Episode 4 - The Third Time’s the Charm
 

Description

To start off Black History Month, I wanted to highlight an extremely moving and important case of the wrongful conviction of a black man. The rape of Jennifer Thompson was horrific. But police procedures at the time, in 1984, caused her to accuse the wrong man. When he was finally exonerated by DNA, Jennifer didn’t just apologize. She and Ronald Cotton became close friends and Jennifer became an activist about the fallibility of eyewitness identification and the power of forgiveness.

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Show Notes

Written, hosted and produced by Erica Kelley
Researched by Erica Kelley
Edited by Chaes Gray
Suggested by Suzanne Link
Original Graphic Art by Coley Horner
Original Music by Rob Harrison of Gamma Radio

Sources

  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/18/opinion/i-was-certain-but-i-was-wrong.html

  2. https://www.pickingcottonbook.com/

  3. https://www.innocenceproject.org/cases/ronald-cotton/

  4. https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3124

  5. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/the-perfect-witness

  6. https://law.justia.com/cases/north-carolina/supreme-court/1987/257a85-0.html

  7. https://law.justia.com/cases/north-carolina/court-of-appeals/1990/8815sc1152-1.html

  8. https://casetext.com/case/state-v-cotton-78

  9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistaken_identity

  10. https://www.innocenceproject.org/eyewitness-identification-reform/

  11. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/02/mistaken-identity

  12. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dna/cotton/summary.html

  13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLGXrviy5Iw

  14. https://deadline.com/2019/01/picking-cotton-movie-ronald-cotton-jennifer-thompson-sidney-kimmel-jessica-sanders-1202537518/

  15. https://healingjusticeproject.org/

  16. https://www.innocenceproject.org/cross-racial-identification-and-jury-instruction/

  17. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/abo-blood-type-identification-and-forensic-science-1900-1960

  18. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/teaching/myth-eyewitness-testimony-is-the-best-kind-of-evidence.html

  19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington,_North_Carolina

  20. https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=4394&h=11029142&tid=&pid=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=lSh378&_phstart=successSource

  21. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dna/interviews/moseley.html

  22. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/03/04/the-perfect-witness/a7fa0461-c15c-4237-86db-52ab5069fbea/

  23. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.1965.20.2.547

  24. https://www.innocenceproject.org/exonerate/