America has two point two million people in prison. If just one percent is wrong, that's twenty two thousand people. That's a lot of people's lives destroyed.
If the system want to take you out of society, they will do it no matter what laws they have to break, saying that they are enforcing the laws, 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 hear 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 see something happen 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 Jason Flamm. 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 nineteen eighty four, when Jennifer was a college student in North Carolina. A man broke into her apartment.
Even as she was being raped. 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 hundred percent sure about, was Ronald Cotton.
Ronald Cotton was twenty two years old and worked at a seafood restaurant near Jennifer's home.
Ronald went to trial Jennifer again I d'd him in court. It took a jury four hours to convict him, and a judge sentenced him till 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 confirmed what he had been saying all along. The DNA did not match. On June thirtieth, nineteen ninety five, Ronald Cotton walked out of the Alamance County Courthouse a freeman.
Without further ado. Ronald Cotton, Welcome to rafel conviction.
Thank you pleasure to be here today.
And with him is Jennifer Thompson. Welcome to raful conviction.
Thank you, Jason.
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, 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 seemed like an open and shutcase. And that's one of the things that makes this story so important. Again, Let's go back to that time. You were a twenty two year old girl becoming a woman. You sort of had the world at your feet, so to speak, right, and everything to look forward to until one horrible night. Yes, and can you tell us about that night and how this all started?
Sure? Sure, I had gone to bed on July twenty eighth, nineteen eighty four 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 didn't really hear anything that was going on in 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 twenty ninth, I heard a noise in the bedroom, like feet moving across the carpet. Of course, I lived alone, 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 asked, who was that? Who's there? And a man
jumped up on my bed. I screamed. He covered my mouth with a 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 literally a horror movie like this.
Oh yeah, it's a horror movie. There's several things going on, right, I mean, you're trying to figure out what's happening. It's that that place where you're 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 rate me. That was very clear. But what you don't know, no survivor ever knows, is was he going to kill me? And I honestly believe that I'd probably not live, that he would slip
my throat, that he would, you know, 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?
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 going to 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.
Be cliche about your whole life lashing before your eyes, It's really true, isn't it.
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 attacker, your your torturer, so that you could identify him. I mean that's some very 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
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 and I was able to talk him off of me after part of the assault had happened, because I knew that I needed to 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, 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 that he might you know, kind of drop, and I could remember in getting myself into different positions of light. It was all, 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 a horror movie scenario, your sailing had cut the phone line as well. Right, He had.
Cut the phone line. He had been in my apartment for hours, 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 actually asked permission. He said, I hope you don't mind, but I took 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. It
is a forever thing. And he changed me that night in ways that I that you know, the girl was just the girl died that night. She she was gone.
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 did come after me.
He chased me through the.
Dark, unreal. But you out ran him. Is that basically how to come down?
I outran. 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 carport that was on at a house that I didn't know who lived there. I just kind of prayed that people were there, but I knew he wouldn't come underneath that carport because if someone was home, they would see him. So that kept him away from me. As I banged on the door, and 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 take any of her classes, but she had seen me on campus and they let me in and basically saved my life.
Well, what a story I 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 prior to your arrest, 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 were standing on the Sweet corner and I let a newspaper, local newspaper down and in the rapper. I pulled it out the rapper on the front page and there was this SketchUp guy and it described him and showing a picture of him and instruction 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 is. 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 mother and boyfriend told me as I approached the door that the police had been looking for me, and I went down to 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 about the same age. Well, I had been working at local restaurants and 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 I building that application here and there, you know, trying to become employed.
Uh.
