Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption - Hardcover

Thompson-Cannino, Jennifer; Cotton, Ronald; Torneo, Erin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312376537 ISBN 13: 9780312376536

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2009

Synopsis

The New York Times best selling true story of an unlikely friendship forged between a woman and the man she incorrectly identified as her rapist and sent to prison for 11 years.

Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape, and eventually positively identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken-- but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars.

After eleven years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released, after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed. Two years later, Jennifer and Ronald met face to face-- and forged an unlikely friendship that changed both of their lives.

With Picking Cotton, Jennifer and Ronald tell in their own words the harrowing details of their tragedy, and challenge our ideas of memory and judgment while demonstrating the profound nature of human grace and the healing power of forgiveness.

About this title

About the Author:

JENNIFER THOMPSON-CANNINO lives in North Carolina with her family. She speaks frequently about the need for judicial reform, and is a member of the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission, the advisory committee for Active Voices, and the Constitution Project. Her op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Durham-Herald Sun, and the Tallahassee Democrat.

RONALD COTTON lives with his wife and daughter in North Carolina. He has spoken at various schools and conferences including Washington and Lee University, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Georgetown Law School, and the Community March for Justice for Troy Anthony Davis in Savannah, GA.

ERIN TORNEO is a Los Angeles-based writer. She was a 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts Nonfiction Fellow.

The authors received the 2008 Soros Justice Media Fellowship for PICKING COTTON.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Prologue

September 2006

Ronald Cotton stands a few rows behind Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, watching as she cranes her head through the crowd, looking for him among the faces of the parents who have come out to watch their children play soccer. All of the fields at Northeast Park in Gibsonville, North Carolina, are occupied on this bright autumn afternoon: It’s tournament day, with a parking lot crammed full of yellow school buses, SUVs, and station wagons to prove it.

“Where are you?” she says into her cell phone, unable to find him.

“I’m right here,“ Ron says, enjoying the joke. Then he reaches out and touches Jennifer’s arm, causing her to turn and jump. “It’s so good to see you,“ she says, laughing and moving close to embrace him. “You’d think I would’ve spotted you!” Wearing a blue baseball hat, Ron at six foot four towers over her. He’s got to lean waay down to hug Jennifer, a tiny blonde with bobbed hair. The sun catches the sterling medallion he always wears around his neck: an eagle in flight.

Ron immediately gets into the game. “C’mon! Don’t let ’em take that ball!” he shouts, clapping his hands.

Beside him, Raven, his nine- year- old daughter in neat braids he helped do that morning, shoots him a look. “Daddy!”

“What? Am I embarrassing you?” She nods, which only makes Ron yell louder. “Let’s go!”

He is cheering on Jennifer’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Brittany, who plays center-midfield, the link between offense and defense. Her brown ponytail bopping behind her, she keeps her cleats close to the ball, switch- backing across the field to try to keep it away from the other side until she’s got a clear path to pass it to her fellow players. When she sees her opening, Brittany makes a strong, sure kick and sends the ball to her teammate, who takes off for the goal. The crowd yells for the black and white ball to make it into the net as if nothing could matter more.

The Reds, Brittany’s team, win the first game of the tournament, and then they break for lunch. Brittany, spotting Ron and Raven with her mom, jogs over and hugs them both, happy they are there. The four of them head over with the other parents to the park’s pavilion. With his Burger King bags picked up from the drive- in, Ron isn’t part of the usual soccer parent crowd: moms like Jennifer who unpack neatly prepared sandwiches and snacks from Tupperware and coolers. After the kids eat, Brittany heads off to the grass to show Raven how to kick straight and dribble, while Jennifer and Ron catch up. One nosy mom can’t resist and comes over to say hello.

“Jennifer, Brittany was just great today!” she says. “Too bad your husband missed it. Where is he?” “He’s with my son, doing ‘guy stuff,’ but they should be here any minute,“ says Jennifer.

The mother’s eyes dart over to Ron and back to Jennifer. She can’t figure it out. “So how do y’all know each other?” the mom says, motioning to Ron.

Jennifer and Ron look at each other, smiling. They let the moment settle between them, hanging in the air like the sweet green smell of freshly cut grass, ready for hordes of high school girls to trample it.

“We go way back,“ Ron says, in his characteristic way of understating things.

What they don’t say is that twenty- two years ago, Jennifer sat in a jail house just five miles down the interstate, looked at seven black men standing in front of her, and picked Ronald Cotton as the man who had brutally raped her eleven days before.

Excerpted from Picking Cotton by Jennifer Thompson- Cannino.

Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Thompson- Cannino.

Published in March 2009 by St. Martin’s Press.

All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0312376537
• ISBN 13: 9780312376536
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304