Latest / The Knife: A True Crime Podcast / Update and Jennifer Thompson ReRelease

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Update and Jennifer Thompson ReRelease · The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

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  Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: the speaker and do not necessarily represent the Knife or
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: exactly Right Media. Hi Patia, Hey Hannah. Well, it has
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: been a week. It has been a week, and it
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: has been a morning. It really has. We have an
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  Speaker 1: update for you to start it off. I'll just say
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  Speaker 1: we had an episode that was going to come out
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  Speaker 1: this week. We were really excited about it. We worked
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  Speaker 1: really hard on it and felt really strongly about it,
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  Speaker 1: but we have hit a major roadblock. Yeah. So what
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  Speaker 1: happened is we were working on a you know, I
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  Speaker 1: guess you call it like a partially wrong full conviction story.
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  Speaker 1: A man who in his early twenties in the nineteen
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  Speaker 1: nineties was convicted on multiple charges, one of those including
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  Speaker 1: the murder of a young woman, and it was he
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  Speaker 1: and his friend who were both charged with the murder,
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  Speaker 1: among other charges related to what happened that night. And
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  Speaker 1: so in two thousand and two it came out that
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  Speaker 1: the person who he was with that night took full
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  Speaker 1: responsibility for the murder, which is what had been his
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  Speaker 1: story all along. And then in two thousand and eight,
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  Speaker 1: there was an evidentiary hearing where he went on record
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  Speaker 1: and said it. And so since two thousand and eight,
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  Speaker 1: this person who we were doing this story about.
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  Speaker 2: Who was convicted of first degree murder and had always said,
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  Speaker 2: you know, admitted that he was there but that he
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  Speaker 2: actually didn't participate in the murder at all, tried to
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  Speaker 2: stop it, and he'd been claiming his innocence in that regard,
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  Speaker 2: but had been convicted and was serving a sentence of
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  Speaker 2: eighty two years.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so he got a lot of support following
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  Speaker 1: this person coming out and taking full responsibility for her death,
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  Speaker 1: not for what took place after, but for her death.
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  Speaker 1: He finally, after five parole hearings yesterday, was granted parole.
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  Speaker 2: We actually did the interview in December of twenty twenty
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  Speaker 2: five and have been working on it, and you know,
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  Speaker 2: at that point, part of the reason for doing the
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  Speaker 2: story was to raise awareness of his case. Like we've
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  Speaker 2: done other wrongful conviction stories in the past. There was
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  Speaker 2: a lot of from our perspective, a lot of evidence
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  Speaker 2: that this man was wrongfully convicted and had already served
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  Speaker 2: thirty one years in prison. But it's really hard to
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  Speaker 2: get someone out of the prison system once they're in it,
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  Speaker 2: even when you have really compelling information that shows that
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  Speaker 2: they were, you know, wrongfully convicted. And so we spoke
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  Speaker 2: with one of the members of his team about his
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  Speaker 2: case in hopes that it would help to raise more awareness.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 2: So we did all this work and then literally the
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  Speaker 2: week that it's supposed to come out, he gets a
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  Speaker 2: parole hearing, which amazing, incredible for him. Right, And you
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  Speaker 2: attended the parole hearing.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I attended. Virtually there were five people on the
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  Speaker 1: parole board. Three gave him yes's and two were nos.
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  Speaker 1: And the two people who dissented or said no felt
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  Speaker 1: really strongly about it. And one of those reasons, understandably,
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  Speaker 1: is that this has caused the victim's family immeasurable pain,
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  Speaker 1: you know, a loss that cannot be undone. And so
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  Speaker 1: because this person who has been in prison has gotten
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  Speaker 1: a lot of support, an unfortunate fallout of that is
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  Speaker 1: that sometimes his supporters had reached out to her family
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  Speaker 1: and caused the victims family the victim's family and caused
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  Speaker 1: her additional distress. And so we didn't know what was happening,
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  Speaker 1: and we certainly didn't reach out certainly not and would
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  Speaker 1: not ever agree with that, right because you know, she
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  Speaker 1: is at the center of the story. She is the
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  Speaker 1: person whose life was taken, and so you know, it
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  Speaker 1: was said at the parole hearing and afterward privately that
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  Speaker 1: any mention of her could jeopardize this parole in the press.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and since we interviewed one of his supporters, us
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  Speaker 2: airing the episode with her talking about this case could
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  Speaker 2: actually jeopardize this man's parole, right.
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  Speaker 1: And you know, some things are more important than the podcasting.
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  Speaker 1: And so Hannah and I are aligned on that it
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  Speaker 1: wasn't the right decision to air the episode this week,
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  Speaker 1: and we feel really strongly about people who aren't either
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  Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted or have done their time and deserve to
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  Speaker 1: be paroled, And so we're going to run another episode.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I just want to say, like our show, ultimately,
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  Speaker 2: we're not ignorant to the fact that this is entertainment,
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  Speaker 2: but we've always also wanted it to be more than that,
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  Speaker 2: which is why we do the research and try to
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  Speaker 2: present information to people and be educational as well. We
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  Speaker 2: also really like to highlight cases where there's an injustice
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  Speaker 2: and hopes that that injustice could be righted. And when
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  Speaker 2: we first recorded the episode, it felt like that, it
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  Speaker 2: felt like, this feels really good to get this information
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  Speaker 2: out there. At this point, releasing it would really just
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  Speaker 2: do the opposite of that, and so it goes against
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  Speaker 2: our personal ethics and the ethics of the show. Even
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  Speaker 2: though it's a bummer because we love the episode and
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  Speaker 2: we're hopeful that maybe as time goes by it could
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  Speaker 2: resolve that we would safely be able to put it out.
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  Speaker 2: That is our hope, but for now we're going to
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  Speaker 2: hold off.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, And you know, just to add to that, it's like,
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  Speaker 1: you know, we're working on the true crime space, but
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  Speaker 1: we have this mission driven perspective on true crime, and
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  Speaker 1: when we're telling stories, we look for those opportunities where
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  Speaker 1: they exist, and sometimes that requires flexibility.
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  Speaker 2: And so here we are, and so, like you said,
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  Speaker 2: we decided that we're going to re release an older episode.
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  Speaker 2: It feels appropriate. It is also a story about a
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  Speaker 2: wrongful conviction. It was an early episode and it is
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  Speaker 2: an interview with Jennifer Thompson. It's honestly one of my.
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  Speaker 1: It's an incredible story and we have so many new
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  Speaker 1: listeners since we aired that episode that I'm hopeful it
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  Speaker 1: will be an exciting listen for everyone who sticks with us.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we will be back next week with a
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  Speaker 2: brand new episode. Thanks for being here.
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  Speaker 3: I remember thinking about what it would feel like to die,
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  Speaker 3: and I remember wondering how much it will hurt.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Knife. I'm Hannah Smith.
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  Speaker 1: I'm patia Eton. This week we speak with Jennifer Thompson.
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  Speaker 1: Jennifer is the founder of Healing Justice Project, an organization
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  Speaker 1: that addresses the harm caused by wrongful convictions.
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  Speaker 2: Jennifer's life changed forever when, at twenty two years old,
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  Speaker 2: she became I'm the victim of a violent crime. But
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  Speaker 2: a decade later, what happened to Jennifer would make headlines
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  Speaker 2: for a reason so unexpected. It changed the course of
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  Speaker 2: her life forever. Now, over thirty years later, she joins
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  Speaker 2: us to reflect on what happened and how everything went
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  Speaker 2: so wrong.
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  Speaker 1: Our conversation with Jennifer took place on February twenty first,
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. Let's get into the interview.
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  Speaker 2: Hi, Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us on
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  Speaker 2: the podcast.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
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  Speaker 2: We've been really excited about this interview, so let's just
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  Speaker 2: jump right into it. Why don't you give the audience
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  Speaker 2: a short intro into who you are?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I am a wife, I am a mother of triplets.
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  Speaker 3: I'm the grandmother to five amazing grandchildren. I'm the co
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  Speaker 3: author to the book Picking Cotton, our memoir of injustice
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  Speaker 3: and Redemption. The founder of Healing Justice Project, which is
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  Speaker 3: a national organization dedicated to helping all of those who
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  Speaker 3: have been impacted by wrongful convictions kind of navigate the
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  Speaker 3: healing space. Born and raised in North Carolina, and I
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  Speaker 3: was born in nineteen sixty two, So I grew up
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  Speaker 3: in really the segregated south half of our town was
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  Speaker 3: you know, wealthy and white, and the other half the town,
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  Speaker 3: literally across the train tracks were poor and black. Winston
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  Speaker 3: Salem is a town where RG Rentals Tobacco company was founded,
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  Speaker 3: Haines Hosiery was founded. So it's like enormous wealth but
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  Speaker 3: also enormous poverty. And that was where I was raised,
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  Speaker 3: is where I was born, It's how I grew up.
