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The Wrongful Conviction · The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

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Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
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Speaker 2: I remember thinking about what it would feel like to die,
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Speaker 2: and I remember wondering how much it will hurt.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Knife. I'm Hannah Smith. I'm patia Eton.
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Speaker 1: This week we speak with Jennifer Thompson. Jennifer is the
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Speaker 1: founder of Healing Justice Project, an organization that addresses the
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Speaker 1: harm caused by wrongful convictions.
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Speaker 3: Jennifer's life changed forever when, at twenty two years old,
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Speaker 3: she became the victim of a violent crime. But a
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Speaker 3: decade later, what happened to Jennifer would make headlines for
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Speaker 3: a reason so unexpected. It changed the course of her
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Speaker 3: life forever. Now, over thirty years later, she joins us
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Speaker 3: to reflect on what happened and how everything went so wrong.
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Speaker 3: Our conversation with Jennifer took place on February twenty first,
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Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. Let's get into the interview. Hi, Jennifer,
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Speaker 3: thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.
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Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
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Speaker 3: We've been really excited about this interview, so let's just
1:22
Speaker 3: jump right into it. Why don't you give the audience
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Speaker 3: a short intro into who you are?
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Speaker 2: Well, I am a wife, I am a mother of triplets.
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Speaker 2: I'm the grandmother to five amazing grandchildren. I'm the co
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Speaker 2: author to the book Picking Cotton, our memoir of injustice
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Speaker 2: and Redemption. The founder of Healing Justice Project, which is
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Speaker 2: a national organization dedicated to helping all of those who
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Speaker 2: have been impacted by wrongful convictions kind of navigate the
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Speaker 2: healing space. Born and raised in North Carolina, and I
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Speaker 2: was born in nineteen sixty two, So I grew up
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Speaker 2: in really the segregated south half of our town was
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Speaker 2: you know, wealthy and white, and the other half the town,
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Speaker 2: literally across the train tracks were poor and black. Winston
2:11
Speaker 2: Salem is a town where RG Rental Tobacco Company was founded,
2:15
Speaker 2: Haines's Hosiery was founded. So it's like enormous wealth but
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Speaker 2: also enormous poverty. And that was where I was raised,
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Speaker 2: is where I was born, It's how I grew up.
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Speaker 2: I often tell people that you don't really notice things
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Speaker 2: that are wrong until you're removed from it. So the
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Speaker 2: waters that I was swimming in as a child were segregation.
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Speaker 2: I grew up in a white, relatively privileged home. So
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Speaker 2: many of us, particularly people that are white we grow
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Speaker 2: up and were given certain things, almost as a birthright.
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Speaker 2: You know that the criminal justice system works, and it's effective.
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Speaker 2: It's fair, and it's equal, and it's impartial, and it's balanced.
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Speaker 2: And that was certainly the way I was brought up.
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Speaker 2: I was brought up to believe that we had the
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Speaker 2: greatest criminal justice system in the world, that if you
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Speaker 2: ended up in an orange jumpsuit behind a defense table,
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Speaker 2: you were absolutely guilty of a crime. You're a criminal.
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Speaker 2: You deserve whatever punishment the system met it out to you.
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Speaker 2: And if you sat at the prosecutor's side of the table,
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Speaker 2: you were a victim. And it was clear and it
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Speaker 2: was clean. Within my family structure, I knew from a
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Speaker 2: very young age that I didn't belong. I ended up
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Speaker 2: at Elon College in nineteen eighty three. I felt like
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Speaker 2: I had found my footing, maybe for the first time
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Speaker 2: really ever. And I was also dating what would have
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Speaker 2: been a very respectable young man. In my family's eyes.
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Speaker 2: That was important, right, women were to marry a respectable man,
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Speaker 2: and he checked all the boxes. And so in nineteen
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Speaker 2: eighty three, I was in a really great place in
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Speaker 2: my life. I had everything that I had hoped I
4:04
Speaker 2: would have. My goals were to finish college and then
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Speaker 2: to go on and get a master's and become a
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Speaker 2: physical therapist. July of nineteen eighty four, July twenty eighth
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Speaker 2: was a very hot day. I mean July in the South,
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Speaker 2: the humidity is unfathomable. So my boyfriend and I our
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Speaker 2: plan was to go play tennis. And I was a
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Speaker 2: tennis player. I played on the tennis team in high school.
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Speaker 2: I played a year at Elon College on tennis at
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Speaker 2: the tennis team. And his family was a member of
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Speaker 2: the Burlington Country Club. So we were to go play tennis,
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Speaker 2: and we did, and the rest of the day was
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Speaker 2: kind of, you know, a typical twenty two year old
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Speaker 2: college student day. He took me back home later that
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Speaker 2: afternoon to my apartment, and he was going to go
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Speaker 2: home and take a shower, and then we were going
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Speaker 2: to meet up for dinner and then go to a
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Speaker 2: summer party at one of his friend's houses. So he
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Speaker 2: picked me up probably around six o'clock and took me to.
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Speaker 4: A Chinese food buffet because I had a very hot
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Speaker 4: metabolism in those days, and I ate just really unbelievable
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Speaker 4: amounts of food at any given sitting and so nobody
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Speaker 4: in the right mind would have ever taken me to
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Speaker 4: an a la carte restaurant.
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Speaker 2: He always took me to a buffet because it was,
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Speaker 2: you know, for two ninety nine or three ninety nine,
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Speaker 2: I could eat as much as I wanted to eat,
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Speaker 2: which I did. I sat down and began to consume
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Speaker 2: just vast amounts of sodium laced products. But because I've
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Speaker 2: been dehydrated earlier in the day, it hit really hard
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Speaker 2: and I came down with a massive headache, just massive,
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Speaker 2: and I told him that there was just no way
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Speaker 2: I could go to this party, that I was sick
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Speaker 2: and I needed to go home. He took me back
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Speaker 2: to my apartment, probably around eight o'clock, give me some water,
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Speaker 2: brought me some aspirin, and my last memories that night
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Speaker 2: were him standing near me kind of rubbing my back,
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Speaker 2: just to make sure that I wasn't going to be
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Speaker 2: violently sick, and that was my last memory of him
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Speaker 2: that night. The police reports the following day would show
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Speaker 2: that he left some time between nine and nine thirty pm,
6:17
Speaker 2: but I had gone to sleep, and so I did
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Speaker 2: not hear him leave, didn't hear anything at all. I
6:22
Speaker 2: lived in an old complex, and none of these apartments
6:28
Speaker 2: had central air. They all had those window boxes for
6:31
Speaker 2: air conditioning. The window unit in my bedroom was at
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Speaker 2: my headboard, so when it would come on at night
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Speaker 2: like you could not hear anything. Therefore, I did not
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Speaker 2: hear him leave. But I also didn't hear leice sirens
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Speaker 2: that were all throughout my apartment complex at midnight. They
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Speaker 2: were searching for a man who had attempted to break
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Speaker 2: into my neighbor's apartment across the parking lot. He had
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Speaker 2: broken the kitchen door window. She fortunately happened to be
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Speaker 2: awake at the time watching television, and when she heard
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Speaker 2: the glass break, she looked into the kitchen and saw
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Speaker 2: a hand reaching trying to unlock her door, and she
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Speaker 2: called the police. He heard her call the police, and
7:15
Speaker 2: she told the police officers that he had on a
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Speaker 2: white knit glove and a dark blue shirt with three
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Speaker 2: white stripes on his biceps. But he took off running
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Speaker 2: before they could get him. And so I didn't hear
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Speaker 2: anything at all until around three o'clock in the morning,
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Speaker 2: when I heard something like feet shuffling on my carpet
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Speaker 2: in my bedroom. Now I lived alone, so hearing movement
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Speaker 2: in your bedroom is alarming. But you know, when you're
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Speaker 2: in that space of awake but not really awake, you
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Speaker 2: think you might have heard something, but you're not positive
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Speaker 2: you heard it. Do you go back to sleep or
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Speaker 2: do you wake up and try to identify a noise
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Speaker 2: right which is really frightening, particular for women that are
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Speaker 2: living alone. And so when I opened my eyes, I
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Speaker 2: looked to the left side of my mattress and saw
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Speaker 2: the top of someone's head and I could see him moving.
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Speaker 2: And my first thought and my first impulse, was to
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Speaker 2: believe that this was probably my boyfriend, that he had
8:19
Speaker 2: fallen asleep on my floor. He was trying not to
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Speaker 2: wake me as he was leaving to go home. I
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Speaker 2: didn't know what time it was at that point, but
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Speaker 2: when I thought about it, I realized that it could
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Speaker 2: not be my boyfriend. He didn't stay the night with me.
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Speaker 2: He never did because his mother lived about a mile
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Speaker 2: and a half two miles from where my apartment was,
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Speaker 2: and she was very, very intentional about where he was
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Speaker 2: at all times. So I knew that it wasn't my boyfriend.
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Speaker 2: And that's when I said, who is that? Who's there?
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Speaker 3: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2: Very quickly. A man jumped up up on my bed.
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Speaker 2: I screamed, and he straddled my body with his legs
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Speaker 2: and put a knife to my left side of my
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Speaker 2: throat and covered my mouth with a glove and told
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Speaker 2: me to shut up or he would kill me.
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Speaker 3: So terrifying.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it is terrifying. And I think it's important for
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Speaker 2: people to understand what happens with trauma and memory, because
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Speaker 2: I think human beings just instinctively think that they would
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Speaker 2: never make certain mistakes right. Human beings instinctively will say
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Speaker 2: I would never falsely confess. But if you've never been
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Speaker 2: in a position of being threatened and coerced and tortured,
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Speaker 2: you actually don't know what you would do. The same
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Speaker 2: applies for the ability to kind of make an eyewitness identification.
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Speaker 2: Everybody thinks that you know, well, I know what I saw,
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Speaker 2: but you don't know what you would do if you're
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Speaker 2: wondering if you're going to be murdered. It's about twenty
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Speaker 2: minutes total throughout the whole entire event.
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Speaker 3: What was going through your mind? Was it just I
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Speaker 3: got to survive this?
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Speaker 2: You know? There's a couple of things that went in
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Speaker 2: my mind. I mean, the initial thing obviously that was
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Speaker 2: in my mind was I'm in a lot of danger.