But that particular time, I had been in the fast lane running the bars. And you know, I had quit school and and I was working. I was just enjoying life in general. Once my mother boyfriend instructed me that the cops were looking for me, I had walked inside the apartment. I know. It was a paper there on a television. It had named on it. So I took the paper. I read it, and instruction on it was how this individual had entered the Stompson apartment and committed
to scrime upon her. And I said, no, they got the wrong guy. And some of my mother boyfriend said, well, you all gonna get it straightened out. 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 I walked over and asked her to bought her car to drive down the police apartment and see what's
going on in this matter. I said, well, I take my sister Tuoty with me just in case they locked me up, and that way she can bring your car back. So on our way there, we buried off and went by my girlfriend Teresa's place, and she come running to the car and crying, holling Ryan and Ron the police been over here looking for you, saying that you rate this woman. And she said, I know you didn't. I said, no,
I did not. I said, baby, we're all getting ready to go to the police department right now and trying to get this minter taken care of. So I want to ride. So we all hopped in the car and went down and pulled in the parking lot. I exited the car. I was approaching the police apartment and I looked up. You know, it was about two three stories high, and the older cops that was I saw him looking at the window. Rush away from the wonder and run
downstairs and met me at the door. And out the door pops Mike Golden, and uh, he saidthing detected, Mike Goldan. I said, yes, I heard you. I've been looking for me for a crime in the community that I need committed.
Uh.
He said, well, come on inside and let's talk. About it, and uh, you know, trying to get this thing worked out. So I went inside and the alibi that I gave them was totally different, because you know, I parted a lot and I wasn't keeping up with everything.
So how long after the actual crime was this taking place?
Augustry? First?
Three days?
Yeah?
Oh, sub short time.
Augustr first around about twelve thirty, and we went upstairs and they began to ask me a question about Jennifer. You want They ended, I want in this woman apartment, committed all the acts un her, and I said, I kept telling him, no, I did not. I said, my reason for coming down here, for trying to get this matter taken care of. And then the police chief he told me that, yeah, I took a flashlight and held it in a woman's facing rape, which I was I said,
I convict him. Happened that night as well. I told him, Noah, 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 swim white women. I said, sir, you're totally wrong. I did not commit these crimes. Then they was instructed to take me in a room and lock me up, you know, photograph me, fangle print me, and they took me down to that Damans County jail, put mine one hundred and fifty thousand dollars bail.
And there was no way you could post that.
No, I was there ontil due date.
A trial actually didn't walk out for eleven years. Yes, I mean that night you spent in the motel was the last night you spent as a free man. Yes, until this whole thing was finally resolved all those years later. So, Jennifer, you had now seen his picture see Royn'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, a mile down 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 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 tight 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, police were being called, and he actually passed the police, so there was a police that actually got a short glimpse of the assailants,
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 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 and bitter and 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, 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.
Yeah, 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.
I was staying about three miles off campus in 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, you can't ever return to that place that you were before. And I talk to people, 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?
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 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. I mean, literally everything in my world was gone, and your task now with trying to somehow recover. And I use that like with 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 adam 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 crazyland now, right because you can't possibly understand 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 well of this guy's going down whatever, right, that's right, and now it's you. The day of the trial comes. How long had you been held by then?
About four months?
Four months, 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 those. Just a lot of guys talking jump and you know, if you wanted to make a stand, you know, you took a chance, you know.
So, Jennifer back to you. So the day of the trial comes, you're there hoping to get some closure, right.
Well yeah, closure is such an interesting part. Well yeah, I mean you're looking for justice, is what you're looking for. And that's what I was looking for. I was looking for him to be held responsible for what he had done to not just me, but the other woman who wasn't going to be able to tell her story and other women who could never find justice. So it was like kind of this thing I needed, I really needed it to move to the next place of my life. And the trial was over, two weeks long.
Wow, Yeah, that's a long trial. I'm actually surprised it was that long. But by now you had identified ron in a photo array and in a lineup, and it's important to highlight the fact that he was the only person that was featured in both the photo array 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 did what they could in a very imperfect system to try to be in harshall. Was 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 lineup, which was the photographic lineup and what they call six pack, and I had been given some instructions to take my time, not feel compelled to choose anyone, which was pretty modern thinking in nineteen.
Eighty four, right, that's what I was referraing.
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 certainty that confirmation I needed, and boy, my certainty went out the roof once they said that to me, Ronald Cotton, that photo became the rapist.
And 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 identification. It's been proven in every study that's ever been done just how unreliable I woulds 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 caused your memory 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 better the weapon focus, right, that's the best term for it. And so what should have been really an open and shut case was anything but. But we didn't know that at the time.
