I said, I
kept telling no, I did not. I said, the reason
for coming down here, for trying to get this matter
taken care of. And then uh, the police chief he
told me that, uh, yeah, I took a flashlight and
held it in a woman's facing. Rape, which I was
as I convictim, happened that night as well. I told no,
(14:05):
I said, you got me wrong. You know I did
not commit this crime. He said yeah, He said, you
think you missed the big stuff going around town swimming
white women. I said, so, you're totally wrong. I did
not commit these crimes. Then they was instructed to take
me in the room and locked me up, you know,
photographed me and thanger print me, and they took me
down to that men's County jail put me on a
(14:26):
hundred and fifty thousand dollar bail, and there was no
way you could post that. No, I was there until
do day on trial. Actually you didn't walk out for
eleven years. I mean that night you're spending the model
was the last night you spent as a free man
until this whole thing was finally resolved all those years later. So, Jennifer,
(14:57):
you have now seen his picture, st Ron's picture in
a photo array, and you had identified him, and now
they had him under arrest, So you must have felt
a huge sense of relief. I did. I mean there
had been another rape immediately after mine, and we knew
it was the same person. An hour later, mild on
(15:19):
the road, there's another woman who's assaulted, and I felt
that we had a serial rapist in the community and
he needed to be removed. So yes, I thought a
huge sense of relief after I knew that he had
been arrested and of course would be held over for
probable cause and we would go to trial, which became
(15:40):
a next task. How did they know that it was
the same person. It was a description of the clothing.
Both of us had said that the person who had
attacked us had had on a navy blue shirt with
three white stripes that went along as biceps. He had
on khaki type pants. He had white gloves that were knit.
I mean, both of us had the same exact description.
And as he was running from the second rape survivor,
(16:03):
police were being called, and he actually passed the police,
so there was a police that actually got a short
glimpse of the assailance, so we knew it was the
same person. It was the same person who had attempted
to break into the woman before me, because she had
said the same thing and arm was coming through her door,
blew shirt with white stripes, nick gloves. She just happened
(16:24):
to be awake and called the police. So he never
assaulted the first woman. The other woman who was raped,
Was she involved in this process in any way? Did
they show her the same photo array, and if so,
did she identify ron as well? They did show her
the same array, and she was much older than me,
And during her assault he hit her in bitter and
(16:47):
put a flashlight in her eyes and put a pillow
on her face when he raped her, So she was
not able to get the same kind of description and
details that I was able to get. And so when
she went to the photographic lineup and physical lineup, she
wasn't sure. She said that I think it's number four,
but it could be number five. And so the district
attorney made the decision to not try the cases together,
(17:10):
that they would only try my case because basically they
had a better conviction with just my identification. Right again,
yours was perfect, seemingly right right. I literally was called
the perfect witness. So you're in prison, you're getting some
sleep now, hopefully by not really where were you staying,
by the way, when this rapist was still on the loose.
(17:32):
I was staying about three miles off campus and a
condominium complex. But you didn't stay in your own apartment
after this? Oh no, I never returned, just only for
my things. And you know, again, the thing about being
an assault survivor is when when you're broken like I
was broken, Um, you can't ever return to that place
that you were before. And I you know, talk to people,
(17:55):
your lens that you look at through the world becomes distorted,
and everything you choose becomes seen through that distortion. Your
place in the world is now distorted. What value do
I have? Um? You know, where do you go? From
here because who you were before is no longer an option,
and it's now trying to recreate this new person. But
(18:18):
you you have no support, so people didn't want to
hang out with me. My family wouldn't talk to me
about it. My boyfriend said he just couldn't handle it,
so he broke up with me. Man, Literally everything in
my world was gone, and your your task now with
trying to somehow recover. And I use that like with
(18:40):
a big sigh, because it is a forever recovery. It's
just as long as you live, you're still in recovery.
It's hard for me to add how those particular people
who were so close and intimate with you made exactly
the wrong choice ron back to you. So you are
in crazy land now, right, because you can't possibly understand,
(19:03):
I imagine why this is happening. And now all of
a sudden you find yourself in the situation that you
had just been discussing with your brother. Right, you had
just predicted your own fate, actually right, because you had said,
whoever they get one of that guy's going down whatever? Right,
and now it's you. The day of the trial comes.
How long had you been held by then? About four months,
(19:27):
so you had been in for quite a while. And
the jail. I don't know how that jail was, but
we know that a lot of the jails in America
are even worse and even more dangerous and scary than
the maximum security prisons. Was this jail one of those?
I wasn't one of know. It was just a lot
of guys talking. John. You know, if you wanted to
make a stand, you know, you took a chance, you know, So,
(19:49):
Jennifer back to you. So the day of the trial comes,
you're there hoping to get some closure, right, Well, yeah,
closure such an interesting Well yeah, I mean you're looking
for justice, is what you're looking for, and and that's
what I was looking for. I was looking for for
him to be held responsible for what you had done
to not just me, but the other woman who wasn't
(20:09):
going to be able to tell her story and other
women who could never find justice. So it was like,
kind of this this thing I needed. I really needed
it to to move to the next place of my life.
And then the trial was over two weeks long. Well
that's a long trial. I'm actually surprised it was that long.
But by now you had identified ron in a photo
(20:31):
array and in the lineup, and it's important to highlight
the fact that he was the only person that was
featured in both the photo or A and the lineup
that is correct, which is obviously going to have some
impact on your perception, your memory, right. And of course
what we know now is that the perpetrator was never
in any of the lineups. So it seems like they
(20:54):
did what they could in a very imperfect system to
try to be harshal. Is that accurate? Not? Really, they
had thought before I went down to do the photographic lineup,
they had believed that Ronald Cotton had actually committed these crimes.
So during the first line up, which was the photographic
lineup and what they call six pack, and I had
(21:16):
been given some instructions to take my time, not feel
compelled to choose anyone, which was pretty modern thinking in Yeah,
but when I picked Ronald out of the photographs, they
did tell me, good job, that's who we thought it was.
Of course, what we know now is that just gave
my my certainty, that confirmation unneeded, and boy, my certainty
(21:40):
went out the roof. Once they said that to me
Ronald Cotton, that photo became the rapist, and we we
were dealing in this case with a cross racial identification,
which we know are the least reliable of all the
different forms of I would have identification. It's been proven
(22:01):
in every study that's ever been done just how unreliable
I would just identification is. And we know that it
goes up in cases in which either the victim or
the witness is in mortal danger, which you certainly were.
Of course, it triggers all sorts of chemical reactions in
your brain, which in turn cause your your your memory
(22:27):
to play tricks on you. It's odd, right, you were
the perfect witness, but it was also the perfect storm
because you had this particular case, had all of those
factors right, You had again the cross racial identification problem,
you had the mortal fear problem, for lack of a
better the weapon focus, right, that's the best term for it.
(22:47):
And so what should have been really an open and
shut case was anything but. But we didn't know that
at the time. No, we we thought we were doing
things best practices at that time. We know now that
it all went horribly wrong. And so you now had
(23:07):
identified him in the photo array and in the lineup,
you were given a positive reinforcement in both of those cases. Now,
the day of the trial comes and you're asked to
identify the perpetrator in the courtroom. Yeah, that's great. I
was on the stand for two days having to just
(23:30):
over and over and over again talk about what had
been done to me, literally over and over again, in
front of my family, in front of strangers. I mean,
it was really awful. And then you're the rape survivor.
So the defense attorney is beginning to assassinate my character,
basically blaming me for inviting my own rape because I
had the audacity to go to bed that night in
(23:52):
just my underwear, and so didn't I know that's what
led people to rape women. And so there's a lot
of things happening. What are you supposed to wear a
coat of armor? Well that was my point. My my
point to the defense attorney was basically, so if I
had gone to bed in a sweatsuit, and he would
have looked at me and at I don't think So
it's just too much trouble, is that what you're saying
(24:14):
to me. And of course it's shut that down immediately.
But I was so angry. I was so angry that
somehow me going to bed as a twenty two year
old woman and my underwear had had been the cost
of my own sexual assault. Yeah, that's that's not And
of course it didn't help Ron honestly with a jury.
(24:34):
The jury was really angry at the defense attorney for
even suggesting that. So there were some things that happened
that must have made you feel uncomfortable to Ron to
have that line of questioning. I mean, here's this woman
that you've never met, that you don't know what happened
or why you're in this situation that you're in. Um,
you're four months and five months in jail, whatever it was,
So your your head's standing around in all different directions, right,
(24:57):
and now you your own team is acting in a
way that I can't imagine you would ever act. The
whole situation is just wrong. Um, And ultimately you're asked
to make a positive identification. And what happens. I looked
straight over at Ronald and I said, he's sitting at
the defense table. That's the man who raped me. And
(25:20):
the jury deliberated four hours and came back with, of course,
a guilty verdict on all charges. And what was that moment,
like Ron, I mean that had to be the worst
moment of your life. I just couldn't believe it, you know,
I just shook my head. You know, I looked at
my attorneys and I looked directly like the judge and
the foreman and the Jews and the reporter, and once
(25:44):
a verdict were red from the jurid form, I just
I said, no, that's what I'm saying to myself. I said,
they have it wrong. And so the judge I asked
me if I had anything to say to the court,
and I said yes. I told him that I would
like to have his for missing a single song that
I had written in jail. And so while I stood up,
I sang the song. And as I was singing that song,
(26:08):
you know my turning is, you know, like said, went
to here to drop, you know, as said though I
put them the shame, but I didn't care anything at
that particular time because I've just been found guilty for
a crime I did not commit. And you're saying, song,
can you sing it now? Yeah? If I can remember
word for word, I've tried to. Anyway. It was a
(26:30):
poem written to my girlfriend, but I've changed the words
and wrote a gospel song. Whatever, and they wants something
like this decisions I can no longer me because my
future is so unknown to me. And then I could
no longer tell he go. During the day, I wonder
(26:55):
and I have heard with fear col at his names
him much suddenly tears appear. Until God came in my life.
Until God came in my life, I was often along
(27:16):
and people I really couldn't face. I just didn't know
what to do without I feel so wild a place
I meany time as I say this, before you agree,
there's no other God, whoever love of you, not quite
(27:41):
as much as Lord God. Believe me every one, because
God will change your life. And that is a fare
because I would pay both night and day until you God.
Oh bye to me, Yeah yeah, all those words to
(28:11):
I just don't sound like that. Oh God, that's funny,
that's beautiful. Your life is literally coming to an end,
and then you get up and sing a damn song. Unbelievable.