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Speaker 2: He's nineteen eighty four. There's no cell phones, there was
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Speaker 2: no house alarms. I didn't own a gun. He's on
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Speaker 2: top of me. I can smell alcohol. I knew he'd
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Speaker 2: probably been using drugs. There's a knife. I'm small, He's
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Speaker 2: probably done this before. So for me, the first thing
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Speaker 2: that went through my mind was do not physically fight,
10:27
Speaker 2: because You're going to die. And I remember thinking about
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Speaker 2: what it would feel like to die, and I remember
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Speaker 2: wondering how much it will hurt, and is it going
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Speaker 2: to be a quick death or will it be a
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Speaker 2: slow death? And will it take a long time before
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Speaker 2: I die? And then you think about the people that
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Speaker 2: you love and what their experience is going to be
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Speaker 2: like to have to come and look at your body
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Speaker 2: and identify it. Those are the things initially that went
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Speaker 2: through my body. But then I hate bullies, and I've
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Speaker 2: never backed down from a bully, and I remember kind
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Speaker 2: of like pivoting and thinking, there's a chance I'm going
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Speaker 2: to die, but it won't be on my back. If
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Speaker 2: there is a way to survive it I'm going to
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Speaker 2: figure it out. And so that's when I began to
11:21
Speaker 2: like really calculate and think. And so I remember thinking
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Speaker 2: to myself, like, Jennifer, you're smart. You've not been drinking,
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Speaker 2: You've you've not been using drugs. You know, you're a
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Speaker 2: straight A student. You've got a good memory. So for me,
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Speaker 2: staying alive was equated to pay attention to this person.
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Speaker 2: Figure out what he looks like, Listen to everything he says.
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Speaker 2: Try to pick up on a lisp or some type
11:51
Speaker 2: of a speech that you know is just different. I
11:54
Speaker 2: remember thinking, look for things he can't change later. Look
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Speaker 2: for scars to have twos or you know, missing teeth.
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Speaker 2: There's something that he couldn't change later on. And those
12:05
Speaker 2: were the things that initially I started paying attention to.
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Speaker 2: It was at the point when he tried to kiss
12:11
Speaker 2: me that I was gonna vomit and I didn't want
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Speaker 2: to throw up and choke on it because I was
12:17
Speaker 2: on my back, so I turned my head and that
12:23
Speaker 2: would actually end up saving my life that night when
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Speaker 2: he said, relax, I'm not gonna hurt you. And I
12:29
Speaker 2: don't know why I said it, but I said, I can't.
12:32
Speaker 2: I'm afraid of knives. I have a phobia, an actual
12:35
Speaker 2: phobia of knives. And if you'll just get off of
12:38
Speaker 2: me and take the knife to the front door and
12:39
Speaker 2: walk down the steps and drop it on my car,
12:42
Speaker 2: I'll let you come back in. And for whatever reason,
12:46
Speaker 2: the power dynamics just shifted right there, so I was
12:51
Speaker 2: able to get him off of me. I was able
12:52
Speaker 2: to grab a blanket off the edge of my bed
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Speaker 2: wrap it around myself because I knew that the police
12:57
Speaker 2: were going to ask me certain questions. They were going
12:59
Speaker 2: to me how tall he was and how much did
13:01
Speaker 2: he weigh, And so I had to figure out how
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Speaker 2: tall he was by me being close enough to him
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Speaker 2: to figure out the difference between a five foot one
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Speaker 2: person and him, And so I was able to kind
13:11
Speaker 2: of figure that out. And I was able to look
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Speaker 2: at his clothing because I knew that, again, the police
13:16
Speaker 2: were going to ask me those questions. He had on
13:19
Speaker 2: dark blue canvas shoes that slipped on your feet. There
13:23
Speaker 2: were no shoelaces. He had on khaki colored army fatigue pants.
13:27
Speaker 2: He had on a dark blue shirt with three white
13:29
Speaker 2: stripes on the biceps, and he had white gloves on
13:32
Speaker 2: his hands. He was African American. He was in his
13:35
Speaker 2: early twenties. He had short clothes, cropped hair, he had
13:38
Speaker 2: a pencil thin mustache. Like every single thing that I
13:41
Speaker 2: could remember that night meant I was going to live.
13:45
Speaker 2: And over the next few minutes, he pretended to drop
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Speaker 2: the knife out of the front door. He came back
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Speaker 2: in and grabbed me and tried to pull me back
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Speaker 2: into the bedroom, and I told him I had to
13:55
Speaker 2: go to the bathroom first, because my plan was for
13:58
Speaker 2: him to go to the car and I was going
13:59
Speaker 2: to lock the door and then call the police. But
14:02
Speaker 2: he had already cut my phone lines earlier, and so
14:06
Speaker 2: when that planned didn't work, I said, I have to
14:08
Speaker 2: go to the bathroom. And I had to rethink, like
14:10
Speaker 2: what's my next plan. I thought maybe I could crawl
14:14
Speaker 2: out of the bathroom window, but it was small, and
14:17
Speaker 2: it was a drop all the way down to the basement,
14:19
Speaker 2: which is where the laundry room was. If I dropped,
14:22
Speaker 2: i'd probably break my legs. And then I remembered him
14:25
Speaker 2: saying he had come through the back door where the
14:28
Speaker 2: kitchen was, and I needed to get to that back
14:31
Speaker 2: door because his way in was going to be my
14:35
Speaker 2: way out, and I told him I needed a drink
14:37
Speaker 2: of water, and he told me to make him a drink,
14:40
Speaker 2: and we were going to have a party. So I
14:43
Speaker 2: told him I'd make him a drink. And as I
14:45
Speaker 2: walked past him, he was bending down to my stereo,
14:48
Speaker 2: turning it on, trying to find ninety eight points seven
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Speaker 2: Kiss FM because he thought we were going to have
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Speaker 2: a party. But again, as I walked by him, the
14:57
Speaker 2: light coming off of the stereo illuminated his profile. While
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Speaker 2: and again it was just another image that I could
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Speaker 2: kind of glean as I went into the kitchen, and
15:07
Speaker 2: so I started making noise with water running and ice
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Speaker 2: cubes hitting the sink and cabinet door shutting as I
15:15
Speaker 2: started opening up the back door, and I just pulled
15:18
Speaker 2: my blanket tight and I ran.
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Speaker 3: On July twenty eighth, nineteen eighty four, a strange man
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Speaker 3: broke into Jennifer's home while she was asleep. He attacked
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Speaker 3: and raped her. Jennifer managed to escape, running out of
15:34
Speaker 3: the back door of her home with a blanket wrapped
15:36
Speaker 3: around her.
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Speaker 2: It's about three point thirty in the morning, and it's
15:40
Speaker 2: pitch black, but it's also raining now, and so it
15:44
Speaker 2: was slippery. I thought I could go next door to
15:46
Speaker 2: my neighbor and he would save me. As I was
15:49
Speaker 2: banging on the door, not realizing he was gone, the
15:53
Speaker 2: attacker came through my back door, coming after me, and
15:57
Speaker 2: I knew I'd made him angry. So I did the
16:00
Speaker 2: only thing that to me that made any sense, which
16:03
Speaker 2: was to run towards light. And I found a carport
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Speaker 2: light on in someone's house that I just ran towards.
16:08
Speaker 2: I didn't know who lived there, but as I was
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Speaker 2: banging on the back door screaming that I've been raped into,
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Speaker 2: please please let me in, the neighbors were home. It
16:18
Speaker 2: happened to be a professor on campus who recognized me,
16:22
Speaker 2: and she told her husband to let me in, and
16:24
Speaker 2: they did, and I fainted and they called the police,
16:27
Speaker 2: and the next thing I knew, you know, I was
16:30
Speaker 2: being taken to the hospital for a rape kit.
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Speaker 3: Wow, thank you for walking us through that. It's such
16:36
Speaker 3: a harrowing story that you lived through, and it strikes
16:40
Speaker 3: me just how you were taking meticulous mental notes about everything,
16:45
Speaker 3: fearing for your life and also at the same time
16:47
Speaker 3: having a plan what am I going to do once
16:50
Speaker 3: I get away? It's not like, Okay, the story's over,
16:53
Speaker 3: You're fine. Obviously, this is the beginning of a huge,
16:56
Speaker 3: years long situation for you that will involve law enforcement,
17:01
Speaker 3: the legal system. There's so many people that experience sexual
17:05
Speaker 3: assaults and are hesitant to make reports, as you know,
17:09
Speaker 3: because of the situation that you're put into where you're
17:12
Speaker 3: having to retell your story. Can you talk to us
17:14
Speaker 3: a little bit about that first experience of having to
17:17
Speaker 3: tell your story to law enforcement and how was that
17:19
Speaker 3: for you.
17:20
Speaker 2: It's really complicated, and it's incredibly traumatic. I mean, you've
17:25
Speaker 2: just survived this trauma. Your body's traumatized, your brain's traumatized.
17:30
Speaker 2: You're going into the hospital to have evidence collected on
17:35
Speaker 2: your body and in your body. Right, it's like my
17:38
Speaker 2: body was the crime scene and that's where the evidence is.
17:43
Speaker 2: And depending on where you go depends on how you're
17:47
Speaker 2: going to be treated as an assault survivor. This is
17:50
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four. There were no such things as sane nurses,
17:54
Speaker 2: and so the doctor who came in to collect the identification,
18:00
Speaker 2: the pubic care comings, the cheek swab, your vaginal swab,
18:03
Speaker 2: your nail clippings, like all the stuff that he's supposed
18:06
Speaker 2: to do was clearly annoyed and did not want to
18:10
Speaker 2: be in a hospital collecting evidence off of another rape survivor,
18:13
Speaker 2: particularly a college girl, and so he haphazardly did that.
18:18
Speaker 2: But that would also be the location where I knew
18:21
Speaker 2: and realized that the person who had raped me had
18:24
Speaker 2: gone on within less than an hour and raped another
18:27
Speaker 2: woman less than a mile from my home, and when
18:29
Speaker 2: he had crawled through her den window when she was
18:31
Speaker 2: sleeping and bit her and slapped her and punched her
18:34
Speaker 2: and then raped her because I could hear her down
18:36
Speaker 2: the hall crying. It was also at that moment right
18:39
Speaker 2: where I really realized that we had a serial rapist
18:43
Speaker 2: in the community, that women were not safe, and my
18:49
Speaker 2: hatred was palatable. I could literally taste it in the
18:53
Speaker 2: back of my throat, how much I hated this person
18:57
Speaker 2: and wanted him to die for what he had done
18:59
Speaker 2: to me this other woman, knowing that he was going
19:02
Speaker 2: to do it again. And so from there I was
19:05
Speaker 2: taken to the police station and began to give descriptions
19:10
Speaker 2: of what this person looked like. And as I was
19:13
Speaker 2: given the description, the detective got a phone call from
19:16
Speaker 2: I'm not sure who, and then he looked at me
19:19
Speaker 2: and he said at the hospital. Did they give you
19:21
Speaker 2: a penicillin shot? And I said no. Did they give
19:25
Speaker 2: you the morning after pill? And I said no? And
19:29
Speaker 2: so we realized that they had done an incomplete rape kit.
19:33
Speaker 2: So I was taken back out to a second hospital
19:37
Speaker 2: to have a second rape kit collected. You just can't imagine,
19:40
Speaker 2: like the amount of trauma on my body is now story.