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  Speaker 3: I often tell people that you don't really notice things
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  Speaker 3: that are wrong until you're removed from it. So the
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  Speaker 3: waters that I was swimming in as a child were
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  Speaker 3: segregation I grew up in a white, relatively privileged home.
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  Speaker 3: So many of us, particularly people that are white, we
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  Speaker 3: grow up and we're given certain things almost as a birthright.
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  Speaker 3: You know that the criminal justice system works, and it's effective,
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  Speaker 3: and it's fair, and it's equal, and it's impartial and
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  Speaker 3: it's balanced. And that was certainly the way I was
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  Speaker 3: brought up. I was brought up to believe that we
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  Speaker 3: had the greatest criminal justice system in the world, that
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  Speaker 3: if you ended up in an orange jumpsuit behind a
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  Speaker 3: defense table, you were absolutely guilty of a crime. You're
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  Speaker 3: a criminal, you deserve whatever punishment the system met it
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  Speaker 3: out to you. And if you sat at the prosecutor's
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  Speaker 3: side of the table, you were a victim. And it
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  Speaker 3: was clear and it was clean. Within my family structure,
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  Speaker 3: I knew from a very young age that I didn't belong.
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  Speaker 3: I ended up at Elon College in nineteen eighty three.
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  Speaker 3: I felt like I had found my footing, maybe for
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  Speaker 3: the first time really ever. And I was also dating,
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  Speaker 3: you know what, would have been a very respectable young man,
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  Speaker 3: and in my family's eyes, that was important. Right women
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  Speaker 3: were to marry a respectable man. And he checked all
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  Speaker 3: the boxes and so in nineteen eighty three, I was
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  Speaker 3: in a really great place in my life. I had
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  Speaker 3: everything that I had hoped I would have. My goals
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  Speaker 3: were to finish college and then to go on and
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  Speaker 3: get a master's and become a physical therapist. July of
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  Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four, July twenty eighth was a very hot day.
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  Speaker 3: I mean July in the South, the humidity is unfathomable.
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  Speaker 3: So my boyfriend and I our plan was to go
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  Speaker 3: play tennis. And I was a tennis player. I played
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  Speaker 3: on the tennis team in high school. I played a
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  Speaker 3: year at Elon College on tennis at the tennis team.
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  Speaker 3: And his family was a member of the Burlington Country Club.
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  Speaker 3: So we were to go play tennis, and we did,
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  Speaker 3: and the rest of the day was kind of, you know,
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  Speaker 3: a typical twenty two year old college student day. He
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  Speaker 3: took me back home later that after noon to my apartment,
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  Speaker 3: and he was going to go home and take a shower,
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  Speaker 3: and then we were going to meet up for dinner
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  Speaker 3: and then go to a summer party at one of
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  Speaker 3: his friend's houses. So he picked me up probably around
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  Speaker 3: six o'clock and took.
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  Speaker 4: Me to a Chinese food buffet because I had a
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  Speaker 4: very hot metabolism in those days, and I ate just
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  Speaker 4: really unbelievable amounts of food at any given sitting, and
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  Speaker 4: so nobody in the right mind would have ever taken
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  Speaker 4: me to an O la carte restaurant.
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  Speaker 3: He always took me to a buffet because it was,
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  Speaker 3: you know, for two ninety nine or three ninety nine,
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  Speaker 3: I could eat as much as I wanted to eat,
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: which it did. I sat down and began to consume
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  Speaker 3: just vast amounts of sodium laced products. But because I'd
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  Speaker 3: been dehydrated earlier in the day, it hit really hard
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  Speaker 3: and I came down with a massive headache, just massive,
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  Speaker 3: and I told him that there was just no way
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  Speaker 3: I could go to this party, that I was sick
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  Speaker 3: and I needed to go home. He took me back
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  Speaker 3: to my apartment, probably around eight o'clock, gave me some water,
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  Speaker 3: brought me some aspirin, and my last memories that night
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  Speaker 3: were him standing near me kind of rubbing my back,
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  Speaker 3: just to make sure that I wasn't going to be
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  Speaker 3: violently sick, and that was my last memory of him
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  Speaker 3: that night. The police reports the following day would show
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  Speaker 3: that he left some time between nine and nine thirty pm,
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  Speaker 3: but I had gone to sleep, and so I did
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  Speaker 3: not hear him leave, didn't hear anything at all. I
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  Speaker 3: lived in an old complex and none of these apartments
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  Speaker 3: had central air. They all had those window boxes for
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  Speaker 3: air conditioning. The window unit in my bedroom was at
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  Speaker 3: my headboard, so when it would come on at night,
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  Speaker 3: you could not hear anything. Therefore, I did not hear
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  Speaker 3: him leave. But I also didn't hear police sirens that
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  Speaker 3: were all throughout my apartment complex at midnight. They were
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  Speaker 3: searching for a man who had attempted to break into
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  Speaker 3: my neighbor's apartment across the parking lot. He had broken
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  Speaker 3: the kitchen door window, and she fortunately happened to be
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: awake at the time watching television, and when she heard
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  Speaker 3: the glass break, she looked into the kitchen and saw
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  Speaker 3: a hand reaching trying to unlock her door, and she
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  Speaker 3: called the police. He heard her call the police, and
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  Speaker 3: she told the police officers that he had on a
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  Speaker 3: white neck glove and a dark blue shirt with three
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  Speaker 3: white stripes on his biceps. But he took off running
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  Speaker 3: before they could get him. And so I didn't hear
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  Speaker 3: anything at all until around three o'clock in the morning
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  Speaker 3: when I heard something like feet shuffling on my carpet
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  Speaker 3: in my bedroom. Now I lived alone, so hearing movement
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  Speaker 3: in your bedroom is alarming. But you know, when you're
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  Speaker 3: in that space of awake but not really awake, you
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  Speaker 3: think you might have heard something, but you're not positive
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  Speaker 3: if you heard it. Do you go back to sleep
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  Speaker 3: or do you wake up and try to identify a
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  Speaker 3: noise right which is really frightening, particularly for women that
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  Speaker 3: are living alone. And so when I opened my eyes,
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  Speaker 3: I looked to the left side of my mattress and
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  Speaker 3: saw the top of someone's head and I could see
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  Speaker 3: him moving. And my first thought, and my first impulse,
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  Speaker 3: was to believe that this was probably my boyfriend, that
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  Speaker 3: he had fallen asleep on my floor he was trying
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  Speaker 3: not to wake me as he was leaving to go home.
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  Speaker 3: I didn't know what time it was at that point,
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: but when I thought about it, I realized that it
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  Speaker 3: could not be my boyfriend. He didn't stay the night
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  Speaker 3: with me. He never did because his mother lived about
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  Speaker 3: a mile and a half two miles from where my
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: apartment was, and she was very, very intentional about where
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: he was at all times. So I knew that it
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  Speaker 3: wasn't my boyfriend, and that's when I said, who is that?
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  Speaker 3: Who's there?
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  Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
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  Speaker 3: Very quickly. A man jumped up up on my bed.
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  Speaker 3: I screamed, and he straddled my body with his legs
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  Speaker 3: and put a knife to my left side of my
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  Speaker 3: throat and covered my mouth with a glove and told
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  Speaker 3: me to shut up where he would kill me.
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  Speaker 2: So terrifying.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is terrifying. And I think it's important for
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: people to understand what happens with trauma and memory because
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: I think human beings just instinctively think that they would
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: never make certain mistakes right. Human beings instinctively will say
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: I would never falsely confess. But if you've never been
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: in a position of being threatened and coerced and tortured,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: you actually don't know what you would do. The same
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: applies for the ability to kind of make an eyewitness identification.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Everybody thinks it you know, well, I know what I saw,
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: but you don't know what you would do if you're
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: wondering if you're going to be murdered. It's about twenty
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: minutes total throughout the whole entire event.
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  Speaker 2: What was going through your mind? Was it just I
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: got to survive this?