Now things start to get crazier because you're in prison.
(28:33):
What steps did you take and what hope did you have? Well?
I had handed the prison system with life and four
year prison term. Immediately they pointed me guidance counselor in
the prison, and I went in and made him took
the tests, talk with him about my being in prison,
(28:54):
and uh, you know the crime that I was in
there for, but he said, we're not here for that,
We're here to keep So you know, I know it
was the lost costs I was fighting, and so it
was all upon me to do what I had to
do to survive, and that was to stay in contact
with my trial lawyers would still continue to fight my
case on appeal. So you actually had a competent attorney
(29:14):
in this. Yes, it wouldn't needed O J's dream team,
and you probably might have still gotten convicted. I don't
I don't know that there's a lawyer on this planet
that could have gotten you out of this. But now
I was fighting a lost costs, but you know, it
was a battle field that I was in that I
couldn't give up. Uh you know. Immediately, you know, I
put myself into the school I love very at the
Center prison and start filing motions from inside the prison
(29:38):
and what's din't doing a good at all? And so
one day I was on my way to the gym
to work out, and I recognized his inmates being escorted
inside the prison, and it looked very familiar to me,
so I started thinking. I said, I saw this guy before,
you know, as I'm walking and uh. I went on
continue that process of working out, and I went back
(30:01):
to my dorm that night. You know, they had him
finished processing him inside the prison and I went to
him the next day. I recognized him from being outside
in the recreation yard. I was playing a handball game
I was in and immediately I had someone to come
and relieve me from that game. And uh, I've made
an approach on him, and I had him where was
(30:23):
he from? And he told me he was from Burlton,
Akro and also and uh, I said what he looked
like the drawing up compartitive sketch of rape that was
committed in Bralson that I'm in prison for that you
commit the crime, And immediately he told me no, he
did not, But you just had a feeling I had
to feel because he resembled the drawing. You know, I
had to cut it out the local newspaper because I
(30:44):
had my hands from the newspaper in the count of jail,
and I cut it out and put it in my possession.
Now finally destiny. So that throws you a bone, right,
because this guy, if he had to come to your prison,
you wouldn't have had any idea if you had to
cross path with him at that particular time, you might
not have had that same feeling, that instinct that you had, Right,
(31:05):
But here he goes and he denies it. You have
this instinct, this feeling. It turns out he's from the
same town. He denies it. So you're basically back where
you started. Accepted. Now you're under the same roof with
the guy who's responsible for destroying both of your lives.
But there's nothing you can really do about it. But
(31:27):
that all changed one day as a result of a
conversation that you had with another inmate, right, And can
you can you tell us how that started, because this
is a really amazing part of the story. Well, this guy,
he began to lust after me in prison. I told
him one night as I was in the shower, you know,
I was washing my hair and Savo Kurt and I
(31:49):
heard slide and so I lifted up my hand because
I had an effort at the time, and he was
standing I lust and you know, telling me what a
beautiful body I had, and I told him, I'm not
trying to hear that need to keep moving, you know,
when he kept on and I said, well, I'm not
going on trying to fight a guy, you know in
the new you know, I might slip and follow my head,
you know, bumping on the floor something, getting knocked out, unconscious,
(32:11):
and you know you gotta do me in. So I
just chilled. And the next day I was in the
gym shooting pool a guy from Greensboro, nam Roger. He
told mes the cot now Kenne and the kids and
talking junk about you, you know, And I said, well,
I'm tired of this stuff. I'm gonna get this man
straight out right now. So I handed my pool stick
(32:31):
and I chug a look up to the kitchen. He
was in the parking paying area with his back turn.
When I approached. I stopped so many feet from him,
and I called his name out and now he turned
around he said yeah. I said, look, man, uh, you've
been talking drunk about me for so many months. I'm
tired of it. You let my name taste like crap
in your mouth. And he approached me, said you better
(32:52):
get up my face for I kill you. He put
his hand on man. I said, oh, you want to fight, right,
I said, okay, let's go. So he walked over in
the corn and get off a camera, you know, and
we fought and I end up breaking his jaw and
put them down, and you know, and they got bound
of him and he goes to surrogation and I do
not because you know, they ris them stewards and the
(33:14):
kitchen had heard me telling this guy to leave me alone.
So you know, they got on my side. And so
he went to Hope for thirty days. And after thirty
days they come out. I was setting in my dorm.
I was sitting in the corner. Come my bump within
a corner wall. I kept three chails lining up along
the wall. And he walked up to the window and
he said cod and not saying yeah, he said, let
(33:36):
me holl let you man. I told him come on end.
You know. When he comes in my dorm and I
told him have a seat. He sit down and he spiling.
He's I'm sorry to fight you. He said, you're fighting, dude,
and I said no, I'm just not gonna go for
that bull, you know, so hease, I apologize it. I
just wanted to become your friend. I said, well, becoming
a friend and don't approach me in that way. And
(33:56):
he said, well, I just want to tell you that
Mr Poole told me that he committed the crime you're
in prison for. And I said, well, thank you. So
he gets up and he walks off. And so later
that night I go to my lock and I pulled
out my legal pad and a pan, and I set
up about two o'clock in the morning, and I wrote
my lawyer Field Most and I told him what had
(34:17):
been told to me. And so a week or two
went by. He wrote me back and then walked to me, well,
we're gonna look into it, you know, but right now
we're got to go through the process of the pills
and so, uh, I just want head on. And about
the next week Mr Pool approached me. He said because
he worked, he got a job in the kitchen as well.
(34:39):
He said that. He said, I know you've got a
lot of sisters, man. Uh, he said, why don't you
let me write one of your sisters. I said, what,
I don't know, I'm gonna let guys in prison right
my sisters? And uh, I said, but with you too,
with deception, I consider, I said, but first of all
we have to do, I said, we have to take
a photograph together. And I the letter and I sent
(35:01):
it to my sister. I said, she see what you
look like? She had write your back. If she doesn't,
I don't know what to tell you. And so we
took the photograph. Anyway, I didn't send that letter to
my sister. I sent it to my lawyer and he
liked what he saw. Yeah, I really got the ball
kind of rolling. Well. I was transferred on through the
(35:22):
prison and uh, I ended up in Mason, Tennessee, and
I wrote the Court of Appeal from there, you know,
by listening to the o J trial. You know, I
took my legal pad start taking notes on the DNA
and when I felt I had enough evident and information
written down on my legal pads, I said, well it's
time for me to write to the Court of Appield
and request for this DNA test. So, once I wrote
(35:46):
the letter and send it out, Tiger Harner from Rather
he wrote my letter and told me that, so, you know,
you got a good case Piel's quote, we are, he said,
they turned it down, but we're gonna continue looking then it.
So he fought my letter to law school at UNC
(36:06):
and uh wasn't long after that they wrote me a
letter from the legislator, I mean the lawyer, and he
told me, I said that Cotting, we're gonna do your
request and send you and you have a DNA done.
They didn't send me to do it, but they're gonna
have it done. Said, we're doing your DNA testing. But
if the tests come back stating that you committed the crime,
(36:28):
you're gonna spend the rest of your life in prison.
What do you want us to do? I didn't hesitate
for one moment. Immediately I sent a letter back out
do the tests become to come back stating anything other
than innocent guilty? Rather, that's a because I'm an innocent man,
I said. The Good Lord knows and I know in
(36:48):
my heart that I did not commit this crime. Jennifer,
we're aware of this, any of this stuff going on
at this time? No, not at that time. And we
had gone through a second trial seven did Bobby Pool
to fight that trial? Well, in seven they had told
me that there was this new name out there, Bobby Pool,
that you know, Ronald had been claiming that he had
(37:10):
confessed to it, and um, but don't don't worry about it.
We know that we have the right guy. So in
the second trial, they brought Bobby Pool into the courtroom
under boardier. They had removed the jury, so the jury
never knew about Bobby Pool. And of course in the
court Bobby Pool denied it. He said he had never
said anything, he didn't commit the crime. And by that
(37:31):
point three years had gone by and there was no
memory of Bobby Pool in my head or the second
survivor who was in the courtroom, and both of us
said that we did not recognize Bobby Pool. And then
we were asked again, did we see the person of
the courtroom who had raped us? And we both pointed
out Ronald Cotton. So you go to put your life
(37:52):
back together again as best as you can. You know,
life moves on. I had gotten married, I gotten pregnant.
I gave birth to triplets the spring of n I
had two little girls and a baby boy. And by
you know my babies, I have three five year olds,
(38:13):
and I'm busy. You know, I'm a busy mama. I'm
halfway surprised you even showed up a child, because I mean,
you said you were busy, and be you were absolutely
certain that the justice had already been done. Why would
you even want to go back to You wouldn't forced
to come back were you know, but you want to
make sure that the person that you think try to
kill you stays in prison. So you have a vested
interest in this. So you were there not to learn
(38:34):
anything but to reaffirm what you already knew, and to
you know, make sure that nothing went wrong and that
he was ever free to prey on anybody. Absolutely, absolutely,
and um by nine five when they came to me
and said that there was this thing called post conviction
DNA testing, sometime I had never heard of. I knew
what DNA was, but I had never heard the word
(38:55):
exoneration or wrongful convictions. It wasn't part of my life.
It wasn't part of my story. That wasn't really part
of anybody. It wasn't it was really it wasn't anybody's
story at that point we're talking about. But my blood
from the rape kit had dissolved and disintegrated after those
eleven years, and at some point the courts would probably
require me to give a new blood sample. And I
(39:17):
said to them, I said, you know, I've got five
year old triplets, and I'm busy, and I'm a MoMA
now and that's my job and that's what I want
to do. So I went to the lab that day
and I had my doctor take blood, put it in
a vial, give it straight to the A d A
and Mike Golden, who now was captain the Burlington Police Department,
(39:37):
and I said, run the test because I can't do
this anymore. And and then and then ship hit the
fan pretty yeah much. I mean it was three months later,
which in legal time, three months is like two seconds. Yeah,
probably not when you're in prison. Not when you're in prison,
but you know, some of these tests take years and years, years,
(40:00):
and this one was three months. And they came to
my house and told me that the DNA had completely
excluded Ronald Cotton but had been a direct hit on
Bobby Pool. You you must have been floored. It was
one of the worst days of my life. I'm getting
(40:22):
the shells done. So when they told you this, did
you immediately realize that, in fact this was true and
that you had been wrong all this time? Well? I
think what happened for me was part of my degree
in science, so I understood d NA like I understood
DNA in relation to human memory. I got that that
(40:47):
human memory is fallible. DNA was pretty dang spot on.
