Ebook: Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption

On the 1984 night that changed her life, Jennifer Thompson was a 22-year-old college student when she was awakened from a sleep by a knife-wielding rapist. She escaped from her attacker, and several days later, she picked the culprit from first a mug shot and then a physical lineup. Or so she thought. Ronald Cotton, the man who Jennifer was "absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt certain" was her rapist, served 11 years for the crime before he was exonerated by DNA evidence. Two years after his release, he and Jennifer met and, against every expectation, formed a resilient friendship. Picking Cotton, their joint memoir, speaks not only to their tragic shared experience but also to the issue of mistaken eyewitness testimony, the number one cause of wrongful convictions.