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: You know, There's a couple of things that went in
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: my mind. I mean, the initial thing, obviously that went
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: in my mind was I'm in a lot of danger.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: He's nineteen eighty four. There's no cell phones, there was
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: no house alarms. I didn't own a gun. He's on
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: top of me. I can smell alcohol. I knew he'd
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: probably been using drugs. There's a knife. I'm small, He's
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: probably done this before. So for me, the first thing
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: that went through my mind was do not physically fight,
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: because you're gonna die. And I remember thinking about what
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: it would feel like to die, and I remember wondering
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: how much it will hurt, and is it going to
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: be a quick death or will it be a slow death?
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: And will it take a long time before I die?
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: And then you think about the people that you love
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: and what their experience is going to be like to
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: have to come and look at your body and identify it.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: Those are the things initially that went through my body.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: But then I hate bullies, and I've never backed down
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: from a bully, and I remember kind of like pivoting
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: and thinking there's a chance I'm going to die, but
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: it won't be on my back. If there is a
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: way to survive it, I'm going to figure it out.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: And so that's when I began to like really calculate
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: and think. And so I remember thinking to myself, like, Jennifer,
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: you're smart. You've not been drinking, you've not been using drugs.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: You know, you're a straight A student. You've got a
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: good memory. So for me, staying alive was equated to
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: pay attention to this person. Figure out what he looks like,
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Listen to everything he says. Try to pick up on
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: a lisp or some type of a speech that you
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: know is just different. I remember thinking, look for things
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: he can't change later. Look for scars, tattoos or you know,
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: missing teeth. There's something that he couldn't change later on.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: And those were the things that initially I started paying
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: attention to. It was at the point when he tried
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: to kiss me that I was going to vomit and
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: I didn't want to throw up and choke on it
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: because I was on my back, so I turned my
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: head and that would actually end up saving my life
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: that night when he said, relax, I'm not gonna hurt you.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: And I don't know why I said it, but I said,
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: I can't. I'm afraid of knives. I have a phobia,
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: an actual phobia of knives. And if you'll just get
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: off of me and take the knife to the front
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: door and walk down the steps and drop it on
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: my car, I'll let you come back in. And for
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: whatever reason, the power dying just shifted right there, so
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: I was able to get him off of me. I
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: was able to grab a blanket off the edge of
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: my bed to wrap it around myself because I knew
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: that the police were going to ask me certain questions.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: They were going to ask me how tall he was
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: and how much did he weigh, And so I had
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: to figure out how tall he was by me being
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: close enough to him to figure out the difference between
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: a five foot one person and him, And so I
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: was able to kind of figure that out. And I
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: was able to look at his clothing because I knew that, again,
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: the police were going to ask me those questions. He
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: had on dark blue canvas shoes that slipped on your feet,
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: there were no shoelaces. He had on khaki colored army
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: fatigue pants. He had on a dark blue shirt with
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: three white stripes on the biceps, and he had white
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: gloves on his hands. He was African American. He was
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: in his early twenties. He had short clothes, cropped hair,
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: He had a pencil thin mustache. Like every single thing
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: that I could remember that night meant I was going
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: to live. And over the next few minutes, he pretended
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: to drop the knife out of the front door. He
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: came back in and grabbed me and tried to pull
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: me back into the bedroom, and I told him I
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: had to go to the bathroom first, because my plan
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: was for him to go to the car and I
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: was going to lock the door and then call the police.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: But he had already cut my phone lines earlier, and
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: so when that planned didn't work, I said, I have
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: to go to the bathroom. And I had to rethink,
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: like what's my next plan. I thought maybe I could
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: crawl out of the bathroom window, but it was small,
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: and it was a drop all the way down to
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: the basement, which is where the laundry room was. If
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: I dropped, i'd probably break my legs. And then I
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: remembered him saying he had come through the back door
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: where the kitchen was and I needed to get to
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: that back door because his way in was going to
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: be my way out. And I told him I needed
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: a drink of water, and he told me to make
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: him a drink, and we were going to have a party.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: So I told him I'd make him a drink. And
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: as I walked past him, he was bending down to
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: my stereo, turning it on, trying to find ninety eight
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: point seven Kiss FM because he thought we were going
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: to have a party. But again, as I walked by him,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: the light coming off of the stereo illuminated his profile,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: and again it was just another image that I could
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: kind of glean as I went into the kitchen, and
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: so I started making noise with water running and ice
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: cubes hitting the sink and cabinet door shutting as I
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: started opening up the back door, and I just pulled
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: my blanket tight and I ran.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: On July twenty eighth, nineteen eighty four, a strange man
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: broke into Jennifer's home while she was asleep. He attacked
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: and raped her. Jennifer managed to escape, running out of
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: the back door of her home with a blanket wrapped
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: around her.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: It's about three point thirty in the morning and it's
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: pitch black, but it's also raining now and so it
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: was slippery. I thought I could go next door to
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: my neighbor and he would save me. As I was
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: banging on the door, not realizing he was gone, the
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: attacker came through my back door, coming after me, and
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: I knew I'd made him angry. So I did the
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: only thing that to me that made any sense, which
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: was to run towards light. And I found a carport
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: light on in someone's house that I just ran towards.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: I didn't know who lived there, but as I was
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: banging on the back door screaming that I've been raped
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: and please please let me in, the neighbors were home.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: It happened to be a professor on campus who recognized me,
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: and she told her husband to let me in, and
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: they did, and I fainted and they called the police,
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: and the next thing I knew, you know, I was
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: being taken to the hospital for a rape kit.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Wow, thank you for walking us through that. It's such
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: a heroine story that you lived through, and it strikes
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: me just how you were taking meticulous mental notes about everything,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: fearing for your life and also at the same time
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: having a plan what am I going to do once
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: I get away. It's not like, Okay, the story's over,
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: You're fine. Obviously, this is the beginning of a huge,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: years long situation for you that will involve law enforcement,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: the legal system. There's so many people that experience sexual
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: assaults and are hesitant to make reports, as you know,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: because of the situation that you're put into where you're
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: having to retell your story. Can you talk to us
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: a little bit about that first experience of having to
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: tell your story to law enforcement and how was that
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: for you.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: It's really complicated and it's incredibly traumatic. I mean, you've
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: just survived this trauma. Your body's traumatized, your brain's traumatized.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: You're going into the hospital to have evidence collected on
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: your body and in your body, right, it's like my
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: body was the crime scene and that's where the evidence is.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: And depending on where you go depends on how you're
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: going to be treated as an assault survivor. This is
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four. There were no such things as sane nurses,
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: and so the doctor who came in to collect the identification,
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: the puba care comings, the cheek swap, your vaginal swab
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: your nail clippings, like all the stuff that he's supposed
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: to do. Was clearly annoyed and did not want to
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: be in a hospital collecting evidence off of another rape survivor,
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: particularly a college girl, and so he haphazardly did that.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: But that would also be the location where I knew
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: and realized that the person who had raped me had
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: gone on within less than an hour and raped another
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: woman less than a mile from my home, and when
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: he had crawled through her din window when she was
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: sleeping and bit her and slapped her and punched her
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: and then raped her because I could hear her down
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: the hall crying. It was also at that moment right
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: where I really realized that we had a serial rapist
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: in the community, that women were not safe, and my
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: hatred was palatable. I could literally taste it in the
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: back of my throat, how much I hated this person
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: and wanted him to die for what he had done
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: to me and this other woman, knowing that he was
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: going to do it again. And so from there I
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: was taken to the police station and began to give
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: descriptions of what this person looked like. And as I
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: was given the description the detective got a phone call
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: from I'm not sure who, and then he looked at
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: me and he said, at the hospital, did they give
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: you a penicillin shot? And I said no. Did they
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: give you the morning after pill? And I said no?
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: And so we realized that they had done an incomplete
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: rape kit. So I was taken back out to a
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: second hospital to have a second rape kit collected. You
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: just can't imagine, like the amount of trauma on my
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: body is now story. And so after the second rape
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: kit again, I go back to the police station. It's
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: now been what three or four hours since I almost died,
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: and now I'm being asked, you know, the questions like
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: how tall was he, how much did you weigh? What
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: was his hair? And it was so clear to the
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: police that I had paid very good attention. They asked
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: if I could do a composite sketch. The second woman
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: had been beaten and so she couldn't give us clearer description.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: So I felt like a lot of weight and pressure
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: on me to help the police figure out who this
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: person was. And at the time, they used something called
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: an identicit, which was just a big plastic file box
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: that had tabs of every part of your face. And
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: so the police would pick up a drawing of the
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: shape of a person's face and is it this space?