I understood it like I understood that Ronald was now
going to be exonerated, understood that Bobby Pool had committed
all these crimes, that a mistake had been made. The
best I can say is it's like the earth opened
(41:10):
up and it swallowed me, and everything became black and dark,
and I dissolved. I felt paralyzed. I felt like I
couldn't breathe. I couldn't function. I mean, you know, try
to talk about this in terms of I could do
my day to day things like I could make a
(41:31):
peanut butter sandwich and I could put the clothes from
the washer into the dryer. But I couldn't function. And
when I got quiet and I was left by myself,
I just was debilitated with fear and guilt. It just
suffocated me and I stopped functioning for two years. Two
(41:57):
years I just couldn't got in know what to do right.
There's nobody was talking about these issues. Nobody was even
talking to me about rape and what had happened to me.
But they really weren't talking about wrongful convictions, and I
had nobody to turn to. There was nobody for me
to talk to. You know, Ronald was on the Larry
(42:17):
King Show and in People magazine, and I understood that,
like I understood that, but there was nobody that cared
about me. And not only did they not care about me,
but they were blaming me, right, And that's a that's
a crazy phenomenon too. It happens to all of our
crime survivors. We get blamed for something that should never
(42:38):
have been our fault. Like we're the first person harmed.
There is someone to blame. It's the perpetrator. Because not
only did Bobby pull destroy my life and the second survivor,
but he sat there and watched an innocent man go
to prison, and he committed over two dozen other crimes
that fall in the spring of before he was ever apprehended.
(43:02):
He raped many women, sexually assaulted them, broke into their homes,
terrorized them for months, and yet somehow the media and
the general public felt that it was okay to bludgeon
me to a bloody pulp for something that was never
(43:23):
my fault. Like there's no survivor in the world that
wants to get this wrong. No, No, we want the
person to go to prison who committed the crimes against
us or murdered our families. Nobody wants to get this wrong.
I mean, it was wrong, but it wasn't my fault.
It was just Jason for me to explain. I mean,
(43:44):
I got death threats, people who would say, people who
said to me, if I find her, I will kidnap her,
I will rape her, I will slit her throat from
ear to ear, and I will watch her die and
bleed to death in a ditch. What is that all about.
I mean, blaming me for something that was never my fault,
(44:05):
something that wrong didn't even blame me for. Well, then
that's that's very very important part of the story obviously.
I mean, the grace of this man who's sitting in
front of us is impossible to exaggerate or describe accurately.
And we'll get to that part of the story in
a second. But yeah, it's so it's so bizarre because
(44:26):
now you've got to deal with the guilt of having
convicted an innocent man, which I know has such a
profound effect on you and still does, and also the
idea that you were now in a situation where you
had not done the thing that was most important to you,
(44:47):
which was to correctly identify your assailant, which led to
these terrible outcomes for all these other women's it seems
like to me, like every where you look, it's just bad. Well,
I first of all, I want to make sure everybody
understands that I did not convict Ronald coun No, you
(45:09):
can't convict anybody exactly. I mean, but that's something that
gets that gets narrated in a way that is not right.
Like the state of North Carolina indicted Ronald and press
charges and convicted Ronald. Jennifer Thompson had no power to
convict anybody. Did I pick Ronald out of a lineup?
I did? And I can explain to you how those
(45:30):
kind of things happen, how can memory kind of contaminates
itself over time, But there there was no way for
me to adequately explain what was happening to me. For
the exonerie and their families, an overturning in of a
conviction is the day they've been praying for. Is that
(45:52):
they're happy ending for a crime survivor, for murder victim
family member who thought that this system had given them justice,
which is what they promised to do for a for
a victim, and find out that the that the system
had failed to give me justice, it had failed my family,
(46:12):
it had failed Ronald, it had failed Ronald's family, and
had failed the other women in the community. UM. I
have not come up with a word yet that can
actually explain what that looks like and what that feels
like for those of us they get impacted, except it
is an additional nightmare. So for Ronald, he's home, he's
with his family, They've supported him, they're embracing him. The
(46:35):
community is celebrating this man who comes back to freedom
and rightly, so that's exactly what should be happening. The
crime survivor should be cared for as well. And I've
talked to lots of police and prosecutors and training and
talking about these things, and they they will come up
to me at the end and they say, you know,
oh my god, I totally forgot about the victim in
(46:57):
these cases. And it shocked me because for every wrongful conviction,
there's a victim, and even if that victim is someone
who was killed, that there's a family, and we are
ignored and we are placed aside and our harm is
not validated. And then on top of it, the media
(47:19):
places to blame and says things such as rape survivor
falsely accuses innocent man and sends into prison not once
but twice. And there's everything wrong with that sentence, right,
as if you were doing it deliberately, because if this
was to kill a mockingbird, and I was just making
up a story, right, And so then the most amazing
(47:40):
part of this story, I would say, the positive part
starts right, which is Jennifer reaches out and how did
that happen. I actually called Mike Golden at the police
department and said, I am not doing well. It's been
two years. I haven't moved forward at all. I need
you to set up a private meeting. Because Ron was
(48:02):
the first teeniggs honery in North Carolina. He was about three,
I think, in the country. So everybody was trying to
find the girl. Everybody wanted to find the girl. So
I asked him to set up a private meeting where
journalists couldn't find us because they were all trying to
find me. So they set it up at a church
that was about a mile and a half where I
had been raped thirteen years before that, and he didn't
(48:25):
know where he was going, and I didn't know where
I was going, so we couldn't accidentally leak it to anybody.
And I found myself at the pastors study and looking
out the window, I see this humongous six ft four
man kind of walking towards the building. And I remember thinking,
as I looked at him, because his wife was seeing
him beside of him, who's my height? And the first
(48:46):
thing I thought of was, my god, he's too tall. Mm.
Then my attacker had never been that tall. Now now
it hit me because I had that relation. Right, I'm looking,
I'm thinking, oh my god, he's huge, and uh he
was five inches taller. What did you say? What did
(49:06):
you say? What? How did it? What happened? Well, my
wife she didn't me to go in the beginning, but
I had to determined that I was going anyway. She said, no,
you're not going. I said, yes, I am. I said,
because it would be a book close brain closure. So
you know, after I got dressed and I looked and
my wife she was there, and she said, well, I'm
(49:27):
going to. So we jumped in my truck. We pull
up and I'll get out and she gets out and
we met Detective Goal and my lawyer, Tom Lambert, and
jennifer husband was there. And so as we were getting
at the inner the room to go in to talk,
Jennifer instructed that her husband stayed back and what nobody
(49:47):
about me? My wife and Jennifer in the room. So
when I walked into the room, Jennifer setting just like
she's sitting down with a Jaane outfit on, and she
had a nervous expression on her face. And I walked
up and us looked at her, and she looked at
me and she said, I'm sorry. She said, I don't
know how. I don't know what to call you, Mr Carton,
(50:09):
Ronald Cotton. Uh she said, I'm sorry, you know, And
I said, I forgive you, and and I hugged her,
and you know, she stood up. I hugged us. She cried.
I cried. I said, grown me and not cry. But
that's a lie. You know, you got it hard and
have sympathy for people. You know you're gonna cry. You know,
I don't care who y'all. You know you're trying to
be hard all you want to. You know, people walk
(50:32):
over you, you know, walk on you. And uh So
after that Jennifer and my wife, they stepped to the side,
said the little private things that women say together, you know,
that encourage each other to be strong and carry on.
So then me and Jennifer, you know, as we went
outside to leave the premises. But before that, when it's
(50:53):
changed phone almost like you know, that way we can
stay in contact with one another. It's time went by,
and it was it's like a good story coming to
an end, and you know, but we continue to stay
in touch. Then this book deal come about. You know,
I went on to be on Lion King Live and
(51:13):
all those shows, you know, and people back and saying,
but I didn't let it blow my head up. But
come my head is already big enough usually had. So
I just went on with my life and she went
on with her, you know. But so it was one
thing after another, you know, I met the kids and all,
and she met my daughter after she come into this world.
(51:34):
And it's just been an amazing thing, you know, to
know that this book has been written and it's out
and come together and it's been blossom year after year.
You know, it's been over thirty years now and I
stually you're talking about Peeking Cotton and I believe my
peeking every day, you know, on my closed I do
want to get your perspective and your memories of that
(51:58):
most incredible moment. I think it's a very brave thing
that you did in a lot of ways. So what
was that moment like for you? I went in thinking
that probably the best case scenario out of this meeting
is going to be Ronald looking at me going, Okay,
(52:18):
thanks for saying that. You know, I don't want you
any harm, but just go away. Like that was gonna
be the best scenario. The worst was going to be, yeah,
I'm screaming at me and wishing me death and destruction
and terrible things. What I didn't expect was what happened,
and that was you know, really looking at him sincerely.
(52:39):
And I was sobbing, telling him that if I spent
the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am,
can you ever forgive me? And Ronald literally took my
hands and it started to cry, and he said, I'm
not angry at you. I forgave you years ago. And
Bobby Pool did this to both of us, and we
(52:59):
were both victims of this man, and it was really
that foundation that we were able to love each other,
and we spent the next two hours asking each other
questions I think that we had wanted to ask each
other all those eleven years. You know, why did you
think it was me? And you know my question was, well,
but then if that, if you weren't there, then where
(53:20):
were you? You know, that type of thing, like trying
to peel back the layers of the truth. And he
really truly gave me back pieces of myself that I
had lost, and for the first time in thirteen years,
there were parts of my spirit and my soul, my
(53:42):
heart that kind of found a way back. And you know,
by watching Ronald and his just incredible love. My next
task was to find a way to let go of
what Bobby Pool had done to me all those years ago,
and you know, find a way to take my power back.
Where do I want to give my power? And it
(54:03):
sure hack wasn't going to be to Bobby Pool. So
Bobby died in prison three years later after he was exonerated. Yeah,
was he was he killed or I had cancer? Yeah?
