Book Review: Picking Cotton
Friday, July 24th, 2009
Our book club selected Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton as our July reading. I was a bit apprehensive about this selection and I was worried it would be slow reading as a non-fiction (though I guess memoirs are typically “light” non-fiction). I thought it might take me a while to get through it. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. I was wrong on both accounts, zipping through the book in two or three days. Considering the amount of time I generally get to read these days, that is pretty impressive. The book was an interesting look at our justice system and some of its flaws. It gave me a different perspective on such cases. I’ll save the spoilers for below, but I will say that I recommend the book to others. If you were in North Carolina in the 80s and early to mid-90s, you may remember seeing some of this case on the news. You may not, so I’ll keep the details of the case below.
WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW
The first chapter was enough to make me interested to find out how we got from point A to point B. Jennifer and Ronald, the authors of the memoir, are at a kids’ sporting event and appear to be friends. I don’t have the book since I returned it to the library a while ago, and my memory may be fuzzy on some details. It is then revealed that 20 years ago or so, Jennifer wrongfully accused Ronald of a horrible rape which sent him to prison for over 11 years. I was eager to find out how these two individuals became unlikely friends.
The story flips back and forth between Jennifer’s view point and Ronald’s. Hers starts with horrifying details of her attack and rape in her own home, and his starts with a misunderstanding where he is going down to the police station to clear up the mistake. I have sometimes seen on the news how someone was released from prison because they proved that they had convicted the wrong person, including a vague memory of this exact case.
I have never truly thought about how it must have been for that person to be in jail all these many years. Thoughts about how scary it is that you could be thrown in jail for crimes that you didn’t do have been in my head, but the situation seems unlikely for most people. The news stories made me think for a few seconds, but until I read this book it didn’t really sink in that these are real people with real lives and real feelings and experiences who have been dealt a really crappy hand.
The glimpses into the faults of our justice system and how one eye witness’s false memory and testimony can send someone to prison for life is a bit scary. Jennifer was presented with a stack of photographs of possible perpetrators which did not include the actual rapist. She identified the one that most closely matched her memory of his image (which she very consciously constructed at the time of the rape, knowing that she would have to identify him). This new image, Ronald, had now become superimposed in her memories. She was very confident beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ronald was her rapist. It is not her fault that she pointed the finger at him – the brain and its memory works in interesting ways. When later shown a line up that included Ronald but again not her rapist, she was quite sure that he was the man. A few years later, Ronald’s case went back to trial where she actually saw the man who was the real perpetrator, and she did not recognize him as such. Her memory had already been tainted by the process. The victim wants and believes that the police have presented them with a lineup that must include the guy who did it. The brain makes things fit. And when you look at the composite sketches, they do match well enough. I found all of this to be very intriguing and worrisome.
Ronald’s story was amazing. It really showed you the person behind the statistic. It showed you the rapist’s other victim in a real light. Even after reading his account, I cannot fully imagine what it must have been like for him. And I’m very impressed by his character and his perseverance and his ability to forgive Jennifer for her very large life altering mistake. He was in his early 20s with his whole life ahead of him and then had to throw away over a decade of his formative years. He left prison with no money, no job, no education, and no real marketable skills. His compensation for the justice system’s big oops? At the time, it was $5,000. TOTAL. He was eventually awarded around $110,000 – about $10,000 per year that he was wrongfully incarcerated. He had started to fight and advocate for increased compensation for himself and others who found themselves in similar shoes. Still a ridiculously small sum considering the loss of potential, both in wages, experience, and education.
All in all, I thought it was a great pick for book club, and I’m looking forward to discussing it at the end of the month!