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: And I was like, no, it's more triangular. And then
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: you'd pick up the second part, is it more like
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: this face? And same for your eyebrows and your eyes,
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: and your eyelashes, and your lips, and your nose and
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: your chin and your cheeks, your ears, and everything that
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: makes up her face. So you go through these old tabs,
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: and when he was finished, he said to this, like
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: the man who raped you? And I said yes, And
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: so that composite sketch went in the newspaper and the
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: police station started receiving just a numerous phone calls, but
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: the most important call a woman called in and said
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: that she had seen a guy named Ronald Cotton wearing
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: the exact clothing that had been described outside of my
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: apartment on a bike at three am on July twenty ninth,
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: same exact time that I had been raped. So three
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: days after my assault, I was called into the police
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: station to do a photographic lineup, and they would show
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: me what they referred to as a six pack, which
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: is three photos on top, three photos in the bottom,
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: and asked me to take my time. I don't feel compelled,
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: but if you see him pick up the photograph and
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: initial to back, and I did. I took my time,
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: but I picked up photograph number three and initial to
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: back and they looked at me and they said, that's
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: who we thought it was. The photograph belonged to Ronald Cotton.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: So you basically were showing six photographs right picked someone out,
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: and then got immedia encouragement from law enforcement. They said, well, yeah,
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: that's the guy we thought it was.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: When they said that's the guy we thought it was,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: how did you feel in that moment.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: When they said that's who we thought it was. Honestly,
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: it was the first time I could take a deep
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: breath since the time of the assault. Is called confirmation.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: I felt like I had done it right. I felt
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: like I had been a good survivor. I felt like
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: I'd been helpful. I felt like the women in Burlington,
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: North Carolina would be safe again. It was a huge
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: moment for me. And then about five or six days
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: after the photographic lineup, I was called again to come
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: back to the police station. They wanted me to do
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: a physical lineup, and what I didn't know at the time,
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: was that the room that they would have normally done
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: the physical lineup in, which is that room you see
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: in cop shows right where there's that one way glass
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: and there's the lineup, but your identity is protected. That
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: room was being renovated in the police department. So I
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: was taken to an abandoned schoolhouse to the second floor,
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: and I was taken into this abandoned school room where
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: the only thing between me and the lineup was a
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: folding picnic table. So seven men are marched in front
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: of me holding numbers, and I was terrified because I thought, well,
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: what happens if I don't get this one right right?
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Does he walk? Does he go free? Is he going
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: to come back and kill me? Because it's broad daylight,
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: there's lights in this room, Like I'm not protected. It
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: was extremely traumatic. So as I looked through the seven
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: men in the lineup, honestly, I narrowed it down to
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: number four and five. And as I started, you know,
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: looking between four and five, I remember thinking, well, no,
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: it's number five, and that's what I wrote down on
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: a piece of paper. And again the police officers looked
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: at me and said, great job, So you picked doubt
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: in the photograph, and that was a huge relief. That
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: would have been middle of August, so he would of
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: course be arrested, held over for what they call probable cause,
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: and we would await trial.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: When you were in that second now photo lineup, do
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: you recall in that moment if maybe you were consciously
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: or subconsciously looking to match to the man in the
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: photo that you had picked out previously, or recalling the
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: memory of the assault.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: Great question. I've worked in this for a long time now,
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: so I actually understand what happened to my mind. You know,
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: I had a very clear picture of who had done
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: this to me after the assault. But what happens, and
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: it happens to anybody who is in a place of
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: trauma like I was, and then you're brought through like
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: what we call contaminated processes. So as I'm doing that
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: identicit and I'm looking through the different eyelashes and the
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: eyebrows and the lips and the noses, my memory at
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: that moment starts becoming contaminated because the reality is the
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: person who had assaulted me hours before, his eyebrows are
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: not in that box, his lips are not in that box,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: His cheeks and chin that's not in that box. You
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: have seventy five eyebrows that choose from. There's millions of
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: eyebrows in the world, right, and human beings are not
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: capable of compartmentalizing the human face. So we look at
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: your face and totality, I mean, unless you have some
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: very strange eyebrow, right, you really can't memorize that. And
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: so by the time I was finished with the composite
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: sketch and they asked me, was this the man who
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: attacked you? My memory was now gone, The original memory
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: was gone, and what is now in place of it
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: is a composite sketch image. So that when I go
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: to the photographic lineup, when I'm actually looking to match up,
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: and it's all completely subconscious. No one knows they're doing
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: this is you're trying to find the closest photograph to
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: my last memory, which is a composite sketch. Therefore, Ronald
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: Cotton's photograph, which was three years old in that lineup,
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: was the closest photograph to the composite sketch. Our brains
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: are valuable, and we are so prone to suggestion, and
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: so things can go into our memory that wasn't there before,
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: but now it's a permanent fixture in our brain.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So then when you go into the physical lineup,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: when you see six men in person, are you then
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: trying to match to the composite sketch or even to
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Ronald Cotton's three year old photo. Is your mind now
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: using those as references?
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: It is? It's scanning all of that, right, you're scanning
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: your memory banking. What my memory was saying was, oh
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: my god, that number five looks like I recognize him,
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: like I'll never forget that face. And of course I
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: recognized him. I had picked his photograph out of a
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: lineup the week before. But you don't know that. It's
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: just the way our brains work. It's not an intentional thing,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: not from the victim's perspective. It may be intentional from
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: a police officer's perspective, but you don't know you're doing that.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: And so when I picked out Ronald in the physical
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: lineup and again was given confirmation, which is huge. Ronald
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: Cotton is now a permanent fixture in my mind.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I'm wondering also during these two instances of choosing a
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: photo and then a person that you're standing in front
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: of what knowledge did you have in that moment of
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: the woman who called in and identified Ronald as having
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: been wearing those clothes at your apartment at three am.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Was that also playing a role in this confirmation you
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: were getting.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: Yes. I was told about the phone call. I was
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: told that Ronald had just been released that spring out
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: of prison after doing eighteen months for attempted sexual assault.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: I was told pretty much everything leading up to trial.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Each time Jennifer picked Ronald Cotton out of a lineup,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: she received confirmation from law enforcement that she'd chosen their suspect. Additionally,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Ronald Cotton was the only person who appeared in both
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: the photo and in person lineups. There was also the
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: woman who called and reported seeing Ronald Cotton outside of
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Jennifer's apartment the night of the attack, wearing the same
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: clothes the white gloves that Jennifer remembered her attacker wearing.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Jennifer felt confident that Ronald Cotton was the man who
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: raped her. The trial was in January nineteen eighty five.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: It would last two weeks. I would testify for two
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: and a half days. Again, you know, when you think
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: about the process and what was happening, it's all trauma.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: My body was just registering trauma after trauma. Testifying was horrible.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: You know, you're having to repeat every graphic thing that
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: was done to your body in front of strangers, in
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: front of your family. You're being blamed for the rape
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: to begin with. It's just what defense attorneys do. I
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: was told, what did I think would happen when you're
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: a single woman living alone and you go to bed
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: in your underwear? Didn't I know that that's how rapes happened?