19:44
Speaker 2: And so after the second rape kit again, I go
19:46
Speaker 2: back to the police station. It's now been three or
19:49
Speaker 2: four hours since I almost died, and now I'm being asked,
19:53
Speaker 2: you know, the questions like how tall was he, how
19:56
Speaker 2: much did he weigh? What was his hair? And it
19:59
Speaker 2: was so clear to the police that I had paid
20:02
Speaker 2: very good attention. They asked if I could do a
20:04
Speaker 2: composite sketch. The second woman had been beaten and so
20:08
Speaker 2: she couldn't give us clearer description. So I felt like
20:12
Speaker 2: a lot of weight and pressure on me to help
20:15
Speaker 2: the police figure out who this person was. And at
20:17
Speaker 2: the time, they used something called an identikit, which was
20:21
Speaker 2: just a big plastic file box that had tabs of
20:25
Speaker 2: every part of your face, and so the police would
20:29
Speaker 2: pick up a drawing of the shape of a person's
20:32
Speaker 2: face and is it this space? And I was like, no,
20:34
Speaker 2: it's more triangular. And then you'd pick up the second part,
20:38
Speaker 2: is it more like this face? And same for your
20:40
Speaker 2: eyebrows and your eyes, and your eyelashes, and your lips,
20:43
Speaker 2: and your nose and your chin and your cheeks and
20:44
Speaker 2: your ears and everything that makes up her face. So
20:46
Speaker 2: you go through these old tabs, and when he was finished,
20:49
Speaker 2: she said, is this like the man who raped you?
20:51
Speaker 2: And I said yes, And so that composite sketch went
20:54
Speaker 2: in the newspaper and the police station started receiving just
20:59
Speaker 2: a numerous phone but the most important call A woman
21:03
Speaker 2: called in and said that she had seen a guy
21:06
Speaker 2: named Ronald Cotton wearing the exact clothing that had been
21:09
Speaker 2: described outside of my apartment on a bike at three
21:13
Speaker 2: am on July twenty ninth, same exact time that I
21:16
Speaker 2: had been raped. So three days after my assault, I
21:20
Speaker 2: was called into the police station to do a photographic
21:22
Speaker 2: lineup and they would show me what they referred to
21:25
Speaker 2: as a six pack, which is three photos on top,
21:28
Speaker 2: three photos in the bottom, and asked me to take
21:31
Speaker 2: my time. I don't feel compelled, but if you see him,
21:34
Speaker 2: pick up the photograph and initial the back and I did.
21:37
Speaker 2: I took my time, but I picked up photograph number
21:40
Speaker 2: three and initial the back and they looked at me
21:42
Speaker 2: and they said, that's who we thought it was.
21:44
Speaker 3: Oh wow, the photograph belonged to Ronald Cotton. So you
21:48
Speaker 3: basically were showing six photographs right picked someone out and
21:52
Speaker 3: then got a media encouragement from law enforcement. They said, well, yeah,
21:56
Speaker 3: that's the guy we thought it was.
21:58
Speaker 1: When they said that's the guy we thought it was,
22:01
Speaker 1: how did you feel.
22:02
Speaker 2: In that moment when they said that's who we thought
22:05
Speaker 2: it was. Honestly, it was the first time I could
22:07
Speaker 2: take a deep breath since the time of the assault.
22:10
Speaker 2: Is called confirmation. I felt like I had done it right.
22:12
Speaker 2: I felt like I had been a good survivor. I
22:16
Speaker 2: felt like I'd been helpful. I felt like the women
22:19
Speaker 2: in Burlington, North Carolina would be safe again. It was
22:22
Speaker 2: a huge moment for me. And then about five or
22:25
Speaker 2: six days after the photographic lineup, I was called again
22:30
Speaker 2: to come back to the police station. They wanted me
22:33
Speaker 2: to do a physical lineup, and what I didn't know
22:36
Speaker 2: at the time was that the room that they would
22:39
Speaker 2: have normally done the physical lineup in, which is that
22:43
Speaker 2: room you see in cop shows, right where there's that
22:46
Speaker 2: one way glass and there's the lineup, but your identity
22:49
Speaker 2: is protected. That room was being renovated in the police department.
22:54
Speaker 2: So I was taken to an abandoned schoolhouse to the
22:57
Speaker 2: second floor and I was into this abandoned school room
23:02
Speaker 2: where the only thing between me and the lineup was
23:06
Speaker 2: a folding picnic table. So seven men are marched in
23:10
Speaker 2: front of me holding numbers, and I was terrified because
23:16
Speaker 2: I thought, what happens if I don't get this one
23:19
Speaker 2: right right? Does he walk? Does he go free? Is
23:22
Speaker 2: he going to come back and kill me? Because it's
23:25
Speaker 2: broad daylight, there's lights in this room, Like I'm not protected.
23:29
Speaker 2: It was extremely traumatic. So as I looked through the
23:32
Speaker 2: seven men in the lineup, honestly, I narrowed it down
23:35
Speaker 2: to number four and five. And as I started, you know,
23:37
Speaker 2: looking between four and five, I remember thinking, well, no,
23:40
Speaker 2: it's number five, and that's what I wrote down on
23:43
Speaker 2: a piece of paper. And again the police officers looked
23:45
Speaker 2: at me and said, great job, so you picked out
23:47
Speaker 2: in the photograph And that was a huge relief. That
23:52
Speaker 2: would have been you know, middle of August, so he
23:55
Speaker 2: would of course, be arrested, held over for what they
23:58
Speaker 2: call probable cause, and we would await trial.
24:03
Speaker 1: When you were in that second now photo lineup, do
24:07
Speaker 1: you recall in that moment if maybe you were consciously
24:10
Speaker 1: or subconsciously looking to match to the man in the
24:15
Speaker 1: photo that you had picked out previously, or recalling the
24:19
Speaker 1: memory of the assault.
24:21
Speaker 2: Great question. I've worked in this for a long time now,
24:24
Speaker 2: so I actually understand what happened to my mind. You know,
24:28
Speaker 2: I had a very clear picture of who had done
24:31
Speaker 2: this to me after the assault. But what happens, and
24:34
Speaker 2: it happens to anybody who is in a place of
24:37
Speaker 2: trauma like I was, and then you're brought through like
24:39
Speaker 2: what we call contaminated processes. So as I'm doing that
24:45
Speaker 2: identicate and I'm looking through the different eyelashes and the
24:49
Speaker 2: eyebrows and the lips and the noses, my memory at
24:52
Speaker 2: that moment starts becoming contaminated because the reality is the
24:57
Speaker 2: person who had assaulted me hours for his eyebrows are
25:01
Speaker 2: not in that box, his lips are not in that box.
25:05
Speaker 2: His cheeks and chin that's not in that box. You
25:08
Speaker 2: have seventy five eyebrows that choose from there's millions of
25:12
Speaker 2: eyebrows in the world, right, and human beings are not
25:16
Speaker 2: capable of compartmentalizing the human face. So we look at
25:20
Speaker 2: your face and totality. I mean, unless you have some
25:23
Speaker 2: very strange eyebrow, right, you really can't memorize that. And
25:28
Speaker 2: so by the time I was finished with the composite
25:31
Speaker 2: sketch and they asked me, was this the man who
25:33
Speaker 2: attacked you? My memory was now gone, The original memory
25:38
Speaker 2: was gone, and what is now in place of it
25:41
Speaker 2: is a composite sketch image. So that when I go
25:45
Speaker 2: to the photographic lineup, when I'm actually looking to match up,
25:50
Speaker 2: and it's all completely subconscious, no one knows they're doing
25:53
Speaker 2: this is you're trying to find the closest photograph to
25:57
Speaker 2: my last memory, which is a composite sketch. Therefore, Ronald
26:02
Speaker 2: Cotton's photograph, which was three years old in that lineup,
26:06
Speaker 2: was the closest photograph to the composite sketch. Our brains
26:11
Speaker 2: are valuable, and we are so prone to suggestion, and
26:17
Speaker 2: so things can go into our memory that wasn't there before,
26:21
Speaker 2: but now it's a permanent fixture in our brain.
26:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, So then when you go into the physical lineup.
26:27
Speaker 3: When you see six men in person, are you then
26:30
Speaker 3: trying to match to the composite sketch or even to
26:34
Speaker 3: Ronald Cotton's three year old photo. Is your mind now
26:37
Speaker 3: using those as references?
26:39
Speaker 2: It is, it's scanning all of that, right, you're scanning
26:42
Speaker 2: your memory banking. What my memory was saying was, oh
26:45
Speaker 2: my god, that number five looks like I recognize him,
26:50
Speaker 2: like I'll never forget that face. And of course I
26:52
Speaker 2: recognize him. I had picked his photograph out of a
26:55
Speaker 2: lineup the week before. But you don't know that. It's
26:59
Speaker 2: just the way our work. It's not an intentional thing,
27:03
Speaker 2: not from the victim's perspective. It may be intentional from
27:05
Speaker 2: a police officer's perspective, but you don't know you're doing that.
27:09
Speaker 2: And so when I picked out Ronald in the physical
27:12
Speaker 2: lineup and again was given confirmation, which is huge, Ronald
27:18
Speaker 2: Cotton is now a permanent fixture in my mind.
27:22
Speaker 1: I'm wondering also, during these two instances of choosing a
27:26
Speaker 1: photo and then a person that you're standing in front of,
27:30
Speaker 1: what knowledge did you have in that moment of the
27:33
Speaker 1: woman who called in and identified Ronald as having been
27:38
Speaker 1: wearing those clothes at your apartment at three am. Was
27:41
Speaker 1: that also playing a role in this confirmation you were getting?
27:46
Speaker 2: Yes, I was told about the phone call. I was
27:49
Speaker 2: told that Ronald had just been released that spring out
27:53
Speaker 2: of prison after doing eighteen months for attempted sexual assault.
27:57
Speaker 2: I was told pretty much everything leadie up to trial.
28:02
Speaker 3: Each time Jennifer picked Ronald Cotton out of a lineup,
28:06
Speaker 3: she received confirmation from law enforcement that she'd chosen their suspect. Additionally,
28:12
Speaker 3: Ronald Cotton was the only person who appeared in both
28:15
Speaker 3: the photo and in person lineups. There was also the
28:19
Speaker 3: woman who called and reported seeing Ronald Cotton outside of
28:23
Speaker 3: Jennifer's apartment the night of the attack, wearing the same clothes,
28:27
Speaker 3: the white gloves that Jennifer remembered her attacker wearing. Jennifer
28:32
Speaker 3: felt confident that Ronald Cotton was the man who raped her.
28:38
Speaker 2: The trial was in January of nineteen eighty five. It
28:40
Speaker 2: would last two weeks. I would testify for two and
28:44
Speaker 2: a half days. Again, you know, when you think about
28:48
Speaker 2: the process and what was happening, it's all trauma. My
28:52
Speaker 2: body was just registering trauma after trauma. Testifying was horrible,
28:57
Speaker 2: you know, You're having to repeat every graphic thing that
29:01
Speaker 2: was done to your body in front of strangers, in
29:04
Speaker 2: front of your family. You're being blamed for the rape
29:08
Speaker 2: to begin with. It's just what defense attorneys do. I
29:12
Speaker 2: was told, what did I think would happen when you're
29:15
Speaker 2: a single woman, living alone and you go to bed
29:17
Speaker 2: in your underwear? Didn't I know that that's how rapes happened?