I wanted to kill him though. I made me a weapon,
and I was going to do it, you know, until
my father paidment visited and I told him what my
(54:24):
attention were. And my father said, son, he said, don't
do that. He said, you tell me you're innocent. Man,
I believe you innes he said, But if you kill him,
he said, you're gonna be guilty. And so I walked
away thinking of that for two weeks. You know, this
guy he slept in the same dormitory did I slept
in maybe from here to over there, you know, the
(54:45):
next room. And he walked by my bunk every day
two or three times a day or maybe more, and
worked in the same kitchen. And you know, it was
hard for me not to do it, but I'm glad
I didn't do it. You know what, I said, a
prayer so the Big Lord for me to forgive Jennifer
making a costal mistake on my life. That's how I
was able to face her without saying any bad things
(55:08):
to water. You know, I wanted to give her love
scrint and lift up and the world, you know, because
you know she had been down just like myself. So
you were down doing time, she was down in heart
and in paying. I just had to put one foot
in front of the other and keep on walking, and
you know, not be sad, but just continue living my
(55:30):
life as I am today, but my life today is
more in freedom and prime free. Yeah, it's a it's
an amazing, amazing thing. I never get tired of hearing
these stories. It puts a lot of gratitude in my attitude,
So thank you for that. I wanted to talk about
compensation because it's a very bizarre system that we have
(55:53):
in America because it varies wildly from state to state.
And in your case, you were giving ten thousand dollars
a year, which is the North Carolina statute for year
eleven years from present thousand dollars. How do you feel
about that? Well? I felt bad about it at the beginning,
but uh I had to accept it. You know, I
(56:15):
go to fault for it, but it wouldn't have done
any good. You know, they already had their mind made up.
I accepted, and uh I walked away. You know, it's
like they give me a little bit and pat bone
the show on side. You know, enjoy life. Jason is
important to note, though, that when he got compensated, the
laws hadn't been changed for fifty years, so he was
(56:37):
actually eligible for five hundred dollars a year with a
cap of five thousand, So Mike Golden and I lobby
the legislature to changed that to ten thousand dollars a year,
and we thought we'd done this amazing thing. And then
North Carolina changed it again in the early two thousand's
two thousands to fifty thousand dollars a year with a
cap of seven hundred fifty thousand dollars, but they wouldn't
(57:00):
make it retroactive. To Ron Well, I never understand that. So, Jennifer,
tell me about the work you've been doing with Healing Justice,
because it's from what I've read, it seems like an
extraordinary mission and it looks like it's making a real change. Yeah.
We launched Healing Justice three years ago because I became
frustrated it why we weren't addressing this long term damage
(57:22):
done to everybody that gets harmed by a wrongful conviction.
I would listen to crime survivors, I'd listened to family
members of agonrees and the exonrees, and I would hear
the stories about what they had lost. And you keep thinking,
right that Pennsylvania is going to step up and fix
the problems they created with agonrees in Pennsylvania, and they
weren't doing it. So I launched Healing Justice in two
(57:43):
thousand fifteen, and what we do is really look at
the total harm done in a wrongful conviction and who
gets impacted by it and finding ways that we can
address that harm in a myriad of ways, but probably
the cornerstone program we do is we host healing retreats
four times a year and we bring together about exonres
(58:08):
and their family members and crime survivors for a weekend.
We pay for all of it, We fly them in
and we do healing circles. We have art um we
addressed the harm, not the cases. We literally have people
kind of unfold the grief sitting in a safe space
with people who get it. Because unless you've traveled a
(58:30):
road like Ron and I have traveled, you can't understand it.
And so being in space with people who understand it,
you don't have to explain why you feel depression, why
you've had substance abuse issues, why you have family problems,
like we understand it. So it's it's really a way
of looking at the concentric circles of harm when the
(58:52):
system fails. So the other thing we do is training
for police and prosecutors about how do we address um
the aftermath of exenerations. You know, we're really We're not
an innocence project. We really work on the aftermath, bringing
folks together after the harm has been done. How do
we heal from that place? I'm using re storative justice principles,
(59:14):
using peer support. UM. It's very unique and it's kind
because everything we do is is driven by those who
have lived it. So all of our expertise is being
given to us by folks that have been impacted and harmed.
And how do people get involved? How do they support
www dot Healing Justice Project dot org. We really need
(59:38):
the financial support to continue kind of expanding our work
and bringing in more people. You know, we've got wrongful convictions,
so we have a lot of work ahead of us.
Were excited about it, all right, So I'm gonna give
and I'm gonna ask everybody else to do the same.
And then we have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction
(01:00:00):
to turn the mic over to you for any closing thoughts. Ron,
We're gonna save you for last, Jennifer, the mica is yours.
I really want people to understand that when a wrongful
conviction happens, at the center of all of it is
a perpetrator, and when we don't get it right, we've
left the perpetrator on the streets to commit further harm,
(01:00:22):
something that I refer to as wrongful liberty. And everybody
needs to care about that. Everybody needs to know that
when a wrongful conviction happens, the system has failed every
single person except the perpetrator, and he is the only
person who wins. Ron well when someone tell you that
(01:00:45):
they are innocent, having an open ear and open eye
to reach out and touch and very much because just
putting one food in frontday the you can't walk your
way out. You have to work your way out, as
easy said than done. But I've learned my lesson. I've
(01:01:10):
been there, I know how it is. I keep my
head to the sky every day because I'm not ashamed
from where I've been yet not knowing where I'm going.
I'm on a road that I'm leading in the hands
of the get Lord because he knows best, and I
will not following the rest. Thank you, don't forget to
(01:01:35):
give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts,
it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in
supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
wrong for convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to
learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to
thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin wardas the
(01:01:58):
music on the show is by three time screnomenic composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful
Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
America has two point two million people in prison. If
just one percent is wrong, that's twenty two people. That's
a lot of people's lives destroyed. If the system wants
to take you out of society, they will do it
no matter what lords they have to break, saying that
(00:23):
they are enforcing the lords, but they're breaking the lord.
Having to hear those people say that I was guilty
of a crime that I did not commit, and then
here my family break down behind me and not be
able to do anything about it. I can't describe the
crushing weight that was. I'm not anti police, I'm just
anti corruption. A lot of times we look and we
(00:46):
see something happened to somebody, and that's the first thing
we said, that could never happen to me, But they can.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
(01:16):
Jason Flam. Today's episode is one of a kind because
I have two people here who are truly one of
a kind, both individually and together. Their story begins in
when Jennifer was a college student in North Carolina, a
man broke into her apartment even as she was being raped.
(01:37):
Jennifer summoned the strength to study her attacker. She tried
to memorize his face, his eyes, his hair. Jennifer eventually escaped,
eventually made her way to the police, where she used
that image burned in her mind for an artist to
create this sketch. That guy, she says she was one
sure about, was Ronald Cotton. Ronald Cotton was two years
(02:00):
old and worked at a seafood restaurant near Jennifer's home.
Ronald went to trial Jennifer again, I did him in court.
It took a jury four hours to convict him, and
a judge sentenced him to life. Eleven years went by.
Cotton maintained his innocence. Scientists were able to isolate a
tiny fragment of sperm that they could test. The results
(02:21):
confirmed what he had been saying all along. The DNA
did not match. On June, Ronald Cotton walked out of
the Alamance County Courthouse a freeman without further ado. Ronald Cotton.
Welcome conviction, Thank you, pleedg just be here today, and
with him is Jennifer Thompson. Welcome to raw conviction. Thank you. Jason.
(02:46):
Let's go back to the beginning first of all, but
talking about North Carolina and Jennifer's that where you grew up. Yes, yes,
I grew up in Winston Sale in North Carolina. But
the crime happened in Burlington, North Carolina when I was
a college student. And of course it's a client that
Ronald was wrongfully convicted of, but at the time, it
(03:06):
seemed like an open and shut case. And that's one
of the things that makes this story so important. Again,
let's go back to that time. You were twenty two
year old girl becoming a woman. You sort of had
the the world at your feet, so to speak, right,
and everything to look forward to until one horrible night. Yes,
(03:29):
and can you tell us about that night and how
this all started. Sure? Sure, I had gone to bed
on July alone. I had had a headache that evening,
so my boyfriend that I was dating at the time,
we were talking about getting married, took me home. I
went to sleep around nine o'clock and I didn't really
(03:50):
hear anything that was going on the community. There was
police kind of circling the neighborhood. They were looking for
someone who had attempted to break into a neighbor's house.
We know now that they couldn't find him because he
was hiding out in my apartment. So around three am
on July nine, I heard a noise in the bedroom,
like feet moving across the carpet because I lived alone,
(04:12):
and as I kind of woke up and that in
between place of being awake and asleep, I saw the
top of a person's head beside my mattress, and I quickly,
you know, asked who was that? Who's there? And a
man jumped up on my bed. I screamed. He covered
my mouth with the gloved hand and put a knife
to the left side of my throat and told me
to shut up. He was going to kill me. It's
(04:33):
literally a horror movie like this. Oh yeah, it's it's
a horror movie. There are several things going on, right,
I mean, you're trying to figure out what's happening. It's
that that that place where you're wondering if this is
a dream or this is really happening, and then you
realize that you are in terrible danger. I knew, I
knew that he was going to write me. That was
(04:54):
very clear. But what you don't know on no survivor
ever knows is was he going to kill me? And
I honestly believe that I'd probably not live, um, that
he would slip my throat, that he would beat me.
And you start wondering in those moments, how quickly will
I be able to die? And while I feel it
as I'm dying, will it be painful? Will it? You know?
(05:15):
Will it just be quick and over with? And you
start thinking about your parents, You start thinking about your future.
You start thinking about the things that you're gonna miss,
and you you know, the things you wish you had
said and that was what was happening, and that you
know that moment when when you realize that this could
be the last thing that ever touches your skin. Eat
(05:36):
cliche about your life, whole life flashing before your eyes.
It's really true, isn't It's really true. It's really true.
And I know you've spoken about how you at that
moment you made a commitment to do everything you could
not only to survive, but to memorize every detail of
your assailant, your attack, or your your torturer so that
(06:01):
you could identify him. I mean, that's some very um
amazingly sort of clear thinking at a time of utmost terror. Right,
you were a clear eyed college student. You weren't high
or stoned. You hadn't been out drinking that night. You
were perfect for this particular task that now lay in
(06:28):
front of you. When this attack finally ended, and how
long did it go on for? By the way, well,
from the beginning of when he woke me up to
when I was able to escape was probably around twenty minutes.