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: You know, it was apparently important for the jury to
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: know that I was an aerobics instructor, that somehow being
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: an aerobics instructor was like tantalizing for the entire world.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: So it's all this stuff that is being said at
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: the same time. You know, I'm having to look at
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: the defendant. I'm looking at his family. I get up
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: to go to the bathroom and his sister's in the bathroom.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: It's really frightening. You don't know what's going to happen.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: So after the two weeks of trial that came back
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: with guilty on all counts, and Ronald was sentenced to
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: life in fifty four years.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: And what did it feel like when you heard that sentence.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: You know, there's a huge relief. You feel like the
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: system works, like you feel validated. Right, this is the
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: system I've been told my whole life works. And that
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: was confirmation that there is justice for crime victims and survivors.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: And what you don't realize is the narrative and the
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: pats on the backs that you get of this disclosure.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: You get to move on, you can put this behind you,
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: move forward. Doesn't work. It just doesn't work at all.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: And I think people don't really understand that. After trial,
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: it's kind of like after a death right and everybody's
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: brought you the cast role. People just go back to
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: their own lives and you're sitting there and you're thinking, yeah,
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: but for the rest of my life, I'm still going
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: to be grieving. They just think that you're going to
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: be able to start your life again and on as
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: if you're not grieving the loss of what I had
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: and who I had been and what I wanted to
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: return to, Like that part of my life was just
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: completely over and I was left just in this space
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: alone to try to figure out what's next. And it
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: was really terrible.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: How are things with your family, did they go to
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: the trial, What was that support system like at the
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: time for you.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: The truth is, when you are a victim of a
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: violent crime, there's not enough support in the world. So
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: the people who are around you think they're supporting you,
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: and maybe they're doing the best they can. But unless
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: you've lived it, if you've never been in it, you
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: can't really understand what I needed. Tomato super and girl
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: cheese sandwich wasn't going to cut it. And I also
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: think that people I still don't understand the violent nature
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: of sexual assault and what that does to the survivor
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: and to the victims of rape. I think people just
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: think that you're okay. You're not dead, right, Jennifer. Nobody
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: shot you, so you're okay, right, Jennifer. I was young,
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: I was twenty two years old. My family didn't want
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: to talk to me about it, Like, no one wants
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: to sit down and talk to you and say, how
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: are you feeling? What's happening inside of your body? And
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: so no one asked me questions about it, And my
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: boyfriend was just like, yeah, I can't deal with you.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: It's just too much for me. And friends just don't
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: come over because you cry a lot and all the time.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: So you're really left in this grief because it's what
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: it is, it's grief. You're left in that grief alone.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: I didn't do it well. I just numbed with whatever
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: I could get my hands on to numb so that
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: I couldn't feel my skin. Of course, I had to
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: move apartments, and I had to do that alone. I
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: did graduate, but for the first time, I made a bee.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: It sounds crazy, but I wanted to be a straight
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: A student and I made my first best, which meant
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: I wasn't going to graduate with a four point zero,
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: which was my goal, and I wasn't going to graduate
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: summa cum laude or a valedictorian, which was my goal.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: But I graduated, and I didn't go back to school
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: because I just I couldn't. I couldn't go to bed
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: at night because I was so afraid. So the only
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: thing I knew to do was to just drink like
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: large amounts of alcohol and snort cocaine up my nose,
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: which meant I couldn't wake up in the morning. So
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: I was missing work and I was missing class, and
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: I was a disaster. So I moved. I just left
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: North Carolina, and I met another person. I fell in
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: love with him. I came back a year later, back
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: to North Carolina, got a job in a bank, and
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: and the summer of nineteen eighty seven, I received a
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: call from the investigator who had been in charge of
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: the original investigation, Mike Galden, and said that the Pellet
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: Court of North Carolina had overturned the decision and that
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: we would have to go back for a second trial.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: And I didn't understand any of this, because nobody tells
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: you this as a victim, right. Nobody tells you that
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: as soon as the trial's over and the convictions happened
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: and the sentencing takes place, that the defendant automatically has
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: an appeal, You just think that it's over. So I
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: didn't understand this appellate process. But the appellate courts had
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: said that the jury should have known about this second
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: victim because the first trial was only me, and that
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: if the courts had known, if the jury had known
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: there was a second victim who had not made an identification,
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: then that would have called into question my identification. Ronald
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: Cotton had been in Central Prison and Raleigh, North Carolina
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: since nineteen eighty five and had been proclaiming his innocence,
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: and not just his innocence, but that he believed that
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: there was a man that was serving time in the
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: same prison, in the same dormitory and worked in the
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: same kitchen that had actually committed the crime, a man
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: named Bobby Poole. So in nineteen eighty seven, during the
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: second trial, they introduced this person, Bobby Pool, into the
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: trial and brought him in to court under Vordier. So
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: they dismissed the jury and asked Bobby Pool if he
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: had committed this crime, and of course he denied it.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: They asked him if he had been bragging about committing
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: this crime, and he denied ever saying anything about it.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: Then they asked both myself and the second survivor if
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: we recognized him, and both of us said no, we
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: did not recognize him, and did we recognize anyone in
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: the courtroom that had committed the crimes. Both of us
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: pointed out Ronald Cotton, and so in this second trial,
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Ronald would now be found guilty of both first ree rapes,
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: and this time Ronald would be sentenced re sentenced to
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: two life sentences and thirty years in prison, which meant
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: he would absolutely die in prison.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Did it feel final at that point to you?
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought it was final. But of course I
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: thought it was final the first time. Most of us
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: don't know the legal process, and because they always tell
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: you this word closure, now you really get closure, which
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: I really wish people would stop using that word, because
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: there is no such thing as closure. I thought this
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: was going to be it, like, we're done. Now, I
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: get to move on and do my life now, right.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: I got married, I got pregnant. I had triplets in
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: the spring of nineteen ninety and honestly, the triplets were
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: my reason to not die every single day. And it
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: gave me a task. It gave me a job, It
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: gave me structure because you're a mom. You can't die
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: now there's these three little people who need you. And
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: I really loved that part of my life of being
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: a young mother to these incredible babies. And life took
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: on a pattern. The rape was never far from my
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: mind or my spirit. He was always there. But you know, trip,
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: let's keep you busy. So that's how I was busy.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: And then the spring of nineteen ninety five happened. I
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: got the phone call again from Mike Galden and it's
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: now been almost eleven years, and he calls me and says, hey,
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: like I need to come and see you. I'm bringing
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: the Assistant District Attorney of Alamance County with me, and
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: I was like, okay, you know that's fine. They came
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: to my house and started telling me about the fact
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: that Ronald was still saying he was innocent, but they
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: assured me that he was not. They were like, we
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: know we've got the right guy, we know he did it,
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: but they want to have this DNA test. This is
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: North Carolina, this is nineteen ninety five. DNA was really
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: a very new piece of investigation. Very few people were
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: talking about it. The only thing I had ever heard
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: about DNA other than through my science classes was OJ Simpson.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: DNA testing has been admissible in court since nineteen eighty seven,
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: but the first time that most Americans were introduced to
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: the idea of DNA playing a role in the criminal
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: justice system was in nineteen ninety five during the highly
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: televised OJ Simpson trial.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: So they said that North Carolina didn't have any statutes
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: to allow this DNA test to go through, but if
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: the court ordered it, my blood sample from eleven years
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: ago had now disintegrated and now would have to give
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: a new blood sample. And I just looked at them
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: and I said, look, I have five year old triplets.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: I cannot go through another court anything. I just can't.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: And I said, at some point this has to be over.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: We're going to go to the doctor right now and
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: he's going to give you my blood and you're going
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: to run that test because this has to be done.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: And they agreed, like it has to be done. So
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: I went to the doctor and I had my doctor,
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: my doctor draw my blood and give it to them,
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: and it went down. I forty headed to Raleigh, North Carolina,
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: to the State bure of Investigations Crime Lab. That would
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: be March of ninety five. And I will tell you
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: in truth, in all honesty, I didn't really worry about
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: it because I had been assured that it would come
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: back and conclusively point to the fact that it had
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: been Ronald all along. And then they called me the
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: first week of June and stood in my kitchen and
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: said that the DNA did not belong to Ronald Cotton,
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: that it did belong to Bobby Pool.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: Bobby Poole's DNA matched blood collected from Mary reynolds home,
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: the second victim who was attacked the same night as Jennifer.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: Investigators confronted Bobby Pool with the results of the DNA test,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: and he confessed to raping both Mary Reynolds and Jennifer Thompson.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, how did you even take that information in?
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: What did you think?