29:20
Speaker 2: You know, it was apparently important for the jury to
29:23
Speaker 2: know that I was an aerobics instructor, that somehow being
29:25
Speaker 2: an aerobics instructor was like tantalizing for the entire world.
29:29
Speaker 2: So it's all this stuff that is being said. The
29:32
Speaker 2: same time, you know, I'm having to look at the defendant.
29:35
Speaker 2: I'm looking at his family. I get up to go
29:38
Speaker 2: to the bathroom and his sister's in the bathroom. It's
29:41
Speaker 2: really frightening. You don't know what's going to happen. So,
29:44
Speaker 2: after the two weeks of trial, the jury came back
29:48
Speaker 2: with guilty on all counts and Ronald was sentenced to
29:52
Speaker 2: life in fifty four years.
29:54
Speaker 3: And what did it feel like when you heard that sentence?
29:57
Speaker 2: You know, there's a huge relief. You feel like the
30:01
Speaker 2: system works like you feel validated, right, this is the
30:04
Speaker 2: system I've been told my whole life works, and that
30:08
Speaker 2: was confirmation that there is justice for crime victims and survivors.
30:12
Speaker 2: And what you don't realize is the narrative and the
30:16
Speaker 2: pats on the backs that you get of this disclosure.
30:21
Speaker 2: You get to move on, you can put this behind you,
30:24
Speaker 2: move forward. Doesn't work. It just doesn't work at all.
30:29
Speaker 2: And I think people don't really understand that. After trial,
30:33
Speaker 2: it's kind of like after a death right and everybody's
30:35
Speaker 2: brought you the cast role. People just go back to
30:38
Speaker 2: their own lives and you're sitting there and you're thinking, yeah,
30:40
Speaker 2: but for the rest of my life, I'm still going
30:42
Speaker 2: to be grieving. They just think that you're going to
30:44
Speaker 2: be able to start your life again and carry on
30:48
Speaker 2: as if you're not grieving the loss of what I
30:52
Speaker 2: had in, who I had been, and what I wanted
30:56
Speaker 2: to return to, Like that part of my life was
30:58
Speaker 2: just over and I was left just in this space
31:05
Speaker 2: alone to try to figure out what's next. And it
31:08
Speaker 2: was really terrible.
31:10
Speaker 3: How are things with your family? Did they go to
31:13
Speaker 3: the trial? What was that support system like at the time?
31:17
Speaker 2: For you? The truth is when you are a victim
31:24
Speaker 2: of a violent crime. There's not enough support in the world.
31:27
Speaker 2: So the people who are around you think they're supporting you,
31:31
Speaker 2: and maybe they're doing the best they can. But unless
31:34
Speaker 2: you've lived it, if you've never been in it, you
31:37
Speaker 2: can't really understand what I needed. Tomato super and girl
31:43
Speaker 2: cheese sandwich wasn't going to cut it. And I also
31:46
Speaker 2: think that people still don't understand the violent nature of
31:51
Speaker 2: sexual assault and what that does to the survivor and
31:56
Speaker 2: to the victims of rape. I think people just think
31:59
Speaker 2: that you're okay. You're not dead, right, Jennifer. Nobody shot you,
32:03
Speaker 2: so you're okay, right, Jennifer. I was young, I was
32:06
Speaker 2: twenty two years old. My family didn't want to talk
32:10
Speaker 2: to me about it, Like, no one wants to sit
32:12
Speaker 2: down and talk to you and say, how are you feeling?
32:14
Speaker 2: What's happening inside of your body? And so no one
32:17
Speaker 2: asked me questions about it. And my boyfriend was just like, yeah,
32:21
Speaker 2: I can't deal with you. It's just too much for me.
32:24
Speaker 2: And friends just don't come over because you cry a
32:29
Speaker 2: lot and all the time. So you're really left in
32:33
Speaker 2: this grief because it's what it is. It's grief. You're
32:37
Speaker 2: left in that grief alone. I didn't do it well.
32:41
Speaker 2: I just numbed with whatever I could get my hands
32:45
Speaker 2: on to numb so that I couldn't feel my skin.
32:48
Speaker 2: Of course, I had to move apartments, and I had
32:50
Speaker 2: to do that alone. I did graduate, but for the
32:54
Speaker 2: first time, I made a bee. It sounds crazy, but
32:59
Speaker 2: I wanted to SRADA student and I made my first beast,
33:02
Speaker 2: which meant I wasn't going to graduate with a four
33:04
Speaker 2: point zero, which was my goal. And I wasn't going
33:07
Speaker 2: to graduate summa cum laude or a valedictorian, which was
33:10
Speaker 2: my goal. But I graduated, and I didn't go back
33:14
Speaker 2: to school because I just I couldn't. I couldn't go
33:16
Speaker 2: to bed at night because I was so afraid. So
33:19
Speaker 2: the only thing I knew to do was to just
33:21
Speaker 2: drink like large amounts of alcohol and snort cocaine up
33:25
Speaker 2: my nose, which meant I couldn't wake up in the morning.
33:30
Speaker 2: So I was missing work and I was missing class,
33:34
Speaker 2: and I was a disaster. So I moved. I just
33:38
Speaker 2: left North Carolina, and I met another person. I fell
33:41
Speaker 2: in love with him. I came back a year later,
33:44
Speaker 2: back to North Carolina, got a job in a bank,
33:47
Speaker 2: and the summer of nineteen eighty seven, I received a
33:50
Speaker 2: call from the investigator who had been in charge of
33:53
Speaker 2: the original investigation, Mike Golden, and said that the Pellet
33:58
Speaker 2: Court of North Carolina had over returned the decision and
34:01
Speaker 2: that we would have to go back for a second trial.
34:03
Speaker 2: And I didn't understand any of this, because nobody tells
34:06
Speaker 2: you this as a victim, right Nobody tells you that
34:07
Speaker 2: as soon as the trial's over and the convictions happened
34:10
Speaker 2: and the sentencing takes place, that the defendant automatically has
34:15
Speaker 2: an appeal, you just think that it's over. So I
34:18
Speaker 2: didn't understand this appellate process. But the appellate courts had
34:22
Speaker 2: said that the jury should have known about this second
34:26
Speaker 2: victim because the first trial was only me, and that
34:29
Speaker 2: if the courts had known, if the jury had known
34:32
Speaker 2: there was a second victim who had not made an identification,
34:35
Speaker 2: then that would have called into question my identification. Ronald
34:40
Speaker 2: Cotton had been in Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina,
34:43
Speaker 2: since nineteen eighty five and had been proclaiming his innocence,
34:47
Speaker 2: and not just his innocence, but that he believed that
34:50
Speaker 2: there was a man that was serving time in the
34:52
Speaker 2: same prison, in the same dormitory and worked in the
34:55
Speaker 2: same kitchen, that had actually committed the crime, a man
34:58
Speaker 2: named Bobby Pool. So in nineteen eighty seven, during the
35:02
Speaker 2: second trial, they introduced this person, Bobby Poole, into the
35:06
Speaker 2: trial and brought him in to court under Vordier. So
35:09
Speaker 2: they dismissed the jury and asked Bobby Poole if he
35:12
Speaker 2: had committed this crime, and of course he denied it.
35:15
Speaker 2: They asked him if he had been bragging about committing
35:18
Speaker 2: this crime, and he denied ever saying anything about it.
35:22
Speaker 2: Then they asked both myself and the second survivor if
35:24
Speaker 2: we recognized him, and both of us said no, we
35:27
Speaker 2: did not recognize him. And did we recognize anyone in
35:31
Speaker 2: the courtroom that had committed the crimes. Both of us
35:34
Speaker 2: pointed out Ronald Cotton, and so in this second trial,
35:39
Speaker 2: Ronald would now be found guilty of both first ree rapes,
35:43
Speaker 2: and this time Ronald would be sentenced re sentenced to
35:47
Speaker 2: two life sentences and thirty years in prison, which meant
35:51
Speaker 2: he would absolutely die in prison.
35:54
Speaker 3: Did it feel final at that point to you, Yeah.
35:56
Speaker 2: I thought it was final, But of course I thought
35:58
Speaker 2: it was final the first time. Most of us don't
36:01
Speaker 2: know the legal process. And because they always tell you
36:05
Speaker 2: this word closure, now you really get closure, which I
36:08
Speaker 2: really wish people would stop using that word, because there
36:10
Speaker 2: is no such thing as closure. I thought this was
36:13
Speaker 2: going to be it, like, we're done. Now, I get
36:15
Speaker 2: to move on and do my life now, right, We're.
36:18
Speaker 1: Going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
36:29
Speaker 2: I got married, I got pregnant. I had triplets in
36:33
Speaker 2: the spring of nineteen ninety and honestly, the triplets were
36:38
Speaker 2: my reason to not die every single day, and it
36:41
Speaker 2: gave me a task. It gave me a job, It
36:43
Speaker 2: gave me structure because you're a mom. You can't die
36:47
Speaker 2: now there's these three little people who need you. And
36:51
Speaker 2: I really loved that part of my life of being
36:55
Speaker 2: a young mother to these incredible babies, and life took
36:59
Speaker 2: on a pattern. The rape was never far from my
37:04
Speaker 2: mind or my spirit. He was always there. But you know,
37:08
Speaker 2: triplet's keep you busy, So that's how I was busy.
37:12
Speaker 2: And then the spring of nineteen ninety five happened. I
37:17
Speaker 2: got the phone call again from Mike Galden and it's
37:20
Speaker 2: now been almost eleven years and he calls me and says, hey, like,
37:24
Speaker 2: I need to come and see you. I'm bringing the
37:27
Speaker 2: Assistant District Attorney of Alamance County with me, and I
37:30
Speaker 2: was like, okay, you know that's fine. They came to
37:34
Speaker 2: my house and started telling me about the fact that
37:37
Speaker 2: Ronald was still saying he was innocent, but they assured
37:40
Speaker 2: me that he was not. They were like, we know
37:42
Speaker 2: we've got the right guy, we know he did it,
37:45
Speaker 2: but they want to have this DNA test. This is
37:49
Speaker 2: North Carolina, this is nineteen ninety five. DNA was really
37:53
Speaker 2: a very new piece of investigation. Very few people were
37:58
Speaker 2: talking about it. The only thing I had ever heard
38:01
Speaker 2: about DNA other than through my science classes was OJ Simpson.