The assault lasted probably five um and I was able
to talk him off of me after part of the
assault had happened, because I knew that I needed to
(06:52):
find a way to escape. But during that time, when
I was trying to figure out a plan, I was
able to stand close to him, to gauge his height,
to gauge his weight, to remember his clothing. I mean,
everything became important to me that night. And I'm glad
you said task because that's exactly what was happening in
my head. I was very task driven, I mean a survive,
(07:12):
find a way to live, and be watch him rotten
hell for the rest of his life. So I was
making a very concerted effort to pay attention to everything,
even listening to his voice as he began to talk
to me, trying to pick up any details he might,
you know, kind of drop, and I could remember and
getting myself into different positions of light. Um, it was all,
(07:33):
you know, part of that need to survive, and that
task gave me that need and will to survive until
I was able to escape after about twenty minutes. You
made this amazing commitment to this process right when I
think most people would have just been focused on getting
out of there. Right. And if this wasn't enough of
(07:55):
a horror movie scenario, your assailant had cut the phone
lines as well. Right, He had cut the phone line.
He had been in my apartment for our smoking cigarettes,
drinking beer out of my refrigerator. He'd stolen money out
of my wallet. He'd even gone through a photo album
and taken photographs of me out and I actually asked permission.
He said, I hope you don't mind, but I took
(08:16):
some of the photographs of you to keep. I mean,
it was it was a mental, physical torture, and you
know it was sexual assault and violence. Um, it is
a forever thing. He changed me that night in ways
(08:37):
that I that you know. The girl was just the
girl died that night. She she was gone. Um. You
did manage to escape, obviously and run down the road,
which was a very brave thing to do, not knowing
you know, he could have come after you, and he
(08:57):
did come after me. He chased me through you know,
through the dark. Unreal. Um, But you out random? Is
that basically how to come down? I out random. The
trick for me was, I knew I had to get
to light, and I knew he wouldn't come under light
with me. So I found a cardboard that was on
at a house that I didn't know who lived there.
(09:18):
I just kind of prayed that people were there, but
I knew he wouldn't come underneath that car board because
if someone was home, they would see him. So that
kept him away from me. As I banged on the door,
and you know, fortunately the husband and wife and the
family were there, and the woman recognized me. She was
a professor at the college I was attending. I didn't
(09:39):
take any of her classes, but she had seen me
on campus and they let me in and basically saved
my life. Wow, what a story. I don't have any
words now, Ronald. Let me turn to you for a second.
So did you live in the same town I did, Yes,
And in the days and weeks p to your arrest,
(10:02):
were you aware of this? Was this big local news. Well,
I guess it was the week before I got arrested.
Me and my brother was standing on a sweet corner
and I let a newspaper, local newspaper down and in
the wrapper pulled it doutor rapper on the front page,
and there was this sketch of a guy and it
described him and showing a pitch of and instruction on
(10:26):
that he committed a crime upon this female and it
was Jennifer. I didn't know Jennifer, you know, I just
read the article. And I told my brother then that
I don't know who the guy here, but when they
get him, I said, he's through, you know, he's done.
And uh. Well, that following Monday, I went home from
not staying in the hotel with my girlfriend, and my
(10:47):
mother's boyfriend told me as I approached the door that
the police have been looking for me. And I went
down and find out for that particular crime. Now, prior
to this nightmare unfolding in your life, how was your
life before that? How old were you? I was the
same age. Well, I had been working at local restaurants
(11:13):
and uh, you know, seafood places and uh and at
the particular moment in the time I was not working.
I was unemployed. I was in the process of been
an application here and there, you know, trying to become implored.
But that particular time, I had been in the fast
lane running to bars. And you know, I had quit
(11:33):
school and and I was working. I was just enjoying
life in general. Once my mother boyfriend and scrubted me
that the cops were looking for me. I had walked
inside the department. I noticed a paper there on the television.
It had named on it or I took the paper.
I read it, and I instruction on it was how
(11:53):
this individual had entered and stops from apartment and committed
to describe upon her. And I said, no, they got
the wrong guy. And some of my mother boyfriend said, well,
you're all gonna get it straight now. And and so
I walked outside, and I looked across the road, and
I noticed my neighbor Patricia was standing on the front
board sweeping, and uh. I walked over, and I saw
go to bar her car to drive down the police
(12:15):
department and see what's going on in this matter. U.
I said, well, I take my sister tuted with me,
just in case they locked me up. And that way
she can bring your car back. So on our way there,
be buried off and went by my girlfriend Teresa's place,
and she come running to the car crying holding rhyn Ryn.
And police been over here looking for you, saying that
you raped this woman, and she said, I know you didn't.
(12:37):
I said, no, I did not. I said, baby. We
are getting ready to go to the police department right
now and try to get this matter taken care of.
So so I want to ride. So we all hopped
in the car and went down and pulled in the
parking lot. Was I exited the Carron was prosing the
police department and I looked up. You know, it was
about two or three stories high and all the cops
(12:58):
that was I saw him looking at the one of
us away from the wonder and run downstairs. They met
me at the door, and out the door pops Mike Golden,
and uh, he's something, Detective Mike gold Or. I said, yes,
I heard you. I've been looking for me for a
crime in the community that I need to commit. Uh.
He said, well, come on inside and let's talk about it.
And uh, you know, trying to get this thing worked out.
(13:19):
So I went inside and the alibi that I gave
them was totally different, because you know, I parted a
lot that was keeping up with everything. So how long
after the actual crime was this taking place at the
first three days? Yeah, I was a short time as
the first round bout twit or thirty. And we went
upstairs and they've begun and asked me a question about Jennifer.
(13:41):
You want saying that I wanted this warming part man
committed all the acts fun her, and I said, I
kept telling no, I did not. I said, the reason
for coming down here, for trying to get this matter
taken care of. And then uh, the police chief he
told me that, uh, yeah, I took a flashlight and
held it in a woman's facing. Rape, which I was
as I convictim, happened that night as well. I told no,
(14:05):
I said, you got me wrong. You know I did
not commit this crime. He said yeah, He said, you
think you missed the big stuff going around town swimming
white women. I said, so, you're totally wrong. I did
not commit these crimes. Then they was instructed to take
me in the room and locked me up, you know,
photographed me and thanger print me, and they took me
down to that men's County jail put me on a
(14:26):
hundred and fifty thousand dollar bail, and there was no
way you could post that. No, I was there until
do day on trial. Actually you didn't walk out for
eleven years. I mean that night you're spending the model
was the last night you spent as a free man
until this whole thing was finally resolved all those years later. So, Jennifer,
(14:57):
you have now seen his picture, st Ron's picture in
a photo array, and you had identified him, and now
they had him under arrest, So you must have felt
a huge sense of relief. I did. I mean there
had been another rape immediately after mine, and we knew
it was the same person. An hour later, mild on
(15:19):
the road, there's another woman who's assaulted, and I felt
that we had a serial rapist in the community and
he needed to be removed. So yes, I thought a
huge sense of relief after I knew that he had
been arrested and of course would be held over for
probable cause and we would go to trial, which became
(15:40):
a next task. How did they know that it was
the same person. It was a description of the clothing.
Both of us had said that the person who had
attacked us had had on a navy blue shirt with
three white stripes that went along as biceps. He had
on khaki type pants. He had white gloves that were knit.
I mean, both of us had the same exact description.
And as he was running from the second rape survivor,
(16:03):
police were being called, and he actually passed the police,
so there was a police that actually got a short
glimpse of the assailance, so we knew it was the
same person. It was the same person who had attempted
to break into the woman before me, because she had
said the same thing and arm was coming through her door,
blew shirt with white stripes, nick gloves. She just happened
(16:24):
to be awake and called the police. So he never
assaulted the first woman. The other woman who was raped,
Was she involved in this process in any way? Did
they show her the same photo array, and if so,
did she identify ron as well? They did show her
the same array, and she was much older than me,
And during her assault he hit her in bitter and
(16:47):
put a flashlight in her eyes and put a pillow
on her face when he raped her, So she was
not able to get the same kind of description and
details that I was able to get. And so when
she went to the photographic lineup and physical lineup, she
wasn't sure. She said that I think it's number four,
but it could be number five. And so the district
attorney made the decision to not try the cases together,
(17:10):
that they would only try my case because basically they
had a better conviction with just my identification. Right again,
yours was perfect, seemingly right right. I literally was called
the perfect witness. So you're in prison, you're getting some
sleep now, hopefully by not really where were you staying,
by the way, when this rapist was still on the loose.
(17:32):
I was staying about three miles off campus and a
condominium complex. But you didn't stay in your own apartment
after this? Oh no, I never returned, just only for
my things. And you know, again, the thing about being
an assault survivor is when when you're broken like I
was broken, Um, you can't ever return to that place
that you were before. And I you know, talk to people,
(17:55):
your lens that you look at through the world becomes distorted,
and everything you choose becomes seen through that distortion. Your
place in the world is now distorted. What value do
I have? Um? You know, where do you go? From
here because who you were before is no longer an option,
and it's now trying to recreate this new person. But
(18:18):
you you have no support, so people didn't want to
hang out with me. My family wouldn't talk to me
about it. My boyfriend said he just couldn't handle it,
so he broke up with me. Man, Literally everything in
my world was gone, and your your task now with
trying to somehow recover. And I use that like with
(18:40):
a big sigh, because it is a forever recovery. It's
just as long as you live, you're still in recovery.
It's hard for me to add how those particular people
who were so close and intimate with you made exactly
the wrong choice ron back to you. So you are
in crazy land now, right, because you can't possibly understand,
(19:03):
I imagine why this is happening. And now all of
a sudden you find yourself in the situation that you
had just been discussing with your brother. Right, you had
just predicted your own fate, actually right, because you had said,
whoever they get one of that guy's going down whatever? Right,
and now it's you. The day of the trial comes.
How long had you been held by then? About four months,
(19:27):
so you had been in for quite a while. And
the jail. I don't know how that jail was, but
we know that a lot of the jails in America
are even worse and even more dangerous and scary than
the maximum security prisons. Was this jail one of those?
I wasn't one of know. It was just a lot
of guys talking. John. You know, if you wanted to
make a stand, you know, you took a chance, you know, So,
(19:49):
Jennifer back to you. So the day of the trial comes,
you're there hoping to get some closure, right, Well, yeah,
closure such an interesting Well yeah, I mean you're looking
for justice, is what you're looking for, and and that's
what I was looking for. I was looking for for
him to be held responsible for what you had done
to not just me, but the other woman who wasn't
(20:09):
going to be able to tell her story and other
women who could never find justice. So it was like,
kind of this this thing I needed. I really needed
it to to move to the next place of my life.
And then the trial was over two weeks long. Well
that's a long trial. I'm actually surprised it was that long.