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: Honestly, I don't know that I did. I know that
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: I fell, and I know that I screamed and cried
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: for a long time. There were so many emotions that
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: were happening that it's hard to kind of sparse out.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: There's the disbelief, there's the anger, there's the fear, there's
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: the confusion. I felt paralyzed, I felt isolated, I felt fearful.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: I felt everything you can possibly imagine. I don't understand this.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: I don't understand, like, how did this happen? I remember
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: Mike Golden and Rob Johnson, who is the ADA, look
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: at me and say, we're going to get Ronald out
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: of prison as quickly as we can. We don't want
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: him to spend another day in prison. He doesn't and
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: shouldn't be. But they also told me that before they
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: would even deliver this news to me, they made sure
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: that they got a confession from Bobby Pool, which for
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: them was really important, and they said it took six
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: hours for him to finally say, okay, fine, I did
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: that to these women and they didn't just do it
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: to us, like you know, it would come to light
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: that he had committed twenty four more violent crimes before
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: he was ever apprehended, six of which would be first
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: degree rapes, and one of the rapes he committed, he
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: went back and raped the woman a second time. And
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: so there's a lot of things that you're now having
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: to reconcile that Ronald Cotton was in prison for eleven
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: years for something he never did, and that Bobby Pool
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: was not apprehended when he should have been, and that
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: all these other people were harmed because the system failed.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: But what isn't being told to me is that the
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: system failed me too. But that wasn't the story that
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: the public heard for the next few years.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: Current research on eyewitness identification shows that when victims are
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: presented with the police lineup, the overwhelming majority of people
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: will choose someone from that lineup regardless of if the
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: actual perpetrator is present. If the perpetrator is not in
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: the lineup, they will choose the person who looks most
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: similar to their memory of the perpetrator. All of this
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: happens subconsciously. It's important to note that Bobby Pool's photo
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: was not part of the initial photo lineup that Jennifer
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: was shown. He was also not at the physical lineup.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: Jennifer id'd Ronald Cotton twice before the trial, during the trial,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: and then again in nineteen eighty seven when he was retried.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Bobby Pool, her actual rapist, was there in nineteen eighty
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: seven at the retrial in the courtroom with Jennifer, but
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: she did not recognize him. Her brain had replaced any
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: memory of Bobby Poole's face with Ronald Cotton's.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: The story that came out over the course of the
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: years that followed did not reflect that you were also
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: a victim of this system. Did you have any preparation
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: or warning from the ADA or the law enforcement you
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: were working with, like there's going to be media coverage
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: about this.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: I was told there would be media coverage. Again, this
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: is nineteen ninety five. Ronald was the twenty third person
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: I believe in the United States to have been exonerated
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: using DNA. He was the first person in the state
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: of North Carolina to be exonerated through DNA, but it
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: was the first time that a DNA test had also
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: revealed the actual perpetrator. So it was an enormous story
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: across the country, and and it was being covered by
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: every news cast that you can possibly imagine. And so
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: I was told that there was going to be a
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: lot of coverage, that they would try to protect my
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: name because you know, I'd been married since then. But
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: at this point, nobody understood what was happening to crime
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: victims and survivors from these cases. I was really left
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: on my own to try to navigate the next few
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: years of false narratives that were going to be coming out.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: So what I decided to do at that time was
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: in many ways, to just erase myself from the world
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: and to make myself as microscopically tiny so that the
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: world couldn't find me. And I did a really good job,
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: I have to say, Like I really kind of like
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: disappeared for the next year until somebody found me.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: Who found you?
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: What had happened was There was a producer with Frontline
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: who wanted to do a document entry about eyewitness identification
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: and the fallibility of human memory. And this person contacted
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: Barry Sheck, and Barry Sheck was like, there's this story
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: out of North Carolina. You can find the girl. So
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: people started trying to find the girl, and eventually they did.
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: It was really scary because I was getting phone calls
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: from people that I knew that said, yeah, I've got
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: this phone call today, and somebody said, do you know
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: this girl named Jennifer Thompson And it's Jennifer Thompson Jennifer Canino,
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: and so people were calling me and that scared me.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: But eventually Ben Loterman, who was the producer, contacted me,
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: flew down from Boston, sat with me in my house
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: and said, this is what I'm going to do. I
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: would really love you to tell your story. And of
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: course my first impulse was like, oh, hell, no, no way,
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: no way, I'm going to do this. My kids now
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: are six and people are going to try to find
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: me and kill me. Then he said, well, I've talked
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: to Ronald and he's going to tell his story. And
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: I knew very quickly that no one could tell my
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: story but me, because you're not allowed to tell my
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: story like that. I lived it. So I agreed to
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: tell it under the understanding that Ronald stay in Burlington
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: and I was in Winston Salem, and that we weren't
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: going to meet. And he agreed, and so over the
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: next six months is he put together this documentary titled
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: What Jennifer Saw. The crew would say to me like, oh,
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: you know with ron yesterday, he's such a nice guy.
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: He's like really chill, he's really lovely, he's very forgiving.
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, there's no way that can
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: be true. The guy spent eleven years in prison for
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: something he didn't do. There is no way. The documentary
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: aired in February of ninety seven, and I remember watching
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: it the next morning and I heard myself say that
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: I know that he's innocent, but I still see him
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: in my nightmares. And that's when it clicked for me
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: about this is a permanent face in my brain and
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: it shouldn't be there. Bobby Poole should be there, But
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: why can't I see him in my brain? I can't.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: So I called Mike Galden and I said, can you
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: set up a meeting. I don't even want to know
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: where I'm meeting, because every journalist in the country was
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: now trying to find me. When I tell you, every
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: journalist in the country was trying to find me, I
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: mean everybody. So they set it up a private meeting,
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: and I met Ronald in April of ninety seven, not
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: far from where I'd been raped thirteen years before. We
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: started to cry and talk about what had happened to
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: the two of us. We got to ask each other
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: questions that only the other person knew the answers to,
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: and we spent the next two hours just crying and
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: talking and holding each other's hands and sharing about what
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: those years had been like for ourselves, for our families.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: And what we realized at the end of those two
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: hours is that we had a lot of shared trauma
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: because the system had failed us, and that at the
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: intersection of all of that trauma was Bobby Pool who
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: had caused every single bit of it. Bobby Poole had
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: done so much violence and it hurt so many women,
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: But he also sat back and knew that Ronald was
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: going to prison for what he had done to all
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: of us. And so that was where ron and I
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: were able to begin this healing process with each other
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: understanding that the system had failed us and our families,
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: and that Bobby Pool had been the perpetrator of all
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: of it.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: When you met Ronald for the first time, you know,
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: how was he different than what you had maybe feared
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: or imagined he might be, like.
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: Well, in my head, of course, he was just this terrible,
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: violent monster. In reality, he was incredibly gentle and self spoken.
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: He was huge, like that was the other thing. Like
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: he was enormous. He's like six foot four, I'm five
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: foot one. He was like this big, huge person in
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: my life, and yet he was very soft spoken and
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: very gentle and kind and funny and safe, Like I
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: immediately felt safe with him. It was a complete and
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: utter shift, and we immediately became friends. That day, we
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: parted in each other's arms, sharing each other's contact information,
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: and promising that we had lived this journey. We had
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: survived this thing together, and this was our story.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: It sounds like you really did become friends with him.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: You both were really going through it in different ways,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: in different scenarios. Right over those eleven years. You talked
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: about having your children and that being something that helped
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: you want to live, you were so tormented. Was this
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: helpful in any kind of way to move toward healing
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: for you? And how? If so?
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: I think it was helpful on many many levels. So yes,
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: it was very helpful in the healing process because Ronald
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: was probably the only person who could understand in this
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: weird way what I had gone through, because both of
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: us had lost of us could not return to the
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: former person that we were before both of us grieved,
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: and so we had these shared experiences, different but shared experiences,
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: and that was really healing for me and for him.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: The other thing that I think it did for me
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: is it sent me on a quest on mini quests.
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: One of the quests I went on was to understand
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: the criminal justice system and the legal system and how
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: it actually works and who it actually works for and
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: who does it actually fail and fail often. So that
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: forced me to really look back on my childhood and
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: my life of growing up in the segregated South and
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: that kind of birthright of thinking that the system was
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: the best in the world and it was effective and
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: it worked, and that completely shifted everything from me. Began
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: to question everything. It wasn't just like criminal justice system processes,
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: but environmental justice and economic justice, like it really started
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: me thinking and studying and understanding and pulling back layers
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: and asking the deep, really hard questions, which I hope
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: I never stop asking those questions. The other thing that
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: it did for me was to begin to understand memory
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: and trauma and how those two work, and how often
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: the system can get it wrong, and when it gets
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: it wrong, how many people are being harmed by it. Like,
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: it really got me thinking about our brains and how
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: trauma works and doesn't work, and how what we can
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: encode and what we can encode under what circumstances. So
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: I've done a lot of work in that area and
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: then on policy and legislation, So that's taken me in
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: lots of different areas to kind of help improve our system.
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: But then the other thing it did was really help
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: me understand restorative justice and how healing happens, and how
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: healing often doesn't happen because we don't give space for it.
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: Did you experience people blaming you and how did you
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: come to understand how to sort that all in your
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: head and where to place the blame.
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: It was an easy assigning of blame, right, It was
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: like the quick answer. I was like the very quick
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: and easy scapegoat for all of this. So I was
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: very much blamed for well, I still am. Let's just
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: be clear, like I'm still being blamed. I won't allow
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: it anymore. That's the difference. I allow the blame to
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: take place, for gosh, the good twelve to fifteen years
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: after Ronald and I met, because I didn't have a
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: different language, and because the system was very happy to
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: allow me to carry the bag of blame. And so yeah,
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: the general public wanted to blame me, the criminal justice
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: system was happy for me to accept the blame.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: Over the following years, Jennifer Ronald gave many talks together
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: and were interviewed dozens of times. They would eventually go
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: on to co author a book, Picking Cotton in two
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: thousand and nine. Jennifer writes in that book about the
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: overwhelming guilt she felt for misidentifying Ronald. She also notes
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: that that guilt did not assuage the trauma she was
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: already experiencing from being violently attacked in her home at
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: age twenty two. But suddenly, in the public's eye, she
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: was no longer a victim.