38:06
Speaker 3: DNA testing has been admissible in court since nineteen eighty seven,
38:10
Speaker 3: but the first time that most Americans were introduced to
38:13
Speaker 3: the idea of DNA playing a role in the criminal
38:16
Speaker 3: justice system was in nineteen ninety five during the highly
38:19
Speaker 3: televised OJ Simpson trial.
38:23
Speaker 2: So they said that North Carolina didn't have any statutes
38:26
Speaker 2: to allow this DNA test to go through, but if
38:29
Speaker 2: the court ordered it, my blood sample from eleven years
38:33
Speaker 2: ago had now disintegrated and now would have to give
38:36
Speaker 2: a new blood sample. And I just looked at them
38:39
Speaker 2: and I said, look, I have five year old triplets.
38:42
Speaker 2: I cannot go through another court anything like. I just can't.
38:47
Speaker 2: And I said, at some point this has to be over.
38:50
Speaker 2: We're going to go to the doctor right now and
38:53
Speaker 2: he's going to give you my blood and you're going
38:55
Speaker 2: to run that test because this has to be done.
38:58
Speaker 2: And they agreed has to be done. So I went
39:01
Speaker 2: to the doctor and I had my doctor, my doctor
39:05
Speaker 2: draw my blood and give it to them, and it
39:08
Speaker 2: went down. I forty headed to Raleigh, North Carolina, to
39:12
Speaker 2: the State Buer of Investigations Crime Lab. That would be
39:14
Speaker 2: March of ninety five. And I will tell you in truth,
39:17
Speaker 2: in all honesty, I didn't really worry about it because
39:20
Speaker 2: I had been assured that it would come back and
39:23
Speaker 2: conclusively point to the fact that it had been Ronald
39:26
Speaker 2: all along. And then they called me the first week
39:29
Speaker 2: of June and stood in my kitchen and said that
39:33
Speaker 2: the DNA did not belong to Ronald Cotton, that it
39:36
Speaker 2: did belong to Bobby Poole.
39:40
Speaker 3: Bobby Poole's DNA matched blood collected from Mary Reynolds home,
39:44
Speaker 3: the second victim who was attacked the same night as Jennifer.
39:47
Speaker 3: Investigators confronted Bobby Pool with the results of the DNA
39:51
Speaker 3: test and he confessed to raping both Mary Reynolds and
39:54
Speaker 3: Jennifer Thompson.
39:57
Speaker 1: I mean, how did you even take that in?
39:59
Speaker 2: For me?
40:00
Speaker 1: In what did you think?
40:03
Speaker 2: Honestly, I don't know that I did. I know that
40:05
Speaker 2: I fell, and I know that I screamed and cried
40:11
Speaker 2: for a long time. There were so many emotions that
40:15
Speaker 2: were happening that it's hard to kind of sparse out.
40:19
Speaker 2: There's the disbelief, there's the anger, there's the fear, there's
40:25
Speaker 2: the confusion. I felt paralyzed. I felt isolated, I felt fearful.
40:31
Speaker 2: I felt everything you can possibly imagine. I don't understand this.
40:36
Speaker 2: I don't understand, like, how did this happen? I remember
40:40
Speaker 2: Mike Golden and Rob Johnson, who is the ADA, look
40:44
Speaker 2: at me and say, we're going to get Ronald out
40:48
Speaker 2: of prison as quickly as we can. We don't want
40:50
Speaker 2: him to spend another day in prison. He doesn't and
40:53
Speaker 2: shouldn't be. But they also told me that before they
40:56
Speaker 2: would even deliver this news to me, they made sure
40:58
Speaker 2: that they got a confession from Bobby Pool, which for
41:02
Speaker 2: them was really important, and they said it took six
41:05
Speaker 2: hours for him to finally say, okay, fine, I did
41:07
Speaker 2: that to these women and they didn't just do it
41:10
Speaker 2: to us, like you know. It would come to light
41:12
Speaker 2: that he had committed twenty four more violent crimes before
41:15
Speaker 2: he was ever apprehended, six of which would be first
41:18
Speaker 2: to gree rapes, and one of the rapes he committed,
41:21
Speaker 2: he went back and raped the woman a second time.
41:24
Speaker 2: And so there's a lot of things that you're now
41:27
Speaker 2: having to reconcile that Ronald Cotton was in prison for
41:33
Speaker 2: eleven years for something he never did, and that Bobby
41:38
Speaker 2: Pool was not apprehended when he should have been, and
41:42
Speaker 2: that all these other people were harmed because the system failed.
41:47
Speaker 2: But what isn't being told to me is that the
41:52
Speaker 2: system failed me too. But that wasn't the story that
41:57
Speaker 2: the public heard for the next few years.
42:01
Speaker 3: Current research on eyewitness identification shows that when victims are
42:05
Speaker 3: presented with the police lineup, the overwhelming majority of people
42:10
Speaker 3: will choose someone from that lineup, regardless of if the
42:13
Speaker 3: actual perpetrator is present. If the perpetrator is not in
42:17
Speaker 3: the lineup, they will choose the person who looks most
42:21
Speaker 3: similar to their memory of the perpetrator. All of this
42:24
Speaker 3: happens subconsciously. It's important to note that Bobby Pool's photo
42:29
Speaker 3: was not part of the initial photo lineup that Jennifer
42:32
Speaker 3: was shown. He was also not at the physical lineup.
42:36
Speaker 3: Jennifer id'd Ronald Cotton twice before the trial, during the trial,
42:41
Speaker 3: and then again in nineteen eighty seven when he was retried.
42:45
Speaker 3: Bobby Poole, her actual rapist, was there in nineteen eighty
42:48
Speaker 3: seven at the retrial in the courtroom with Jennifer, but
42:52
Speaker 3: she did not recognize him. Her brain had replaced any
42:56
Speaker 3: memory of Bobby Poole's face with Ronald Cotton's.
43:01
Speaker 1: The story that came out over the course of the
43:04
Speaker 1: years that followed did not reflect that you were also
43:07
Speaker 1: a victim of this system.
43:09
Speaker 2: Did you have any.
43:10
Speaker 1: Preparation or warning from the ADA or the law enforcement
43:15
Speaker 1: you were working with, like there's going to be media
43:18
Speaker 1: coverage about this.
43:20
Speaker 2: I was told there would be media coverage again, you know,
43:23
Speaker 2: this is nineteen ninety five. Ronald was the twenty third
43:27
Speaker 2: person I believe in the United States to have been
43:30
Speaker 2: exonerated using DNA. He was the first person in the
43:33
Speaker 2: state of North Carolina to be exonerated through DNA, but
43:37
Speaker 2: it was the first time that a DNA test had
43:40
Speaker 2: also revealed the actual perpetrator. So it was an enormous
43:45
Speaker 2: story across the country, and it was being covered by
43:49
Speaker 2: every news cast that you can possibly imagine. And so
43:52
Speaker 2: I was told that there was going to be a
43:55
Speaker 2: lot of coverage, that they would try to protect my
43:58
Speaker 2: name because you know, I'd been married since then. But
44:01
Speaker 2: at this point, nobody understood what was happening to crime
44:05
Speaker 2: victims and survivors from these cases. I was really left
44:10
Speaker 2: on my own to try to navigate the next few
44:13
Speaker 2: years of false narratives that were going to be coming out.
44:18
Speaker 2: So what I decided to do at that time was
44:22
Speaker 2: in many ways, to just erase myself from the world
44:26
Speaker 2: and to make myself as microscopically tiny so that the
44:29
Speaker 2: world couldn't find me. And I did a really good job,
44:31
Speaker 2: I have to say, like I really kind of like
44:34
Speaker 2: disappeared for the next year until somebody found me.
44:39
Speaker 3: Who found you?
44:41
Speaker 2: What had happened was there was a producer with Frontline
44:46
Speaker 2: who wanted to do a documentary about eyewitness identification and
44:50
Speaker 2: the fallibility of human memory, and this person contacted Barry Sheck,
44:55
Speaker 2: and Barry Sheck was like, there's this story out of
44:59
Speaker 2: North Carolina. Can find the girl. So people started trying
45:02
Speaker 2: to find the girl, and eventually they did. It was
45:05
Speaker 2: really scary because I was getting phone calls from people
45:08
Speaker 2: that I knew that said, yeah, I've got this phone
45:10
Speaker 2: call today, and somebody said, do you know this girl
45:13
Speaker 2: named Jennifer Thompson And it's Jennifer Thompson Jennifer Canino and
45:17
Speaker 2: so people were calling me and that scared me. But
45:19
Speaker 2: eventually Ben Loderman, who was a producer, contacted me, flew
45:24
Speaker 2: down from Boston, sat with me in my house and said,
45:27
Speaker 2: this is what I'm going to do. I would really
45:29
Speaker 2: love you to tell your story. And of course my
45:32
Speaker 2: first impulse was like, oh, hell, no, no way, no way,
45:36
Speaker 2: I'm going to do this. My kids now are six
45:39
Speaker 2: and people are going to try to find me and
45:41
Speaker 2: kill me. Then he said, well, I've talked to Ronald
45:44
Speaker 2: and he's going to tell his story. And I knew
45:47
Speaker 2: very quickly that no one could tell my story but me,
45:50
Speaker 2: because you're not allowed to tell my story. I lived
45:53
Speaker 2: it so I agreed to tell it under the understanding
45:56
Speaker 2: that Ronald stay in Burlington and I was in Winston
45:59
Speaker 2: Sale and that we weren't going to meet, and he agreed,
46:02
Speaker 2: and so over the next six months is he put
46:05
Speaker 2: together this documentary titled What Jennifer Saw. The crew would
46:10
Speaker 2: say to me like, oh, you know with ron yesterday,
46:12
Speaker 2: he's such a nice guy. He's like really chill, he's
46:15
Speaker 2: really lovely, he's very forgiving, and I was like, yeah,
46:19
Speaker 2: there's no way that can be true. The guy spent
46:21
Speaker 2: eleven years in prison for something he didn't do. There
46:23
Speaker 2: is no way. The documentary aired in February of ninety seven,
46:27
Speaker 2: and I remember watching it the next morning and I
46:31
Speaker 2: heard myself say that I know that he's innocent, but
46:33
Speaker 2: I still see him in my nightmares. And that's when
46:36
Speaker 2: it clicked for me about this is a permanent face
46:40
Speaker 2: in my brain and it shouldn't be there. Bobby Pool
46:44
Speaker 2: should be there. But why can't I see him in
46:46
Speaker 2: my brain? Because I can't. So I called Mike Galdon
46:49
Speaker 2: and I said, can you set up a meeting? I
46:52
Speaker 2: don't even want to know where I'm meeting Because every
46:54
Speaker 2: journalist in the country was now trying to find me.