But by now you had identified ron in a photo
(20:31):
array and in the lineup, and it's important to highlight
the fact that he was the only person that was
featured in both the photo or A and the lineup
that is correct, which is obviously going to have some
impact on your perception, your memory, right. And of course
what we know now is that the perpetrator was never
in any of the lineups. So it seems like they
(20:54):
did what they could in a very imperfect system to
try to be harshal. Is that accurate? Not? Really, they
had thought before I went down to do the photographic lineup,
they had believed that Ronald Cotton had actually committed these crimes.
So during the first line up, which was the photographic
lineup and what they call six pack, and I had
(21:16):
been given some instructions to take my time, not feel
compelled to choose anyone, which was pretty modern thinking in Yeah,
but when I picked Ronald out of the photographs, they
did tell me, good job, that's who we thought it was.
Of course, what we know now is that just gave
my my certainty, that confirmation unneeded, and boy, my certainty
(21:40):
went out the roof. Once they said that to me
Ronald Cotton, that photo became the rapist, and we we
were dealing in this case with a cross racial identification,
which we know are the least reliable of all the
different forms of I would have identification. It's been proven
(22:01):
in every study that's ever been done just how unreliable
I would just identification is. And we know that it
goes up in cases in which either the victim or
the witness is in mortal danger, which you certainly were.
Of course, it triggers all sorts of chemical reactions in
your brain, which in turn cause your your your memory
(22:27):
to play tricks on you. It's odd, right, you were
the perfect witness, but it was also the perfect storm
because you had this particular case, had all of those
factors right, You had again the cross racial identification problem,
you had the mortal fear problem, for lack of a
better the weapon focus, right, that's the best term for it.
(22:47):
And so what should have been really an open and
shut case was anything but. But we didn't know that
at the time. No, we we thought we were doing
things best practices at that time. We know now that
it all went horribly wrong. And so you now had
(23:07):
identified him in the photo array and in the lineup,
you were given a positive reinforcement in both of those cases. Now,
the day of the trial comes and you're asked to
identify the perpetrator in the courtroom. Yeah, that's great. I
was on the stand for two days having to just
(23:30):
over and over and over again talk about what had
been done to me, literally over and over again, in
front of my family, in front of strangers. I mean,
it was really awful. And then you're the rape survivor.
So the defense attorney is beginning to assassinate my character,
basically blaming me for inviting my own rape because I
had the audacity to go to bed that night in
(23:52):
just my underwear, and so didn't I know that's what
led people to rape women. And so there's a lot
of things happening. What are you supposed to wear a
coat of armor? Well that was my point. My my
point to the defense attorney was basically, so if I
had gone to bed in a sweatsuit, and he would
have looked at me and at I don't think So
it's just too much trouble, is that what you're saying
(24:14):
to me. And of course it's shut that down immediately.
But I was so angry. I was so angry that
somehow me going to bed as a twenty two year
old woman and my underwear had had been the cost
of my own sexual assault. Yeah, that's that's not And
of course it didn't help Ron honestly with a jury.
(24:34):
The jury was really angry at the defense attorney for
even suggesting that. So there were some things that happened
that must have made you feel uncomfortable to Ron to
have that line of questioning. I mean, here's this woman
that you've never met, that you don't know what happened
or why you're in this situation that you're in. Um,
you're four months and five months in jail, whatever it was,
So your your head's standing around in all different directions, right,
(24:57):
and now you your own team is acting in a
way that I can't imagine you would ever act. The
whole situation is just wrong. Um, And ultimately you're asked
to make a positive identification. And what happens. I looked
straight over at Ronald and I said, he's sitting at
the defense table. That's the man who raped me. And
(25:20):
the jury deliberated four hours and came back with, of course,
a guilty verdict on all charges. And what was that moment,
like Ron, I mean that had to be the worst
moment of your life. I just couldn't believe it, you know,
I just shook my head. You know, I looked at
my attorneys and I looked directly like the judge and
the foreman and the Jews and the reporter, and once
(25:44):
a verdict were red from the jurid form, I just
I said, no, that's what I'm saying to myself. I said,
they have it wrong. And so the judge I asked
me if I had anything to say to the court,
and I said yes. I told him that I would
like to have his for missing a single song that
I had written in jail. And so while I stood up,
I sang the song. And as I was singing that song,
(26:08):
you know my turning is, you know, like said, went
to here to drop, you know, as said though I
put them the shame, but I didn't care anything at
that particular time because I've just been found guilty for
a crime I did not commit. And you're saying, song,
can you sing it now? Yeah? If I can remember
word for word, I've tried to. Anyway. It was a
(26:30):
poem written to my girlfriend, but I've changed the words
and wrote a gospel song. Whatever, and they wants something
like this decisions I can no longer me because my
future is so unknown to me. And then I could
no longer tell he go. During the day, I wonder
(26:55):
and I have heard with fear col at his names
him much suddenly tears appear. Until God came in my life.
Until God came in my life, I was often along
(27:16):
and people I really couldn't face. I just didn't know
what to do without I feel so wild a place
I meany time as I say this, before you agree,
there's no other God, whoever love of you, not quite
(27:41):
as much as Lord God. Believe me every one, because
God will change your life. And that is a fare
because I would pay both night and day until you God.
Oh bye to me, Yeah yeah, all those words to
(28:11):
I just don't sound like that. Oh God, that's funny,
that's beautiful. Your life is literally coming to an end,
and then you get up and sing a damn song. Unbelievable.
Now things start to get crazier because you're in prison.
(28:33):
What steps did you take and what hope did you have? Well?
I had handed the prison system with life and four
year prison term. Immediately they pointed me guidance counselor in
the prison, and I went in and made him took
the tests, talk with him about my being in prison,
(28:54):
and uh, you know the crime that I was in
there for, but he said, we're not here for that,
We're here to keep So you know, I know it
was the lost costs I was fighting, and so it
was all upon me to do what I had to
do to survive, and that was to stay in contact
with my trial lawyers would still continue to fight my
case on appeal. So you actually had a competent attorney
(29:14):
in this. Yes, it wouldn't needed O J's dream team,
and you probably might have still gotten convicted. I don't
I don't know that there's a lawyer on this planet
that could have gotten you out of this. But now
I was fighting a lost costs, but you know, it
was a battle field that I was in that I
couldn't give up. Uh you know. Immediately, you know, I
put myself into the school I love very at the
Center prison and start filing motions from inside the prison
(29:38):
and what's din't doing a good at all? And so
one day I was on my way to the gym
to work out, and I recognized his inmates being escorted
inside the prison, and it looked very familiar to me,
so I started thinking. I said, I saw this guy before,
you know, as I'm walking and uh. I went on
continue that process of working out, and I went back
(30:01):
to my dorm that night. You know, they had him
finished processing him inside the prison and I went to
him the next day. I recognized him from being outside
in the recreation yard. I was playing a handball game
I was in and immediately I had someone to come
and relieve me from that game. And uh, I've made
an approach on him, and I had him where was
(30:23):
he from? And he told me he was from Burlton,
Akro and also and uh, I said what he looked
like the drawing up compartitive sketch of rape that was
committed in Bralson that I'm in prison for that you
commit the crime, And immediately he told me no, he
did not, But you just had a feeling I had
to feel because he resembled the drawing. You know, I
had to cut it out the local newspaper because I
(30:44):
had my hands from the newspaper in the count of jail,
and I cut it out and put it in my possession.
Now finally destiny. So that throws you a bone, right,
because this guy, if he had to come to your prison,
you wouldn't have had any idea if you had to
cross path with him at that particular time, you might
not have had that same feeling, that instinct that you had, Right,
(31:05):
But here he goes and he denies it. You have
this instinct, this feeling. It turns out he's from the
same town. He denies it. So you're basically back where
you started. Accepted. Now you're under the same roof with
the guy who's responsible for destroying both of your lives.
But there's nothing you can really do about it. But
(31:27):
that all changed one day as a result of a
conversation that you had with another inmate, right, And can
you can you tell us how that started, because this
is a really amazing part of the story. Well, this guy,
he began to lust after me in prison. I told
him one night as I was in the shower, you know,
I was washing my hair and Savo Kurt and I
(31:49):
heard slide and so I lifted up my hand because
I had an effort at the time, and he was
standing I lust and you know, telling me what a
beautiful body I had, and I told him, I'm not
trying to hear that need to keep moving, you know,
when he kept on and I said, well, I'm not
going on trying to fight a guy, you know in
the new you know, I might slip and follow my head,
you know, bumping on the floor something, getting knocked out, unconscious,
(32:11):
and you know you gotta do me in. So I
just chilled. And the next day I was in the
gym shooting pool a guy from Greensboro, nam Roger. He
told mes the cot now Kenne and the kids and
talking junk about you, you know, And I said, well,
I'm tired of this stuff. I'm gonna get this man
straight out right now. So I handed my pool stick
(32:31):
and I chug a look up to the kitchen. He
was in the parking paying area with his back turn.
When I approached. I stopped so many feet from him,
and I called his name out and now he turned
around he said yeah. I said, look, man, uh, you've
been talking drunk about me for so many months. I'm
tired of it. You let my name taste like crap
in your mouth. And he approached me, said you better
(32:52):
get up my face for I kill you. He put
his hand on man. I said, oh, you want to fight, right,
I said, okay, let's go. So he walked over in
the corn and get off a camera, you know, and
we fought and I end up breaking his jaw and
put them down, and you know, and they got bound
of him and he goes to surrogation and I do
not because you know, they ris them stewards and the
(33:14):
kitchen had heard me telling this guy to leave me alone.
So you know, they got on my side. And so
he went to Hope for thirty days. And after thirty
days they come out. I was setting in my dorm.
I was sitting in the corner. Come my bump within
a corner wall. I kept three chails lining up along
the wall. And he walked up to the window and
he said cod and not saying yeah, he said, let
(33:36):
me holl let you man. I told him come on end.
You know. When he comes in my dorm and I
told him have a seat. He sit down and he spiling.
He's I'm sorry to fight you. He said, you're fighting, dude,
and I said no, I'm just not gonna go for
that bull, you know, so hease, I apologize it. I
just wanted to become your friend. I said, well, becoming
a friend and don't approach me in that way. And
(33:56):
he said, well, I just want to tell you that
Mr Poole told me that he committed the crime you're
in prison for. And I said, well, thank you. So
he gets up and he walks off. And so later
that night I go to my lock and I pulled
out my legal pad and a pan, and I set
up about two o'clock in the morning, and I wrote
my lawyer Field Most and I told him what had
(34:17):
been told to me. And so a week or two
went by. He wrote me back and then walked to me, well,
we're gonna look into it, you know, but right now
we're got to go through the process of the pills
and so, uh, I just want head on. And about
the next week Mr Pool approached me. He said because
he worked, he got a job in the kitchen as well.