Now, we thought we were doing things best practices at that time in nineteen eighty four.
We know now that it all went horribly wrong, and so you now had identified him in the photo array and in the lineup. You were given a positive reinforcement in both of those cases. Now the day 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 Jesus having to just over and over and over again talk about what had been done to me, well literally over and over again, in front of my family, in front of strangers. I mean, it was really awful. And then 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 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 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 said at I don't think, so it's just too much trouble, is that what you're saying to me? And of course it 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 been the cost of my own sexual assault. Yeah, that's not And of course it didn't help ron honestly
with a jury. 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. You're four months and five months in jail, whatever it was, So your head's fitting around in all different directions, right, and now you know your own team is acting in a way that I can't imagine you would ever act.
The whole situation is just wrong, 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 as the man who raped me, and 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 atturneys and I looked I recollect the judge and the foreman and the jewels and Kurt reporter, and once a verdict was read from the jeurid 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 said, if I had anything to say to the court, and I said yes. I told him that I would like to have this permission to sing a song that I have written in jail.
And so I stood up and I sang the song. And as I was singing that song, you know my turn is, you know, they saying with the head dropped, you know, as if though I put him the shame. But I didn't care anything at that particular time because I had just been found guilty for crime or did not commit and.
You sang a song. Can you sing it now.
Yeah, if I can remember word for word, I'll try to anyway. It was a boem written to my girlfriend, but I changed the words and wrote a gospel song. Whatever, and they want something like this. The sit insa I can know no longer me because my future so one down to me.
And then.
I could no longer say he.
Because during that day I wonder at not a heard with fear call his name, suddenly tears appear.
Until God came in my life. Until God came in my life, I was often alone and people I really conface. I just didn't know what to do before I feel so wild a place. How many time as I say this before you agree, there's no other God whoever loved of you, not quite as much as Lord God. Believe me, everyone, because God will change your life. And that is a fire, because I will pave of night and day until you.
God, oh bye.
To me.
Yeah yeah, hey, all those words too. I just don't sound like that.
Oh God, 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. What steps did you take and what hope did you have?
Well, I had uh entered the prison system with life
in fifty four year prison term. Immediately they pointed me a guidance counselor in the prison and I went in and met him, took tests, talked with him about my being in prison, 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 a lost couse 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, which still continued
to fight my case on a pill.
So you actually had a competent attorney in this case. Yes, it would have needed OJ'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.
Now, I was fighting a lost court, 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 in the school, I buried the central prison and start filing motions from inside the prison and which didn't do any good at all. And so one day I was on my way to the gym to work out, and I recognized this inmate being escorted inside the prison, and he looked very familiar to me, So
I started thinking. I said, I saw this guy before, you know, as I'm walking, and I went on continued that process of working out, and I went back to my dorm that night. You know, they had him finished processing him inside the prison, and I went to him the next day as 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 I made an approach on him and I asked him where was he from, and he told me he was from Burleton of Cardine also, and I said, well, you look like they're drawing up from part of the schedule rap that was committed in Burlton 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. Yes, I had to feel, because he resembled to drawing. You know, I had to cut it out the local newspaper because I 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 hadn't come to your prison, you wouldn't have had any idea if you had to cross paths with him at that particular time, you might not have had that same feeling, that instinct that you had.
Right, that is correct.
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. Accept it. 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 that all changed one day as a result of a conversation that you had with another inmate, right, And 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 a shower, you know, I was washing my hair and shallow curtain I heard slide, So I lifted up my hair because I had an e f ro at the time, and he was standing out 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, and he kept on. I said, well, I'm not gonna want to try to fight a guy, you know,
in the nude. You know, I might slip and fallow my head, you know, bump on the floor or something, getting knocked out unconscious, and you know, got do me in. So I just chilled. And the next day I was in the gym shooting pool a guy from Greensboro named Roger. He told me to cott now Kenny 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 straightened out right now. So I'm hand in my pool stick and I chug a log up to the kitchen.