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: The blame could look as innocuous as Ron and I
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: are staying it on a stage and somebody throws her
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: hand up and says, wow, Ron Man, you're like Jesus Christ.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: You're just like Jesus, Like, how do you stand next
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: to her and be her friend and forgiver? And for
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: a long time I was like, I just I guess
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: I'm just going to have to take this. I now
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: pushed back on that a lot. But that's the innocuous stuff, right.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: The more in my face violent blame would be the
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: death threats, men saying things to me about rape, such
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: as one man looked at me and said, you know,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: I got to say, like, at least the son of
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: a bitch that raped you had good taste. Those were
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: the things I've heard for decades. And that's traumatic. And
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: I didn't know that I didn't have to carry that,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: that I could deny that, that I could say that's
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: not true and that's not right, and here's why. And
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: you know, somebody listened to this podcast. I will promise
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: you there will be somebody listen to this podcast that's
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: going to want to comment at the end of this
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: and say, you know, Jennifer should die, Jennifer should go
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: to prison because this person's not going to think deep
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: enough and far enough to say wow, Like if I
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: was being raped and almost murdered, you know, what would
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: I do? What would I say to my mother if
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: this was her story?
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: What would I say to my daughter? If this was
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: my daughter's story? Would I blame my daughter? No, you
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: wouldn't blame your daughter. I would hope you wouldn't blame
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: your daughter.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, then your story gets lost in the fray because
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: thinking back about like how from the moment that you know,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: you didn't know his name yet, but Bobby Pool was
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: in your apartment. The police even called you like the
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: perfect victim because you were so you were doing your
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: very best. The whole time you were studying him. You
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: were planning on how do I get justice? Not just
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: for yourself at first it was, but then it also
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: for other victims as well. Then you were getting confirmation
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: the whole time. And so when you really stop and
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: think about it, it's like, what did people want you
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: to do differently? There was nothing you could have done differently.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: The woman who called and identified Ronald as being in
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: front of your apartment complex at around three in the morning,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: wearing the same clothing. You know, your trauma and the
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: ability of your memory to be so manipulated by the
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: way the system was operating. As you're telling me that,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I get that. That makes total sense. Her
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: recollect of that is escaping me. Did you ever learn
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: anything about what gave her that level of conviction to
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: call and say that?
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah? And I really appreciate you asking that question, because
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: ron and I did not understand this until the book
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: was published. And this woman came to visit Ronald and
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: said that she had been given a type statement from
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: another police officer to call in in exchange for drug
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: charges against she and her son to be dropped.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's mind blowing. It's actually worse than
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: anything I thought you were going to say.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And neither one of us knew about that
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: phone call, obviously, And the police officer who gave her
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: the type statement was not Mike Golden. It was another
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: police officer who had just always had it against Ronald.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: He'd always hated Ronald, and ron talked about like when
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: he I don't know how old he was, he was
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: probably around twelve. This particular officer said to him one
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: of these days, I'm going to get you And they said,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: you think you're a tough I'm not going to use
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: the word going around dating white women. And he said,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: but I'm going to get your ass one day. And
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: that was the cop.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: And you know, when we tell that story and people
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: will often ask me about that call because that call
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: was really important. It's what put Ron in the crosshairs.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: When we tell people that, people always have the shock
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: and awe, right, it's like, oh my god, I cannot
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: tell you how many of these stories have something like
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: that built in. There's like this bad actor and so
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: again it's like this kind of knee jerk reaction to
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: blame people. Yeah, there are people that should be blamed, absolutely,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: but it is not crime victims and survivors.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: We've all seen the news stories of someone being exonerated,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: walking down the steps of a courthouse, finally free. It
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: is beyond horrifying that any innocent person is sent prison,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: losing potentially years of their life for something they didn't do,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: and exonerations become a celebration that justice has finally prevailed,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: But the harm of wrongful convictions runs deep. There's no
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: getting those years in prison back. And what we often
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: don't think about is the ripple effect of this kind
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: of system failure. There is the original crime victim, often
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: still waiting for justice. Jennifer has worked with people who
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: were victims of violent crimes who believed that their perpetrators
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: had been caught, and then years later the case is
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: reopened and still unsolved.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: No crime victim and no crime survivor, no mortar victim
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: family member wants an innocent person to go to prison. Ever,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: right like we want the person who violently removed our
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: family members from this earth. We want the person who
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: violated our bodies and left us for dead somewhere. We
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: want that person to be apprehended and gone to prison.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: We don't want get an innocent person to go to prison,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: But for some reason, that gets lost in the conversation.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: Right And I think there's certain words that every victim
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: and crime survivor from these cases that I've worked with
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: will tell you. They feel isolated, They feel marginalized, They
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: feel unnoticed that there was no one there for them
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: at the time of the crime. There was no one
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: there for them during the trial, there was no one
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: there for them during the exoneration. These are consistent themes
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: that we see with every victim and survivor, because when
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: an exoneration happens and you pick up the newspaper or
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: you listen to the story on the news, which you
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: don't hear about is who the victims and survivors were.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: It's only about the exonery. And that is not to
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: say that the exonerated person that their story should not
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: be highlighted because it's horrific and what was done to
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: them and what those years look like is absolutely not okay.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: They suffered decades, decades of being separated from their families,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: of watching their children grow up without them, of people
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: dying and they couldn't be there to grieve them. They
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: were physically assaulted in prison. They come out with absolutely
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: no resources. Their families are broken. The system failed them.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: That's absolutely across the board. Yes, and the victims and survivors,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: many of them, their children grew up without them because
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: they can't function. People are brutally kidnapped and tortured and murdered,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: and that these families have to reconcile that the last
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: moments of their child, their wife, their brother, their mother
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: on this earth was torture and then the system comes
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: behind it and says, oh, by the way, the person
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: we thought that did this to you or your family
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: member didn't, and we have no interest in closing the
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: case ever, and so you're never going to know. Or
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: if you're a rape survivor, they come back and say, oh,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: and by the way, we know who did it to you,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: but the statue of limitations have taken place, and the
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: guy who raped you, incidimized you lives an hour down
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: the road, but we can't prosecute him because you live
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: in a state that has statue of limitations. So sorry,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: That's what people need to understand. The system when it
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: fails in a wrongful conviction, fails all of us. It's
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: not just me and Ronald, but the community got failed.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: It was failed, and the only person who wins in
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: any of these cases is the perpetrator. There are no winners.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: And so when I would meet with crime victims and survivors,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: that was really kind of where we all were. It
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: was this place of the system failed us, and now
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: the system wants to blame us, and then we hear
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: ex honeries of course being blamed. We have a lot
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: of people that will look at me and say, yeah,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: but you know, the guy was like he was using
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: drugs and he was in the bad part of town.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: It's like, that doesn't mean that innes some people should
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: go to preak. I mean it was nineteen eighty four
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: and best practices back then were archaic. I often when
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: I do speeches, I will tell people that, you know,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: the medical profession is always updating, right, It's always trying
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: to get better processes, better procedures and to cut down
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: on you know, infections and whatever. But the criminal justice
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: system hasn't caught up like that. And so I'll often
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: ask an audience if somebody came to you and said
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: you have to have open heart surgery, I can do
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: it like we did in nineteen thirty seven, or I
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: can do it like we do now in twenty twenty five.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: Which would you choose. I would imagine close to one
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: hundred percent of people are going to say, oh, can
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: we do it like you know now? Yeah? You know
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: what we know now. But our legal system still operates
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: and in a very very old fashioned, archaic wild West.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: I'm the marshal of this town. Don't tell me what
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: to do. Way, and I travel and I do a
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: lot of legislation in different states and in different jurisdictions.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: And I will tell you that there are police departments
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: in this country today that just refused to do best
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: practices as it relates to eyewitness identification procedures, which we have,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: we know better ways to do it. It's just like,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: don't tell me what to do. It's about closing the case.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: And listen. There's a lot of people that will say, well, listen.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: The guy's a bad guy.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: He was a bad guy, and it's like, Okay, he
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: might have been a bad guy, but don't we want
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: the right bad guy. I mean, that's really important.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is an interesting part, and it's covered in
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: the book that Ronald did have a criminal history, and
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: so some people could look at him and say, oh,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: that's a bad guy. But there were so many factors
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: obviously that played into that that you also described of
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: sort of the environment of the place where also he
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: grew up and being a black kid and then a
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: black man in that environment not really being set up
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: to succeed. And it's so clear based on who he
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: became that he's a wonderful guy. So you know, it
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: just adds another layer of complication and It always just
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: reminds It reminds me of what you said earlier, where
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: you were like the general public likes to have an
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: easy person to blame or an easy answer, things are
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: so one way or the other, and it's like, that's
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: just really not often how real life is.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: It's often very very gray. And I think most of
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: us want to believe that if I lived in this
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: certain circumstance that I wouldn't behave that way, But you
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: don't know that. And the other part of at least
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: my experience, is that we live in a very disposable
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: society where we just want to toss people away and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: not look at them, and prison has done that for us.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: It's created a huge problem in this country where we
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: have systematically put you know, entire groups of people in
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: certain buckets. There's a reason why prisons are not beside
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: country clubs and golf courses, because what you don't see
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: doesn't exist. And so for people that look like me,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: that makes us feel better about the world we live in.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: But I will tell you that I've met many, many, many,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: many hundreds and hundreds of people that have been locked
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: away behind bars, many of them innocent, but some of
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: them not. And we have wasted tremendous talent and intellect
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: and gifts and creativity by just blanket putting people in prison.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: And we've certainly not created a safer world to live in.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: What is the mission of Healing justice? What going to work?