(34:39):
He said that. He said, I know you've got a
lot of sisters, man. Uh, he said, why don't you
let me write one of your sisters. I said, what,
I don't know, I'm gonna let guys in prison right
my sisters? And uh, I said, but with you too,
with deception, I consider, I said, but first of all
we have to do, I said, we have to take
a photograph together. And I the letter and I sent
(35:01):
it to my sister. I said, she see what you
look like? She had write your back. If she doesn't,
I don't know what to tell you. And so we
took the photograph. Anyway, I didn't send that letter to
my sister. I sent it to my lawyer and he
liked what he saw. Yeah, I really got the ball
kind of rolling. Well. I was transferred on through the
(35:22):
prison and uh, I ended up in Mason, Tennessee, and
I wrote the Court of Appeal from there, you know,
by listening to the o J trial. You know, I
took my legal pad start taking notes on the DNA
and when I felt I had enough evident and information
written down on my legal pads, I said, well it's
time for me to write to the Court of Appield
and request for this DNA test. So, once I wrote
(35:46):
the letter and send it out, Tiger Harner from Rather
he wrote my letter and told me that, so, you know,
you got a good case Piel's quote, we are, he said,
they turned it down, but we're gonna continue looking then it.
So he fought my letter to law school at UNC
(36:06):
and uh wasn't long after that they wrote me a
letter from the legislator, I mean the lawyer, and he
told me, I said that Cotting, we're gonna do your
request and send you and you have a DNA done.
They didn't send me to do it, but they're gonna
have it done. Said, we're doing your DNA testing. But
if the tests come back stating that you committed the crime,
(36:28):
you're gonna spend the rest of your life in prison.
What do you want us to do? I didn't hesitate
for one moment. Immediately I sent a letter back out
do the tests become to come back stating anything other
than innocent guilty? Rather, that's a because I'm an innocent man,
I said. The Good Lord knows and I know in
(36:48):
my heart that I did not commit this crime. Jennifer,
we're aware of this, any of this stuff going on
at this time? No, not at that time. And we
had gone through a second trial seven did Bobby Pool
to fight that trial? Well, in seven they had told
me that there was this new name out there, Bobby Pool,
that you know, Ronald had been claiming that he had
(37:10):
confessed to it, and um, but don't don't worry about it.
We know that we have the right guy. So in
the second trial, they brought Bobby Pool into the courtroom
under boardier. They had removed the jury, so the jury
never knew about Bobby Pool. And of course in the
court Bobby Pool denied it. He said he had never
said anything, he didn't commit the crime. And by that
(37:31):
point three years had gone by and there was no
memory of Bobby Pool in my head or the second
survivor who was in the courtroom, and both of us
said that we did not recognize Bobby Pool. And then
we were asked again, did we see the person of
the courtroom who had raped us? And we both pointed
out Ronald Cotton. So you go to put your life
(37:52):
back together again as best as you can. You know,
life moves on. I had gotten married, I gotten pregnant.
I gave birth to triplets the spring of n I
had two little girls and a baby boy. And by
you know my babies, I have three five year olds,
(38:13):
and I'm busy. You know, I'm a busy mama. I'm
halfway surprised you even showed up a child, because I mean,
you said you were busy, and be you were absolutely
certain that the justice had already been done. Why would
you even want to go back to You wouldn't forced
to come back were you know, but you want to
make sure that the person that you think try to
kill you stays in prison. So you have a vested
interest in this. So you were there not to learn
(38:34):
anything but to reaffirm what you already knew, and to
you know, make sure that nothing went wrong and that
he was ever free to prey on anybody. Absolutely, absolutely,
and um by nine five when they came to me
and said that there was this thing called post conviction
DNA testing, sometime I had never heard of. I knew
what DNA was, but I had never heard the word
(38:55):
exoneration or wrongful convictions. It wasn't part of my life.
It wasn't part of my story. That wasn't really part
of anybody. It wasn't it was really it wasn't anybody's
story at that point we're talking about. But my blood
from the rape kit had dissolved and disintegrated after those
eleven years, and at some point the courts would probably
require me to give a new blood sample. And I
(39:17):
said to them, I said, you know, I've got five
year old triplets, and I'm busy, and I'm a MoMA
now and that's my job and that's what I want
to do. So I went to the lab that day
and I had my doctor take blood, put it in
a vial, give it straight to the A d A
and Mike Golden, who now was captain the Burlington Police Department,
(39:37):
and I said, run the test because I can't do
this anymore. And and then and then ship hit the
fan pretty yeah much. I mean it was three months later,
which in legal time, three months is like two seconds. Yeah,
probably not when you're in prison. Not when you're in prison,
but you know, some of these tests take years and years, years,
(40:00):
and this one was three months. And they came to
my house and told me that the DNA had completely
excluded Ronald Cotton but had been a direct hit on
Bobby Pool. You you must have been floored. It was
one of the worst days of my life. I'm getting
(40:22):
the shells done. So when they told you this, did
you immediately realize that, in fact this was true and
that you had been wrong all this time? Well? I
think what happened for me was part of my degree
in science, so I understood d NA like I understood
DNA in relation to human memory. I got that that
(40:47):
human memory is fallible. DNA was pretty dang spot on.
I understood it like I understood that Ronald was now
going to be exonerated, understood that Bobby Pool had committed
all these crimes, that a mistake had been made. The
best I can say is it's like the earth opened
(41:10):
up and it swallowed me, and everything became black and dark,
and I dissolved. I felt paralyzed. I felt like I
couldn't breathe. I couldn't function. I mean, you know, try
to talk about this in terms of I could do
my day to day things like I could make a
(41:31):
peanut butter sandwich and I could put the clothes from
the washer into the dryer. But I couldn't function. And
when I got quiet and I was left by myself,
I just was debilitated with fear and guilt. It just
suffocated me and I stopped functioning for two years. Two
(41:57):
years I just couldn't got in know what to do right.
There's nobody was talking about these issues. Nobody was even
talking to me about rape and what had happened to me.
But they really weren't talking about wrongful convictions, and I
had nobody to turn to. There was nobody for me
to talk to. You know, Ronald was on the Larry
(42:17):
King Show and in People magazine, and I understood that,
like I understood that, but there was nobody that cared
about me. And not only did they not care about me,
but they were blaming me, right, And that's a that's
a crazy phenomenon too. It happens to all of our
crime survivors. We get blamed for something that should never
(42:38):
have been our fault. Like we're the first person harmed.
There is someone to blame. It's the perpetrator. Because not
only did Bobby pull destroy my life and the second survivor,
but he sat there and watched an innocent man go
to prison, and he committed over two dozen other crimes
that fall in the spring of before he was ever apprehended.
(43:02):
He raped many women, sexually assaulted them, broke into their homes,
terrorized them for months, and yet somehow the media and
the general public felt that it was okay to bludgeon
me to a bloody pulp for something that was never
(43:23):
my fault. Like there's no survivor in the world that
wants to get this wrong. No, No, we want the
person to go to prison who committed the crimes against
us or murdered our families. Nobody wants to get this wrong.
I mean, it was wrong, but it wasn't my fault.
It was just Jason for me to explain. I mean,
(43:44):
I got death threats, people who would say, people who
said to me, if I find her, I will kidnap her,
I will rape her, I will slit her throat from
ear to ear, and I will watch her die and
bleed to death in a ditch. What is that all about.
I mean, blaming me for something that was never my fault,
(44:05):
something that wrong didn't even blame me for. Well, then
that's that's very very important part of the story obviously.
I mean, the grace of this man who's sitting in
front of us is impossible to exaggerate or describe accurately.
And we'll get to that part of the story in
a second. But yeah, it's so it's so bizarre because
(44:26):
now you've got to deal with the guilt of having
convicted an innocent man, which I know has such a
profound effect on you and still does, and also the
idea that you were now in a situation where you
had not done the thing that was most important to you,
(44:47):
which was to correctly identify your assailant, which led to
these terrible outcomes for all these other women's it seems
like to me, like every where you look, it's just bad. Well,
I first of all, I want to make sure everybody
understands that I did not convict Ronald coun No, you
(45:09):
can't convict anybody exactly. I mean, but that's something that
gets that gets narrated in a way that is not right.
Like the state of North Carolina indicted Ronald and press
charges and convicted Ronald. Jennifer Thompson had no power to
convict anybody. Did I pick Ronald out of a lineup?
I did? And I can explain to you how those
(45:30):
kind of things happen, how can memory kind of contaminates
itself over time, But there there was no way for
me to adequately explain what was happening to me. For
the exonerie and their families, an overturning in of a
conviction is the day they've been praying for. Is that
(45:52):
they're happy ending for a crime survivor, for murder victim
family member who thought that this system had given them justice,
which is what they promised to do for a for
a victim, and find out that the that the system
had failed to give me justice, it had failed my family,
(46:12):
it had failed Ronald, it had failed Ronald's family, and
had failed the other women in the community. UM. I
have not come up with a word yet that can
actually explain what that looks like and what that feels
like for those of us they get impacted, except it
is an additional nightmare. So for Ronald, he's home, he's
with his family, They've supported him, they're embracing him. The
(46:35):
community is celebrating this man who comes back to freedom
and rightly, so that's exactly what should be happening. The
crime survivor should be cared for as well. And I've
talked to lots of police and prosecutors and training and
talking about these things, and they they will come up
to me at the end and they say, you know,
oh my god, I totally forgot about the victim in
(46:57):
these cases. And it shocked me because for every wrongful conviction,
there's a victim, and even if that victim is someone
who was killed, that there's a family, and we are
ignored and we are placed aside and our harm is
not validated. And then on top of it, the media
(47:19):
places to blame and says things such as rape survivor
falsely accuses innocent man and sends into prison not once
but twice. And there's everything wrong with that sentence, right,
as if you were doing it deliberately, because if this
was to kill a mockingbird, and I was just making
up a story, right, And so then the most amazing
(47:40):
part of this story, I would say, the positive part
starts right, which is Jennifer reaches out and how did
that happen. I actually called Mike Golden at the police
department and said, I am not doing well. It's been
two years. I haven't moved forward at all. I need
you to set up a private meeting. Because Ron was
(48:02):
the first teeniggs honery in North Carolina. He was about three,
I think, in the country. So everybody was trying to
find the girl. Everybody wanted to find the girl. So
I asked him to set up a private meeting where
journalists couldn't find us because they were all trying to
find me. So they set it up at a church
that was about a mile and a half where I
had been raped thirteen years before that, and he didn't
(48:25):
know where he was going, and I didn't know where
I was going, so we couldn't accidentally leak it to anybody.