He was in the parking paying the area with his back turn. When I approached. I stopped so many feet from him and I called his name out and he turned around he said yeah. I said, look, man, you've been talking junk about me for so many months. I'm tired of it. You let my name taste like crap in your mouth. And he proached me and said you better get up my face for I kill you. He put his hand on me and I said, oh, you
want to fight, right, I said, okay, let's go. So he walked around in the corner and get off a camera, you know, and we falled and I ended up breaking his jaw and put them down, and you know, and they got bou off of him, and he goes to surrogation and I do not because you know, they prism stewards in the kitchen had heard me telling this guy to leave me alone. So you know, they they got on my side. And so he went the hole for thirty days. And after thirty days he come out. I
was sating in my dorm. I was sitting in the corner. Come my bump was in a corner wall. I kept three chairs lining up along the wall. And he walked up to the window and he said cott and I said yeah. He said, let me holler at you man. I told him come on. Then you know, he comes in my dorm and I told him to have a seat. He sit down and he span he said, 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 he said, I apologize. I just wanted to become your friend. I said, well, becoming a friend and don't approach me in that way. And he said, well, I just want to tell you that mister Poole told me that he committed the crime you in prison for. And I said, well, thank you. And so he gets up
and he walks off. And so later that night, I go to my locker and I put out my legal pad and a pen, and I set up about two o'clock in the morning, and I wrote my lawd your feel most and I told him what had been told to me. And so a week or two went by, he wrote me back and instructed me, well, then we're gonna look into it, you know, but right now we got to go through the process of the pills. And so, uh, I just went head on. And about the next week
mister Poole approached me. He said, cause he worked, he got a job in the kitchen as well. He said that. Uh, he said, I know you 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 normally let guys in prison write my sisters. And uh, I said, but with view two with exception I consider. I said, but first of all we have to do I said, we have to take a photograph together. And uh, I a letter and I sent it to my sister. I said,
she see what you look like. She'll 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. He liked what he saw, Yeah, that it really got
the ball kind of rolling. Well. I was transferred on through the prison and I ended up in Mason, Tennessee, and I wrote the quartover ap pills from there, you know, by listening to the OJ trial, you know, I took my legal paths shot taking notes on the DNA and when I felt I had enough evident and information written down on my legal paths, I said, well, it's time for me to write to the Court of Appills and Requests for this DNA test. So once I wrote the
letter and send it out, Tiger Harner from Raleigh. He wrote me a letter and told me that. He said, you got a good case. The pills caught we Uh, he said, they turn it down, but we're gonna continue looking at it. So he forwarded my letter to law school at UNC, and wasn't long after that they wrote me a letter from the legislator, I mean the lawyer, and he told me, I said that Cotton. Uh, 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'll do your DNA testing, but if the tests come back stating that you committed to scribe, 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. I immediately I sent a letter back out do the test, because come back stating anything other than innocent, guilty, realant, I said, because I'm an innocent man, I said, the Good Lord knows them. I know in my heart that I did not commit the scribe.
Jennifer, were you 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 nineteen eighty seven.
Did Bobbypool to fight that trial.
Well, in nineteen eighty 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 confessed to it. But 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 wardeer. They had removed the jury, so the jury never knew about Bobby Pool. And of course in the court Bobby Pool denied it, said he had never said anything, he didn't
commit the crime. And by that 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 in the courtroom who had raped us? And we both pointed out Ronald Cotton. So you go to put your life back together again as
best as you can. You know, life moves on. I had gotten married, I had gotten pregnant, I gave birth to triplets the spring of nineteen ninety I had two little girls and a baby boy. And by you know, nineteen ninety five, my babies. I have three five year olds, and I'm busy. You know, I'm a busy mama.
I'm halfway surprised you even showed up with a child, because, I mean, you said you were busy, and you were absolutely certain that the justice had already been done. Why would you even want to go back that you weren't forced to come back, were you? No?
But you want to make sure that the person that you think tried to kill you stays in prison, all right, So you have a vested interest in this.
So you were there not to learn 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 else.