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: Do you do well?
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: Healing Justice? We're ten years old this year, and really
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: it was born from this place where I had already experienced,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: and where I was around communities of victims and survivors
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: and exoneries, and I kept hearing about these terrible stories
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: of the aftermath. Right like after the exoneration happens, everybody
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: thinks that the ex hoonery is going to get ten
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: million dollars or that the case is going to be solved,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: and that's simply not true. So I started Healing Justice
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: in an attempt to try to bring people together who
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: had been equally hurt and harmed into a space to
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: use restorative justice principles to help us all talk about
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: what had happened so we could engage in healing. And
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: so we really do kind of two things. I mean,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: our two big missions are to address the harm caused
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: by wrongful convictions and to help educate the system in
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: ways that we can do better, particularly by crime victims
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: and survivors and what that looks like. The other part
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: of the work we do is bringing directly impacted individuals
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: together to create connections and community and help people engage
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: in what healing looks like. So we do that different ways.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: We do that through peer support, we do that through
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: our healing retreats, we do that through listening sessions. And
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: it's in the space of community that belonging starts happening,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: and belonging is where we can create the healing. If
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: we don't feel like we belong, there's no way we
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: can heal. We can't heal in isolation. There's just no way.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: We heal in community, and we heal when we're heard.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: We can heal when we can see each other.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: I am so glad that Jennifer came on our podcast
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: and told us her story that was.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: So powerful because it impacted her life in so many ways,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: and then she sort of turned that situation on its
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: head to do a lot of good, which brings us
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: to Healing Justice Project. The Healing Justice Project provides crime
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: victims and exoneries with resources and community for healing. Yeah,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: you can visit them at Healing Justiceproject dot org. And
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: they also hold these retreats in which crime victims and
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: exneries are able to come together, meet each other and
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: heal together. Is kind of how Jennifer would describe it.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: There's a video on their website from one of these retreats.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: It's really powerful to watch.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: I think that one of the things that really stood
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: out to me in Jennifer's interview is talking about how
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: so being a crime victim and going through this experience
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: of a wrongful conviction, it really left her feeling alone
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: and like pitted her against Ronald Cotton in a way.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: Once they met each other, she really felt like there
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: was community that started to be built and healing from that.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: And so she took that inspiration and used it to
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: create these retreats where she brings crime victims and x
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: hogneries together, not usually from the same case, but she
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: said that it really helps for people to talk to someone,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: for someone maybe whose family member was murdered, to be
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: able to speak with an axannaree who was wrongfully convicted
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: for a murder, and so she facilitates those conversations, and
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: I think that's just really unique and cool. It's a
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: powerful video. Yeah, and it really speaks to you know.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: In the interview, Jennifer said, when the system fails to
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: convict the right person, then they feel everyone involved. Yeah,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: and then I have to mention. So Jennifer and Ronald
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: Cotton co authored a book. She mentions it in the interview.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: It's called Picking Cotton, Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: and it's really good. We wanted to speak with Ronald,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: he is spending time with his family and did not
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: want to do an interview, which we totally understand. But
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: half of the book is written from Jennifer's perspective and
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: then half of it is written from Ronald's perspective. So
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: there's a whole other part of this story in the
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: book that if you wanted to hear it, definitely go
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: check it out. There's obviously so much in here from
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: Ronald's perspective that we can't cover. People should just read
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: the book. But one of the stories floored me. He
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: was in North Carolina Central Prison and he talks about
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: being mistaken for this other guy, Bobby Pool, Like even
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: the guards called him Pool, Hey, Pool, and he was like,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: that's not me. So he meets this guy Bobby Pool
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: in prison, who we now know was the actual assailant,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: and Ronald sees him and says that he looks like
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: the sketch, the original sketch and kind of looks like
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: Ronald as well, and he, you know, confronts him. And
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: then at some point Ronald's sister comes to visit him,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: and he said that he had this creepy interaction where
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: Bobby Pool came up to him afterward and was like, Hey,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: can I get your sister's address so I can write her?
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: And quick thinking as he was, he was like, you know,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: she probably wouldn't write you, but what I can do
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: is we could take a picture together and I could
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: send it to her and maybe she'll want to write you.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: So he said, for two dollars, you could get like
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: a polaroid picture. In the book, it shows the polaroid
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: picture of Ronald Cotton and Bobby Pool, and then, of
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: course he didn't send it to his sister. He sent
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: it to his attorney. He was sent to instant in
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: January of nineteen eighty five to life in prison plus
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: fifty years. He meets Bobby Pool in nineteen eighty six
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: and takes this photo in September of nineteen eighty and
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: sends it to his attorney, but he still spends, you know,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: nine more years in prison before he's exonerated. And the
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: whole time he was like, I know it's this guy
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: Bobby Pool, and he was right.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: That is unimaginable.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: It's a really good book. Jennifer and Ronald both talk
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: in the book about a lot of their activism that
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: they have done together over the years, speaking at different
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: events and working together to try to raise awareness about
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: wrongful convictions, right.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: Because there are a lot of people in prison and
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: proclaiming their innocence, and now having gone through this experience,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: they're making sure those people have a voice. According to
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: the Innocence Project, they have two hundred and three clients
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: that have been exonerated by DNA evidence, and sixty three
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: percent of wrongful convictions that they've worked on involved eyewitness misidentification,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: which is exactly how Ronald Cotton ended up in prison.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: That's a staggering percent. Sixty three percent involved eyewitness misidentification,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: and yet from everything that we've learned, it makes sense.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: So the lead detective Mike Goalden, who Jennifer spoke about
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: He actually went on to transform the way that North
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: Carolina approaches lineups and was really influential in instituting double
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: blind procedures so that the lead investigators in the case
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: are no longer the people who are there with a
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: eyewitness making the identifications.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's like now it has to be in more
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: unbiased person being the middleman there.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: That's great, Yeah, so that you don't have that situation
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: where someone is giving that confirmation and saying, yes, that's
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: our suspect, right and reaffirming it.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because then she went on to misidentify him again
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: because of that. Yeah, the fact that like she identified
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: him again in court and then again at the retrial
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: when Bobby Pool was actually there, she didn't recognize him.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: That just says so much about what our brains and
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: memory does that there's so much that's unreliable really about
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: eyewitness identification. You know, Jennifer had this added pressure because
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: the other victim, who we now know to be Bobby Pool,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: said no, I cannot provide eyewitness testimony. She was unable
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: to say what he looked like. And so Jennifer was
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: being reaffirmed by investigators and also this idea that she
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: was helping the other victim.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, thanks for listening and we will be back
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: next week for an off record.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: If you have a story for us, we would love
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram at
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: the Knife Podcast or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: by me Hannah Smith.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: And me Paytia Eating. Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: Alexis Samarosi.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: is Christina Chamberlain. Our theme music is by Birds in
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: the Airport.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: Executive produced by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.