And I found myself at the pastors study and looking
out the window, I see this humongous six ft four
man kind of walking towards the building. And I remember thinking,
as I looked at him, because his wife was seeing
him beside of him, who's my height? And the first
(48:46):
thing I thought of was, my god, he's too tall. Mm.
Then my attacker had never been that tall. Now now
it hit me because I had that relation. Right, I'm looking,
I'm thinking, oh my god, he's huge, and uh he
was five inches taller. What did you say? What did
(49:06):
you say? What? How did it? What happened? Well, my
wife she didn't me to go in the beginning, but
I had to determined that I was going anyway. She said, no,
you're not going. I said, yes, I am. I said,
because it would be a book close brain closure. So
you know, after I got dressed and I looked and
my wife she was there, and she said, well, I'm
(49:27):
going to. So we jumped in my truck. We pull
up and I'll get out and she gets out and
we met Detective Goal and my lawyer, Tom Lambert, and
jennifer husband was there. And so as we were getting
at the inner the room to go in to talk,
Jennifer instructed that her husband stayed back and what nobody
(49:47):
about me? My wife and Jennifer in the room. So
when I walked into the room, Jennifer setting just like
she's sitting down with a Jaane outfit on, and she
had a nervous expression on her face. And I walked
up and us looked at her, and she looked at
me and she said, I'm sorry. She said, I don't
know how. I don't know what to call you, Mr Carton,
(50:09):
Ronald Cotton. Uh she said, I'm sorry, you know, And
I said, I forgive you, and and I hugged her,
and you know, she stood up. I hugged us. She cried.
I cried. I said, grown me and not cry. But
that's a lie. You know, you got it hard and
have sympathy for people. You know you're gonna cry. You know,
I don't care who y'all. You know you're trying to
be hard all you want to. You know, people walk
(50:32):
over you, you know, walk on you. And uh So
after that Jennifer and my wife, they stepped to the side,
said the little private things that women say together, you know,
that encourage each other to be strong and carry on.
So then me and Jennifer, you know, as we went
outside to leave the premises. But before that, when it's
(50:53):
changed phone almost like you know, that way we can
stay in contact with one another. It's time went by,
and it was it's like a good story coming to
an end, and you know, but we continue to stay
in touch. Then this book deal come about. You know,
I went on to be on Lion King Live and
(51:13):
all those shows, you know, and people back and saying,
but I didn't let it blow my head up. But
come my head is already big enough usually had. So
I just went on with my life and she went
on with her, you know. But so it was one
thing after another, you know, I met the kids and all,
and she met my daughter after she come into this world.
(51:34):
And it's just been an amazing thing, you know, to
know that this book has been written and it's out
and come together and it's been blossom year after year.
You know, it's been over thirty years now and I
stually you're talking about Peeking Cotton and I believe my
peeking every day, you know, on my closed I do
want to get your perspective and your memories of that
(51:58):
most incredible moment. I think it's a very brave thing
that you did in a lot of ways. So what
was that moment like for you? I went in thinking
that probably the best case scenario out of this meeting
is going to be Ronald looking at me going, Okay,
(52:18):
thanks for saying that. You know, I don't want you
any harm, but just go away. Like that was gonna
be the best scenario. The worst was going to be, yeah,
I'm screaming at me and wishing me death and destruction
and terrible things. What I didn't expect was what happened,
and that was you know, really looking at him sincerely.
(52:39):
And I was sobbing, telling him that if I spent
the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am,
can you ever forgive me? And Ronald literally took my
hands and it started to cry, and he said, I'm
not angry at you. I forgave you years ago. And
Bobby Pool did this to both of us, and we
(52:59):
were both victims of this man, and it was really
that foundation that we were able to love each other,
and we spent the next two hours asking each other
questions I think that we had wanted to ask each
other all those eleven years. You know, why did you
think it was me? And you know my question was, well,
but then if that, if you weren't there, then where
(53:20):
were you? You know, that type of thing, like trying
to peel back the layers of the truth. And he
really truly gave me back pieces of myself that I
had lost, and for the first time in thirteen years,
there were parts of my spirit and my soul, my
(53:42):
heart that kind of found a way back. And you know,
by watching Ronald and his just incredible love. My next
task was to find a way to let go of
what Bobby Pool had done to me all those years ago,
and you know, find a way to take my power back.
Where do I want to give my power? And it
(54:03):
sure hack wasn't going to be to Bobby Pool. So
Bobby died in prison three years later after he was exonerated. Yeah,
was he was he killed or I had cancer? Yeah?
I wanted to kill him though. I made me a weapon,
and I was going to do it, you know, until
my father paidment visited and I told him what my
(54:24):
attention were. And my father said, son, he said, don't
do that. He said, you tell me you're innocent. Man,
I believe you innes he said, But if you kill him,
he said, you're gonna be guilty. And so I walked
away thinking of that for two weeks. You know, this
guy he slept in the same dormitory did I slept
in maybe from here to over there, you know, the
(54:45):
next room. And he walked by my bunk every day
two or three times a day or maybe more, and
worked in the same kitchen. And you know, it was
hard for me not to do it, but I'm glad
I didn't do it. You know what, I said, a
prayer so the Big Lord for me to forgive Jennifer
making a costal mistake on my life. That's how I
was able to face her without saying any bad things
(55:08):
to water. You know, I wanted to give her love
scrint and lift up and the world, you know, because
you know she had been down just like myself. So
you were down doing time, she was down in heart
and in paying. I just had to put one foot
in front of the other and keep on walking, and
you know, not be sad, but just continue living my
(55:30):
life as I am today, but my life today is
more in freedom and prime free. Yeah, it's a it's
an amazing, amazing thing. I never get tired of hearing
these stories. It puts a lot of gratitude in my attitude,
So thank you for that. I wanted to talk about
compensation because it's a very bizarre system that we have
(55:53):
in America because it varies wildly from state to state.
And in your case, you were giving ten thousand dollars
a year, which is the North Carolina statute for year
eleven years from present thousand dollars. How do you feel
about that? Well? I felt bad about it at the beginning,
but uh I had to accept it. You know, I
(56:15):
go to fault for it, but it wouldn't have done
any good. You know, they already had their mind made up.
I accepted, and uh I walked away. You know, it's
like they give me a little bit and pat bone
the show on side. You know, enjoy life. Jason is
important to note, though, that when he got compensated, the
laws hadn't been changed for fifty years, so he was
(56:37):
actually eligible for five hundred dollars a year with a
cap of five thousand, So Mike Golden and I lobby
the legislature to changed that to ten thousand dollars a year,
and we thought we'd done this amazing thing. And then
North Carolina changed it again in the early two thousand's
two thousands to fifty thousand dollars a year with a
cap of seven hundred fifty thousand dollars, but they wouldn't
(57:00):
make it retroactive. To Ron Well, I never understand that. So, Jennifer,
tell me about the work you've been doing with Healing Justice,
because it's from what I've read, it seems like an
extraordinary mission and it looks like it's making a real change. Yeah.
We launched Healing Justice three years ago because I became
frustrated it why we weren't addressing this long term damage
(57:22):
done to everybody that gets harmed by a wrongful conviction.
I would listen to crime survivors, I'd listened to family
members of agonrees and the exonrees, and I would hear
the stories about what they had lost. And you keep thinking,
right that Pennsylvania is going to step up and fix
the problems they created with agonrees in Pennsylvania, and they
weren't doing it. So I launched Healing Justice in two
(57:43):
thousand fifteen, and what we do is really look at
the total harm done in a wrongful conviction and who
gets impacted by it and finding ways that we can
address that harm in a myriad of ways, but probably
the cornerstone program we do is we host healing retreats
four times a year and we bring together about exonres
(58:08):
and their family members and crime survivors for a weekend.
We pay for all of it, We fly them in
and we do healing circles. We have art um we
addressed the harm, not the cases. We literally have people
kind of unfold the grief sitting in a safe space
with people who get it. Because unless you've traveled a
(58:30):
road like Ron and I have traveled, you can't understand it.
And so being in space with people who understand it,
you don't have to explain why you feel depression, why
you've had substance abuse issues, why you have family problems,
like we understand it. So it's it's really a way
of looking at the concentric circles of harm when the
(58:52):
system fails. So the other thing we do is training
for police and prosecutors about how do we address um
the aftermath of exenerations. You know, we're really We're not
an innocence project. We really work on the aftermath, bringing
folks together after the harm has been done. How do
we heal from that place? I'm using re storative justice principles,
(59:14):
using peer support. UM. It's very unique and it's kind
because everything we do is is driven by those who
have lived it. So all of our expertise is being
given to us by folks that have been impacted and harmed.
And how do people get involved? How do they support
www dot Healing Justice Project dot org. We really need
(59:38):
the financial support to continue kind of expanding our work
and bringing in more people. You know, we've got wrongful convictions,
so we have a lot of work ahead of us.
Were excited about it, all right, So I'm gonna give
and I'm gonna ask everybody else to do the same.
And then we have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction
(01:00:00):
to turn the mic over to you for any closing thoughts. Ron,
We're gonna save you for last, Jennifer, the mica is yours.
I really want people to understand that when a wrongful
conviction happens, at the center of all of it is
a perpetrator, and when we don't get it right, we've
left the perpetrator on the streets to commit further harm,
(01:00:22):
something that I refer to as wrongful liberty. And everybody
needs to care about that. Everybody needs to know that
when a wrongful conviction happens, the system has failed every
single person except the perpetrator, and he is the only
person who wins. Ron well when someone tell you that
(01:00:45):
they are innocent, having an open ear and open eye
to reach out and touch and very much because just
putting one food in frontday the you can't walk your
way out. You have to work your way out, as
easy said than done. But I've learned my lesson. I've
(01:01:10):
been there, I know how it is. I keep my
head to the sky every day because I'm not ashamed
from where I've been yet not knowing where I'm going.
I'm on a road that I'm leading in the hands
of the get Lord because he knows best, and I
will not following the rest. Thank you, don't forget to
(01:01:35):
give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts,
it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in
supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
wrong for convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to
learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to
thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin wardas the
(01:01:58):
music on the show is by three time screnomenic composer
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful
Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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