Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption

The Memoir Spot

A snapshot review of a book related to the Non-fiction Feature

Also in Bulletin #51:
The Non-fiction Feature: Presumed Guilty by Erwin Chemerinsky
The Product Spot: Innocence Project

The Pithy Take

Picking Cotton is a painful examination of how wrong our criminal justice system can be–both for those accusing and the accused.

One of the authors, Jennifer Thompson, was raped at knifepoint, and afterwards, she identified Ronald Cotton as the perpetrator. She chronicles her fears and anger through this process, and the relief she felt when he was convicted.

Ronald Cotton insisted that she was wrong, and his story of the immense injustice of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit is heart-wrenching.

Eleven years later, DNA testing proved his innocence, and the book delves into the emotional havoc this wreaks on both of them, the difficulty of relying on our memories, and, most importantly, the nature of forgiveness and trust.

Silently, I berated myself…Eleven years. How do eleven years pass when you are locked up for a crime you didn’t commit? I couldn’t begin to imagine. For me, they were eleven years measured in birthdays, first days of school, Christmas mornings.

Ronald Cotton and I were exactly the same age, and he had none of those things because I picked him. He lost eleven years of time with his family, eleven years of falling in love, getting married, having kids. The guilt suffocated me.