Absolutely absolutely, And you know, by ninety five, when they came to me and said that there was this thing called post conviction DNA testing, something I had never heard of. I knew what DNA was, but I had never heard the word exoneration or wrongful convictions. It wasn't part of my life. It wasn't part of my story.
It 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 nineteen eighty five. But my blood from the rape kit had dissolved and sintegrated after those eleven years, and at some point the courts would probably require me to give a new blood sample. And I said to them, I said, you know, I've got five year old triplets, and I'm busy, and I'm a mama 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 ADA and Mike Golden, who now was captain of the Burlington Police Department, and I said, run the test because I can't do this anymore.
And then and then we had hit the.
Fan pretty yeah much. I mean it was three months later, which in legal time, three months is like two seconds lightning.
Yeah 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, 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 florid.
It was one of the worst days of my life.
I'm getting 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 had been science. So I understood DNA like I understood DYNA in relation to human memory. I got that that 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 Bobbypool had committed all these crimes, that a mistake had been made. The best I can say is it's like the earth opened 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, I try to talk about this in terms of I could do my day to day things like I could make a peanut butter sandwich, and I could put the clothes from the washer into the dryer. But I couldn't function. And when it 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 years,
two years. I just couldn't got in, you know, what to do.
Right.
There's nobody was talking about these issues. Nobody was even talking to me about rape and what 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 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 crazy phenomenon too.
It happens to.
All of our crime survivors. We get blamed for something that should never 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 Poole 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 of nineteen eighty four, in the spring of nineteen eighty five, before he was ever apprehended.
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 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, 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 lock.
Is that all about, I mean, blaming me.
For something that was never my fault, something that Ron didn't even blame me for.
Well, then that's a 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 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, which was to correctly identify your assailant, which led to these terrible outcomes for all these other women. It seems like to me, like every where you look, it's just bad.
Well, first of all, I want to make sure everybody understands that I did not.
Convict Ronald count Well, you can't convict anybody.
Exactly, I mean, but that's something 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 kind of things happen, how memory kind of contaminates itself over time. But there was no way for me to adequately explain what was happening to me. For the exonery and their families, an overturning of a conviction is the day they've been praying for. Is that they're happy ending for a crime survivor, for murder victim, family member who thought that the system had given them justice, which is what they promised to do for a victim, and find out that the system
had failed to give me justice. It had failed my family, it had failed Ronald, it had failed Ronald's family, it had failed the other women in the community. 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 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 in training and talking about these things, and they'll come up to me at the end, and they say, you know, oh my god, I totally
forgot about the victim in these cases. And it shocked me because for every wrongful conviction.
There's a victim, right, 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 places to blame and says things such as rape survivor falsely accuses innocent man and sends him to prison not once, but twice. And there's everything wrong with that sentence.
Right, as if you were doing it deliberately, that this was.
To kill a mockingbird, and I was just making.
Up a story, right, And so then the most amazing 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 the first dnags honery in North Carolina. I mean he was about twenty third 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 from where I had been raped thirteen years before that. And he didn't 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 pastor study and looking out the window, I see this humongous six foot 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 is
my height? And the first thing I thought of was, my god, he's too tall. That 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 he was five inches taller.
What'd you say? What did you say? How did what happened?
Well, my wife she didn't want me to go in the beginning, but I had to determine that I was going anyway. She said, no, you're not going. I said, yes, I am, I said, because there would be a book closed brain closure. So, you know, after I got dressed and I looked at my wife, she was there, and she said, well, I'm going too. So we jumped in my truck and we pull up and I'll get out and she gets out, and we met to take the goll and my lawyaf Tom Blambert, and Jennifer's husband was there.