46:57
Speaker 2: When I tell you, every journalist in the country was
46:59
Speaker 2: trying to find me, I mean everybody. So they set
47:01
Speaker 2: it up a private meeting, and I met Ronald in
47:05
Speaker 2: April ninety seven, not far from where I'd been raped
47:08
Speaker 2: thirteen years before. We started to cry and talk about
47:14
Speaker 2: what had happened to the two of us. We got
47:16
Speaker 2: to ask each other questions that only the other person
47:19
Speaker 2: knew the answers to, and we spent the next two
47:22
Speaker 2: hours just crying and talking and holding each other's hands
47:26
Speaker 2: and sharing about what those years had been like for ourselves,
47:30
Speaker 2: for our families. And what we realized at the end
47:32
Speaker 2: of those two hours is that we had a lot
47:35
Speaker 2: of shared trauma because the system had failed us, and
47:39
Speaker 2: that at the intersection of all of that trauma was
47:43
Speaker 2: Bobby Pool, who had caused every single bit of it.
47:47
Speaker 2: Bobby Pool had done so much violence and it hurt
47:51
Speaker 2: so many women, But he also sat back and knew
47:54
Speaker 2: that Ronald was going to prison for what he had
47:56
Speaker 2: done to all of us. And so that was where
47:58
Speaker 2: ron and I were able to began this healing process
48:01
Speaker 2: with each other, understanding that the system had failed us
48:04
Speaker 2: and our families and that Bobby Pool had been the
48:08
Speaker 2: perpetrator of all of it.
48:10
Speaker 3: When you met Ronald for the first time, you know,
48:12
Speaker 3: how was he different than what you had maybe feared
48:15
Speaker 3: or imagined he might be.
48:16
Speaker 2: Like, well, in my head, of course, he was just
48:19
Speaker 2: this terrible, violent monster. In reality, he was incredibly gentle
48:24
Speaker 2: and self spoken. He was huge, Like that was the
48:27
Speaker 2: other thing, Like he was enormous. He's like six foot four,
48:30
Speaker 2: I'm five foot one. He was like this big, huge
48:33
Speaker 2: person in my life, and yet he was very soft
48:36
Speaker 2: spoken and very gentle and kind and funny and safe,
48:43
Speaker 2: Like I immediately felt safe with him. It was a
48:48
Speaker 2: complete and utter shift, and we immediately became friends that day,
48:53
Speaker 2: Like we parted in each other's arms, sharing each other's
48:57
Speaker 2: contact information, and promised that we had lived this journey,
49:02
Speaker 2: we had survived this thing together, and this was our story.
49:08
Speaker 3: It sounds like you really did become friends with him.
49:11
Speaker 3: You both were really going through it in different ways,
49:14
Speaker 3: in different scenarios. Right over those eleven years, you talked
49:17
Speaker 3: about having your children and that being something that helped
49:20
Speaker 3: you want to live. You were so tormented. Was this
49:24
Speaker 3: helpful in any kind of way to move toward healing?
49:27
Speaker 3: For you and how if so.
49:30
Speaker 2: I think it was helpful on many many levels. So yes,
49:34
Speaker 2: it was very helpful in the healing process because Ronald
49:40
Speaker 2: was probably the only person who could understand in this
49:42
Speaker 2: weird way what I had gone through because both of
49:45
Speaker 2: us had lost, both of us could not return to
49:49
Speaker 2: the former person that we were before both of us grieved,
49:54
Speaker 2: and so we had these shared experiences, different but shared experiences,
50:02
Speaker 2: and that was really healing for me and for him.
50:07
Speaker 2: The other thing that I think it did for me
50:09
Speaker 2: is it sent me on a quest on mini quests.
50:13
Speaker 2: One of the quests I went on was to understand
50:16
Speaker 2: the criminal justice system and the legal system and how
50:20
Speaker 2: it actually works and who it actually works for and
50:24
Speaker 2: who does it actually fail and fail often. So that
50:29
Speaker 2: forced me to really look back on my childhood and
50:33
Speaker 2: my life of growing up in the segregated South and
50:37
Speaker 2: that kind of birthright of thinking that the system was
50:41
Speaker 2: the best in the world and it was effective and
50:43
Speaker 2: it worked. And that completely shifted everything from me and
50:47
Speaker 2: I began to question everything. It wasn't just like criminal
50:50
Speaker 2: justice system processes, but environmental justice and economic justice like.
50:55
Speaker 2: It really started me thinking and studying and understanding and
50:59
Speaker 2: pulling back layers and asking the deep, really hard questions,
51:03
Speaker 2: which I hope I never stop asking those questions. The
51:07
Speaker 2: other thing that it did for me was to begin
51:10
Speaker 2: to understand memory and trauma and how those two work,
51:14
Speaker 2: and how often the system can get it wrong, and
51:17
Speaker 2: when it gets it wrong, how many people are being
51:20
Speaker 2: harmed by it. Like, it really got me thinking about
51:23
Speaker 2: our brains and how trauma works and doesn't work, and
51:28
Speaker 2: what we can encode and what we can encode under
51:30
Speaker 2: what circumstances. So I've done a lot of work in
51:33
Speaker 2: that area and then on policy and legislation, So that's
51:37
Speaker 2: taken me in lots of different areas to kind of
51:40
Speaker 2: help improve our system. But then the other thing it
51:44
Speaker 2: did was really help me understand restorative justice and how
51:48
Speaker 2: healing happens, and how healing often doesn't happen because we
51:53
Speaker 2: don't give space for it.
51:55
Speaker 3: Did you experience people blaming you and how did you
51:59
Speaker 3: come to understand how to sort that all in your
52:02
Speaker 3: head and where to place the blame.
52:05
Speaker 2: It was an easy assigning of blame, right, It was
52:07
Speaker 2: like the quick answer. I was like the very quick
52:10
Speaker 2: and easy scapegoat for all of this. So I was
52:13
Speaker 2: very much blamed for well, I still am. Let's just
52:17
Speaker 2: be clear, like I'm still being blamed. I won't allow
52:20
Speaker 2: it anymore. That's the difference. I allow the blame to
52:23
Speaker 2: take place, for gosh, the good twelve to fifteen years
52:27
Speaker 2: after Ronald and I met, because I didn't have a
52:29
Speaker 2: different language, and because the system was very happy to
52:32
Speaker 2: allow me to carry the bag of blame, and so yeah,
52:35
Speaker 2: the general public wanted to blame me, the criminal justice
52:40
Speaker 2: system was happy for me to accept the blame.
52:45
Speaker 3: Over the following years, Jennifer and Ronald gave many talks
52:49
Speaker 3: together and were interviewed dozens of times. They would eventually
52:53
Speaker 3: go on to co author a book, Picking Cotton, in
52:56
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine. Jennifer writes in that book about
52:59
Speaker 3: the overwhelming guilt she felt for misidentifying Ronald. She also
53:05
Speaker 3: notes that that guilt did not assuage the trauma she
53:08
Speaker 3: was already experiencing from being violently attacked in her home
53:13
Speaker 3: at age twenty two. But suddenly, in the public's eye,
53:17
Speaker 3: she was no longer a victim.
53:20
Speaker 2: The blame could look as innocuous as ron and I
53:24
Speaker 2: are staying it on a stage and somebody throws her
53:27
Speaker 2: hand up and says, wow, Ron Man, you're like Jesus Christ,
53:32
Speaker 2: You're just like Jesus, Like, how do you stand next
53:34
Speaker 2: to her and be her friend and forgiver? And for
53:38
Speaker 2: a long time I was like, I just I guess
53:40
Speaker 2: I'm just going to have to take this. I now
53:43
Speaker 2: push back on that a lot, But that's the innocuous stuff, right.
53:48
Speaker 2: The more in my face violent blame would be the
53:52
Speaker 2: death threats, men saying things to me about rape, such
53:58
Speaker 2: as one man looked at me and said, you know,
54:00
Speaker 2: I got to say, like, at least the son of
54:02
Speaker 2: a bitch that raped you had good taste. Those were
54:05
Speaker 2: the things I've heard for decades, and that's traumatic. And
54:09
Speaker 2: I didn't know that I didn't have to carry that,
54:12
Speaker 2: that I could deny that, that I could say that's
54:14
Speaker 2: not true and that's not right. And here's why. And
54:18
Speaker 2: you know, somebody listened to this podcast. I will promise
54:20
Speaker 2: you there will be somebody listen to this podcast. It's
54:23
Speaker 2: going to want to comment at the end of this
54:24
Speaker 2: and say, you know, Jennifer should die, Jennifer should go
54:27
Speaker 2: to prison, because this person's not going to think deep
54:29
Speaker 2: enough and far enough to say, wow, like if I
54:32
Speaker 2: was being raped and almost murdered. You know, what would
54:36
Speaker 2: I do? What would I say to my mother if
54:38
Speaker 2: this was her story? Like, what would I say to
54:41
Speaker 2: my daughter if this was my daughter's story? Would I
54:44
Speaker 2: blame my daughter? No, you wouldn't blame your daughter. I
54:46
Speaker 2: would hope you wouldn't blame your daughter.
54:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, then your story gets lost in the fray because
54:52
Speaker 3: thinking back about like how from the moment that you know,
54:56
Speaker 3: you didn't know his name yet, but Bobby Pool was
54:58
Speaker 3: in your apartment. The police even called you like the
55:01
Speaker 3: perfect victim because you were so you were doing your
55:05
Speaker 3: very best. The whole time you were studying him. You
55:07
Speaker 3: were planning on how do I get justice? Not just
55:10
Speaker 3: for yourself at first it was, but then also for
55:13
Speaker 3: other victims as well. Then you were getting confirmation the
55:16
Speaker 3: whole time. And so when you really stop and think
55:19
Speaker 3: about it, it's like, what did people want you to
55:20
Speaker 3: do differently? There was nothing you could have done differently.
55:25
Speaker 1: The woman who called and identified Ronald as being in
55:29
Speaker 1: front of your apartment complex at around three in the morning,
55:32
Speaker 1: wearing the same clothing. Your trauma and the ability of
55:37
Speaker 1: your memory to be so manipulated by the way the
55:41
Speaker 1: system was operating as you're telling me that, I'm like,
55:44
Speaker 1: I get that. That makes total sense. Her recollection of
55:48
Speaker 1: that is escaping me. Did you ever learn anything about
55:52
Speaker 1: what gave her that level of conviction to call and
55:54
Speaker 1: say that?
55:56
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I really appreciate you asking that question, because
55:59
Speaker 2: ron and I did not understand this until the book
56:01
Speaker 2: was published. And this woman came to visit Ronald and
56:05
Speaker 2: said that she had been given a type statement from
56:09
Speaker 2: another police officer to call in in exchange for drug
56:12
Speaker 2: charges against she and her son to be dropped.
56:16
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's mind blowing. It's actually worse than
56:19
Speaker 1: anything I thought you were going to say.
56:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And neither one of us knew about that
56:25
Speaker 2: phone call, obviously, And the police officer who gave her
56:29
Speaker 2: the type statement was not Mike Golden. It was another
56:32
Speaker 2: police officer who had just always had it against Ronald.
56:37
Speaker 2: He'd always hated Ronald, and ron talked about like when
56:40
Speaker 2: he I don't know how old he was, he was
56:42
Speaker 2: probably around twelve. This particular officer said to him, one
56:47
Speaker 2: of these days, I'm going to get you. And they said,
56:50
Speaker 2: you think you're a tough I'm not going to use
56:52
Speaker 2: the word going around dating white women, and he said,
56:56
Speaker 2: but I'm going to get your ass one day. And
56:58
Speaker 2: that was the cop.
56:59
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
57:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, when we tell that story and
57:03
Speaker 2: people will often ask me about that call, because that
57:06
Speaker 2: call was really important. It's what put Ron in the crosshairs.
57:10
Speaker 2: When we tell people that, people always have the shock
57:13
Speaker 2: and awe right, it's like, oh my god, I cannot
57:16
Speaker 2: tell you how many of these stories have something like
57:19
Speaker 2: that built in. There's like this bad actor and so
57:24
Speaker 2: again it's like this kind of knee jerk reaction to
57:28
Speaker 2: blame people. Yeah, there are people that should be blamed, absolutely,
57:32
Speaker 2: but it is not crime victims and survivors.
57:36
Speaker 3: We've all seen the news stories of someone being exonerated,
57:40
Speaker 3: walking down the steps of a courthouse, finally free. It
57:43
Speaker 3: is beyond horrifying that any innocent person is sent to prison,
57:48
Speaker 3: losing potentially years of their life for something they didn't do,
57:52
Speaker 3: and exonerations become a celebration that justice has finally prevailed.
57:57
Speaker 3: But the harm of wrongful conviction runs deep. There's no
58:02
Speaker 3: getting those years in prison back. And what we often
58:05
Speaker 3: don't think about is the ripple effect of this kind
58:08
Speaker 3: of system failure. There is the original crime victim, often
58:13
Speaker 3: still waiting for justice. Jennifer has worked with people who
58:17
Speaker 3: were victims of violent crimes who believed that their perpetrators
58:20
Speaker 3: had been caught, and then years later the case is
58:24
Speaker 3: reopened and still unsolved.
58:28
Speaker 2: No crime victim and no crime survivor, no marter victim
58:31
Speaker 2: family member wants an innocent person to go to prison. Ever,
58:35
Speaker 2: right like we want the person who violently removed our
58:39
Speaker 2: family members from this earth. We want the person who
58:42
Speaker 2: violated our bodies and left us for dead somewhere. We
58:46
Speaker 2: want that person to be apprehended and going to prison.
58:48
Speaker 2: We don't want an innocent person to go to prison,
58:51
Speaker 2: But for some reason, that gets lost in the conversation.
58:53
Speaker 2: Right And I think there's certain words that every victim
58:57
Speaker 2: and crime survivor from these cases that I've worked with
59:00
Speaker 2: will tell you. They feel isolated, They feel marginalized, They
59:05
Speaker 2: feel unnoticed that there was no one there for them
59:08
Speaker 2: at the time of the crime. There was no one
59:10
Speaker 2: there for them during the trial, there was no one
59:12
Speaker 2: there for them during the exoneration. These are consistent themes
59:16
Speaker 2: that we see with every victim and survivor, because when
59:20
Speaker 2: an exoneration happens and you pick up the newspaper or
59:24
Speaker 2: you listen to the story on the news. What you
59:27
Speaker 2: don't hear about is who the victims and survivors were.
59:31
Speaker 2: It's only about the exonery. And that is not to
59:34
Speaker 2: say that the exonerated person that their story should not
59:39
Speaker 2: be highlighted because it's horrific and what was done to
59:42
Speaker 2: them and what those years look like is absolutely not okay.
59:48
Speaker 2: They suffered decades, decades of being separated from their families,
59:53
Speaker 2: of watching their children grow up without them, of people
59:57
Speaker 2: dying and they couldn't be there to grieve them. They
1:00:00
Speaker 2: were physically assaulted in prison. They come out with absolutely
1:00:04
Speaker 2: no resources. Their families are broken. The system failed them.
1:00:07
Speaker 2: That's absolutely across the board. Yes, and the victims and survivors,
1:00:13
Speaker 2: many of them, their children grew up without them because
1:00:16
Speaker 2: they can't function. People are brutally kidnapped and tortured and murdered,
1:00:23
Speaker 2: and that these families have to reconcile that the last
1:00:26
Speaker 2: moments of their child, their wife, their brother, their mother
1:00:30
Speaker 2: on this earth was torture. And then the system comes
1:00:36
Speaker 2: behind it and says, oh, by the way, the person
1:00:39
Speaker 2: we thought that did this to you or your family
1:00:41
Speaker 2: member didn't and we have no interest in closing the
1:00:45
Speaker 2: case ever, and so you're never going to know, or
1:00:48
Speaker 2: if you're a rape survivor, they come back and say, oh,
1:00:51
Speaker 2: and by the way, we know who did it to you,
1:00:53
Speaker 2: but the statute of limitations have taken place, and the
1:00:56
Speaker 2: guy who raped you and sandomized you lives an hour
1:00:58
Speaker 2: down the road, but we can't prosecute him because you
1:01:01
Speaker 2: live in a state that has statute of limitations. So sorry,
1:01:05
Speaker 2: That's what people need to understand. The system when it
1:01:08
Speaker 2: fails in a wrongful conviction, fails all of us. It's
1:01:12
Speaker 2: not just me and Ronald, but the community got failed.
1:01:17
Speaker 2: It was failed, and the only person who wins in
1:01:20
Speaker 2: any of these cases is the perpetrator. There are no winners.
1:01:24
Speaker 2: And so when I would meet with crime victims and survivors,
1:01:27
Speaker 2: that was really kind of where we all were. It
1:01:31
Speaker 2: was this place of the system failed us, and now
1:01:34
Speaker 2: the system wants to blame us, and then we hear
1:01:36
Speaker 2: exneries of course being blamed. We have a lot of
1:01:39
Speaker 2: people that will look at me and say, yeah, but
1:01:41
Speaker 2: you know, the guy was like, he was using drugs
1:01:44
Speaker 2: and he was in the bad part of town. It's like,
1:01:46
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that innocent people should go to prison.
1:01:48
Speaker 2: I mean it was nineteen eighty four, and best practices
1:01:51
Speaker 2: back then were archaic. I often when I do speeches,
1:01:55
Speaker 2: I will tell people that, you know, the medical profession
1:01:58
Speaker 2: is always updating, right, It's always trying to get better processes,
1:02:02
Speaker 2: better procedures, and to cut down on you know, infections
1:02:06
Speaker 2: and whatever. But the criminal justice system hasn't caught up
1:02:08
Speaker 2: like that. And so I'll often ask an audience if
1:02:11
Speaker 2: somebody came to you and said you have to have
1:02:15
Speaker 2: open heart surgery, I can do it like we did
1:02:17
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty seven, or I can do it like
1:02:20
Speaker 2: we do now in twenty twenty five. Which would you choose.
1:02:23
Speaker 2: I would imagine close to one hundred percent of people
1:02:26
Speaker 2: are going to say, oh, can we do it like
1:02:28
Speaker 2: you know now? You know what we know now? But
1:02:33
Speaker 2: our legal system still operates and in a very very
1:02:37
Speaker 2: old fashioned, archaic wild West. I'm the marshal of this town.
1:02:42
Speaker 2: Don't tell me what to do. Way, And I travel
1:02:46
Speaker 2: and I do a lot of legislation in different states
1:02:49
Speaker 2: and in different jurisdictions. And I will tell you that
1:02:51
Speaker 2: there are police departments in this country today that just
1:02:56
Speaker 2: refuse to do best practices as it relates to eyewitness
1:03:00
Speaker 2: identification procedures, which we have, we know better ways to
1:03:03
Speaker 2: do it. It's just like, don't tell me what to do.
1:03:06
Speaker 2: It's about closing the case and listen. There's a lot
1:03:09
Speaker 2: of people that will say, well, listen, the guy's a
1:03:10
Speaker 2: bad guy. He was a bad guy, and it's like, Okay,
1:03:13
Speaker 2: he might have been a bad guy, but don't we
1:03:15
Speaker 2: want the right bad guy. I mean, that's really important.
1:03:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is an interesting part, and it's covered in
1:03:22
Speaker 3: the book that Ronald did have a criminal history, and
1:03:25
Speaker 3: so some people could look at him and say, oh,
1:03:27
Speaker 3: that's a bad guy. But there were so many factors
1:03:30
Speaker 3: obviously that played into that that you also described of
1:03:33
Speaker 3: sort of the environment of the place where also he
1:03:35
Speaker 3: grew up and being a black kid and then a
1:03:38
Speaker 3: black man in that environment and not really being set
1:03:41
Speaker 3: up to succeed. And it's so clear based on who
1:03:44
Speaker 3: he became that he's a wonderful guy. So you know,
1:03:47
Speaker 3: it just adds another layer of complication, and it always
1:03:50
Speaker 3: just reminds me. It reminds me of what you said earlier,
1:03:52
Speaker 3: where you were like the general public likes to have
1:03:54
Speaker 3: an easy person to blame or an easy answer. Things
1:03:57
Speaker 3: are so one way or the other, and it's like
1:04:00
Speaker 3: that's just really not often how real life is.
1:04:03
Speaker 2: It's often very very gray. And I think most of
1:04:07
Speaker 2: us want to believe that if I lived in this
1:04:10
Speaker 2: certain circumstance that I wouldn't behave that way, But you
1:04:13
Speaker 2: don't know that. And the other part of at least
1:04:17
Speaker 2: my experience, is that we live in a very disposable
1:04:20
Speaker 2: society where we just want to toss people away and
1:04:23
Speaker 2: not look at them, and prison has done that for us.
1:04:27
Speaker 2: It's created a huge problem in this country where we
1:04:30
Speaker 2: have systematically put you know, entire groups of people in
1:04:34
Speaker 2: certain buckets. There's a reason why prisons are not beside
1:04:37
Speaker 2: country clubs and golf courses, because what you don't see
1:04:40
Speaker 2: doesn't exist. And so for people that look like me,
1:04:44
Speaker 2: that makes us feel better about the world we live in.
1:04:47
Speaker 2: But I will tell you that I've met many, many, many,
1:04:50
Speaker 2: many hundreds and hundreds of people that have been locked
1:04:53
Speaker 2: away behind bars, many of them innocent, but some of
1:04:55
Speaker 2: them not. And we have wasted tremendous talent and until
1:04:59
Speaker 2: life and gifts and creativity by just blanket putting people
1:05:06
Speaker 2: in prison, and we've certainly not created a safer world
1:05:09
Speaker 2: to live in.
1:05:11
Speaker 3: What is the mission of healing justice? We're going to work?