And so as we were getting ready to enter the room to go in to talk, Jennifer instructed that her husband stayed back and wasn't nobody but me, my wife, and Jennifer in the room. So when I walked in the room, Jennifer sitting just like she's sitting down with a Jane outfit on, and she had a nervous expression on her face. And I walked up and 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, mister Cotton, Ronald Cotton, and she said I'm sorry, you know, and I said, I forgive you, and I hugged her, and you know, I she stood up. I hugged her. She cried, I cried, I said, grown me and nothing cried. But that's a lie. You know, you got it hard to have sympathy for people. You know you're gonna cry. You know, I don't care who you are. You know, you try to be hard all you want to. You know, people walk 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, to encourage each other to be strong and carry on. So then me and Jennifer, you know, after we went outside to leave the premises, but before that we exchanged phone numbers and you know, that way we can stay in contact with one another as 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. And this book that he'll come about it. You know. I went on to be on Larry King Live and all those shows, you know, and people back and saying, but I didn't let it blow my head up become My head is already big enough, you see, 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, 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 blossoming year after year. You know, it's been over thirty years now and they still talking about Peking Cotton and I believe my picking every day.
You know, I'm a close I do want to get your perspective and your memories of that 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, thanks for saying that. You know, I don't want you any harm, but just go away, Like that was going to 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, 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 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 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, then if that if you weren't there, then where 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 and thirteen years, there were parts of my spirit and my soul, my 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 pack power back. Where do I want to give my power, and it sure as heck wasn't gonna be the Bobby Pool.
So Bobby died in prison three years later after.
He was exonerated.
Yeah was he was he killed or he 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 payment visit, and uh, I told him what my intention were. And my father said, son, he said, don't do that. He said, you tell me you're a innocent man. I believe you're in it, 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 that I slept in, maybe from here to over there, you know, the 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. But I said a prayer to the Good Lord for me to forgive Jennifer making a costly mistake on my life. That's how I was able to face her without saying any
bad things toward her. You know, I wanted to give her love Strent and lift her up in the world, you know, because you know, she had been down just like myself. So y'all were down during time. She was down in heart and in pain. 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 life as I am today. But my life today is more in freedom and crime free.
Yeah, 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 in America because it varies wildly from state to state. And in your case, you were given ten thousand dollars a year, which is the North Carolina statute for or eleven years in present, one hundred and ten thousand dollars. How do you feel about that?
Well, I felt bad about it at the beginning, but I had to accept it. You know, I would have fought for it, but it wouldn't have done any good you know, they already had their mind made up. I accepted and I walked away. You know, it's like they give me a little bit and packed on the shoulder, say, you know, enjoy life, Jason.
It's important to note, though, that when he got compensated, the laws hadn't been changed for fifty years, so he was actually eligible for five hundred dollars a year with a cap of five thousand.
Ye.
So Mike Goalden and I lobbied the legislature has 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 thousands, two thousands to fifty thousand dollars a year with a cap of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But they and 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 why we weren't addressing this long term damage done to everybody that gets harmed by a wrongful conviction. I would listen to crime survivors. I'd listen to family members of Exoneries and the ex Hooneries, 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 ex houneries in Pennsylvania, and
they weren't doing it. So I launched Healing Justice in twenty fifteen. And what we do is really look at the total harm done in our 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 twenty five exgneries 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, we address 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 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 really a way of looking at the concentric circles of harm when the system fails. So the other thing we do is training for police and prosecutors about how do we address the aftermath of exonerations. You know, we're really we're not an innocence project. We really work on the aftermath, bringing folks together after the harm's been done. How do we heal from that place?
I'm using restorative justice principles, using peer support. It's very unique and its kind because everything we do 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. Do we really need the financial support to continue kind of expanding our work and bringing in more people. You know, we've got twenty two hundred wrongful convictions, so we have a lot of work ahead of us. We're excited about.
It all right, So I'm going to give and I'm going to ask everybody else to do the same. And then we have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction to turn the mic over to you for any closing thoughts. Ron, We're going to save you for last, Jennifer, the mic 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, 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.
Rod Well, when someone tells you that they are innocent, having an open ear and open eye to reach out and touch and love very much, because just putting on foot in front of it, you can't walk your way out. You have to work your way out. It's easy to say it than done. But I've learned my lesson. God, I've 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 the road that I'm leading in the hands of the Good Lord because he knows best, and I will not follow the rest.
Thank you, don't forget to 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 wrongful convictions.
Go to Innocence Project dot or org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three times pronominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of
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