1:05:14
Speaker 2: Do you do well? Healing Justice? We're ten years old
1:05:16
Speaker 2: this year, and really it was born from this place
1:05:20
Speaker 2: where I had already experienced, and where I was around
1:05:23
Speaker 2: communities of victims and survivors and ex honeries, and I
1:05:27
Speaker 2: kept hearing about these terrible stories of the aftermath. Right like,
1:05:32
Speaker 2: after the exoneration happens, everybody thinks that the ex honery
1:05:35
Speaker 2: is going to get ten million dollars or the case
1:05:37
Speaker 2: is going to be solved, and that's simply not true.
1:05:40
Speaker 2: So I started Healing Justice in an attempt to try
1:05:43
Speaker 2: to bring people together who had been equally hurt and
1:05:46
Speaker 2: harmed into a space to use restorative justice principles to
1:05:51
Speaker 2: help us all talk about what had happened so we
1:05:54
Speaker 2: could engage in healing. And so we really do kind
1:05:58
Speaker 2: of two things. I mean, I are too big. Missions
1:06:01
Speaker 2: are to address the harm caused by wrongful convictions and
1:06:05
Speaker 2: to help educate the system in ways that we can
1:06:08
Speaker 2: do better, particularly by crime victims and survivors, and what
1:06:12
Speaker 2: that looks like. The other part of The work we
1:06:15
Speaker 2: do is bringing directly impacted individuals together to create connections
1:06:20
Speaker 2: and community and help people engage in what healing looks like.
1:06:24
Speaker 2: So we do that different ways. We do that through
1:06:27
Speaker 2: peer support, we do that through our healing retreats, we
1:06:31
Speaker 2: do that through listening sessions. And it's in the space
1:06:34
Speaker 2: of community that belonging starts happening, and belonging is where
1:06:39
Speaker 2: we can create the healing. If we don't feel like
1:06:41
Speaker 2: we belong, there's no way we can heal. We can't
1:06:44
Speaker 2: heal in isolation. There's just no way. We heal in community,
1:06:48
Speaker 2: and we heal when we're heard. We can heal when
1:06:51
Speaker 2: we can see each other.
1:06:56
Speaker 3: I am so glad that Jennifer came on our podcast
1:06:59
Speaker 3: and told her story.
1:07:01
Speaker 1: That was so powerful because it impacted her life in
1:07:04
Speaker 1: so many ways, and then she sort of turned that
1:07:07
Speaker 1: situation on its head to do a lot of good,
1:07:10
Speaker 1: which brings us to Healing Justice Project. The Healing Justice
1:07:14
Speaker 1: Project provides crime victims and ex hoonneries with resources and
1:07:18
Speaker 1: community for healing.
1:07:20
Speaker 3: Yeah you can visit them at Healing Justiceproject dot org
1:07:25
Speaker 3: and they also hold these retreats in which crime victims
1:07:30
Speaker 3: and exoneries are able to come together, meet each other
1:07:33
Speaker 3: and heal together, is kind of how Jennifer would describe it.
1:07:38
Speaker 3: There's a video on their website from one of these retreats.
1:07:41
Speaker 3: It's really powerful to watch. I think that one of
1:07:44
Speaker 3: the things that really stood out to me and Jennifer's
1:07:46
Speaker 3: interview is talking about how being a crime victim and
1:07:49
Speaker 3: going through this experience of a wrongful conviction it really
1:07:54
Speaker 3: left her feeling alone and like pitted her against Ronald
1:07:59
Speaker 3: Cotton in a way. Once they met each other, she
1:08:02
Speaker 3: really felt like there was community that started to be
1:08:04
Speaker 3: built and healing from that. And so she took that
1:08:07
Speaker 3: inspiration and used it to create these retreats where she
1:08:10
Speaker 3: brings crime victims and xuneries together, not usually from the
1:08:14
Speaker 3: same case, but she said that it really helps for
1:08:18
Speaker 3: people to talk to someone, for someone maybe whose family
1:08:21
Speaker 3: member was murdered, to be able to speak with an
1:08:24
Speaker 3: ex Honay who was wrongfully convicted for a murder, and
1:08:28
Speaker 3: so she facilitates those conversations and I think that's just
1:08:31
Speaker 3: really unique and cool. It's a powerful video, yeah, and
1:08:35
Speaker 3: it really speaks to you know. In the interview, Jennifer
1:08:38
Speaker 3: said when the system fails to convict the right person,
1:08:41
Speaker 3: then they feel everyone involved. Yeah, and then I have
1:08:44
Speaker 3: to mention. So Jennifer and Ronald Cotton co authored a book.
1:08:49
Speaker 3: She mentions it in the interview. It's called Picking Cotton,
1:08:52
Speaker 3: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption, and it's really good.
1:08:57
Speaker 3: We wanted to speak with Ronald, he is spending time
1:09:00
Speaker 3: with his family and did not want to do an interview,
1:09:03
Speaker 3: which we totally understand. But half of the book is
1:09:06
Speaker 3: written from Jennifer's perspective, and then half of it is
1:09:08
Speaker 3: written from Ronald's perspective. So there's a whole other part
1:09:12
Speaker 3: of this story in the book that if you wanted
1:09:16
Speaker 3: to hear it, definitely go check it out. There's obviously
1:09:19
Speaker 3: so much in here from Ronald's perspective that we can't cover.
1:09:23
Speaker 3: People should just read the book. But one of the
1:09:25
Speaker 3: stories floored me. He was in North Carolina Central Prison
1:09:29
Speaker 3: and he talks about being mistaken for this other guy,
1:09:34
Speaker 3: Bobby Pool, like even the guards called him Pool, Hey Pool,
1:09:38
Speaker 3: and he was like, that's not me. So he meets
1:09:42
Speaker 3: this guy Bobby Pool in prison, who we now know
1:09:45
Speaker 3: was the actual assailant of Jennifer's and Ronald sees him
1:09:50
Speaker 3: and says that he looks like the sketch, the original sketch,
1:09:55
Speaker 3: and kind of looks like Ronald as well, and he,
1:09:58
Speaker 3: you know, confronts him. And then at some point Ronald's
1:10:02
Speaker 3: sister comes to visit him, and he said that he
1:10:04
Speaker 3: had this creepy interaction where Bobby Pool came up to
1:10:08
Speaker 3: him afterward and was like, Hey, can I get your
1:10:11
Speaker 3: sister's address so I can write her? And quick thinking
1:10:14
Speaker 3: as he was, he was like, you know, she probably
1:10:17
Speaker 3: wouldn't write you, but what I can do is we
1:10:20
Speaker 3: could take a picture together and I could send it
1:10:22
Speaker 3: to her and maybe she'll want to write you. So
1:10:24
Speaker 3: he said, for two dollars, you could get like a
1:10:26
Speaker 3: polaroid picture. In the book, it shows the polaroid picture
1:10:31
Speaker 3: of Ronald Cotton and Bobby Pool. And then, of course
1:10:33
Speaker 3: he didn't send it to his sister. He sent it
1:10:35
Speaker 3: to his attorney. He was sent instant in January of
1:10:38
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty five to life in prison plus fifty years.
1:10:41
Speaker 3: He meets Bobby Pool in nineteen eighty six and takes
1:10:44
Speaker 3: this photo in September of nineteen eighty six and sends
1:10:48
Speaker 3: it to his attorney. But he still spends, you know,
1:10:53
Speaker 3: nine more years in prison before he's exonerated, and the
1:10:55
Speaker 3: whole time he was like, I know, it's this guy
1:10:59
Speaker 3: Bobby Pool, and he was right.
1:11:00
Speaker 1: That is unimaginable.
1:11:01
Speaker 3: It's a really good book. Jennifer and Ronald both talk
1:11:05
Speaker 3: in the book about a lot of their activism that
1:11:07
Speaker 3: they have done together over the years, speaking at different
1:11:10
Speaker 3: events and working together to try to raise awareness about
1:11:14
Speaker 3: wrongful convictions.
1:11:15
Speaker 1: Right because there are a lot of people in prison
1:11:18
Speaker 1: and proclaiming their innocence, and now having gone through this experience,
1:11:22
Speaker 1: they're making sure those people have a voice. According to
1:11:25
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project, they have two hundred and three clients
1:11:30
Speaker 1: that have been exonerated by DNA evidence, and sixty three
1:11:35
Speaker 1: percent of wrongful convictions that they've worked on involved eyewitness misidentification,
1:11:40
Speaker 1: which is exactly how Ronald Cotton ended up in prison.
1:11:46
Speaker 3: That's a staggering percentage. Sixty three percent involved eyewitness misidentification,
1:11:51
Speaker 3: and yet from everything that we've learned, it makes sense.
1:11:56
Speaker 3: So the lead detective Mike Golden, who Jennifer's about, he
1:12:01
Speaker 3: actually went on to transform the way that North Carolina
1:12:05
Speaker 3: approaches lineups and was really influential in instituting double blind
1:12:10
Speaker 3: procedures so that the lead investigators in the case are
1:12:13
Speaker 3: no longer the people who are there with a eyewitness
1:12:17
Speaker 3: making the identifications.
1:12:19
Speaker 1: Oh, it's like now it has to be a more
1:12:21
Speaker 1: unbiased person being the middleman there.
1:12:23
Speaker 3: That's great. Yeah, so that you don't have that situation
1:12:26
Speaker 3: where someone is giving that confirmation and saying, yes, that's
1:12:29
Speaker 3: our suspect, right and reaffirming it.
1:12:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, because then she went on to misidentify him again
1:12:35
Speaker 1: because of that. Yeah, the fact that like she identified
1:12:39
Speaker 1: him again in court and then again at the retrial
1:12:42
Speaker 1: when Bobby Pool was actually there, she didn't recognize him.
1:12:46
Speaker 1: That just says so much about what our brains and
1:12:48
Speaker 1: memory does that there's so much that's unreliable really about
1:12:53
Speaker 1: eyewitness identification. You know, Jennifer had this added pressure because
1:12:57
Speaker 1: the other victim, who we now know to be Bobby Poll,
1:13:00
Speaker 1: said no, I cannot provide eyewitness testimony. She was unable
1:13:05
Speaker 1: to say what he looked like, and so Jennifer was
1:13:08
Speaker 1: being reaffirmed by investigators and also this idea that she
1:13:12
Speaker 1: was helping the other victim.
1:13:14
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, thanks for listening, and we will be back
1:13:17
Speaker 3: next week for an off record.
1:13:20
Speaker 1: If you have a story for us, we would love
1:13:22
Speaker 1: to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia
1:13:26
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram at
1:13:28
Speaker 1: the Knife Podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.
1:13:31
Speaker 3: This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
1:13:34
Speaker 3: by me Hannah Smith.
1:13:35
Speaker 2: And me Paytia Eaton.
1:13:37
Speaker 1: Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi. This episode
1:13:41
Speaker 1: was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
1:13:45
Speaker 3: Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.
1:13:47
Speaker 1: Artwork fi Vanessa Lilac.
1:13:49
Speaker 3: Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.