Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Ronald Cotton, and Erin Torneo

() Nothing is perfect. Not out justice system, and certainly not our memory. Our memory is especially unreliable in traumatic situations. This book illustrates this in a none-too-short story about a man named Ronald Cotton. He was wrongfully identified by a determined, eduring witness, and rape survivor, Jennifer Thompson.

The book switches from narrating both perspectives. Cotton spends 11 years incarcerated for a rape he never committed. Finally, DNA and another inmate's detailed confession clears him of the crime. Yet all that time, Jennifer Thompson was dead-sure it was Robert Cotton.

But she, Cotton, and the police department are soon educated by research that reveals current police practices can taint the mind of a witness. Thompson was guided to her conclusion, though it was also in line with her memory. (Ronald Cotton was often mistaken to be Bobby Poole, the real perpetrator, while in prison.) So technically, as it says somewhere in the book, they are all "victims of the same rapist." Thompson and Cotton eventually became close friends.

Even when we are completely certain of something, we can still be wrong. Our memories aren't static, though we like to think so. This is a non-fiction book authored by the main characters themselves. It's a good read.

But maybe I'm just growing a love for memoirs. I listened to this as an audio book.

"The way pipes burst when there's too much pressure - I couldn't allow that pressure to build up in me, because it'd snap my mind. I had to protect my mind, to get it in front of the time. [...] More waiting, carrying a big question mark over my head. if this was my life - if I was going to spend the rest of my days in a North Carolina prison - I had to figure out a way to live it." (pg. 144)
"Some of the nicest people you met in prison were sometimes the ones who had done the worst stuff. You never know who to believe. Some people told lies because they didn't want to accept what they had done. A couple of times I tried to tell people I didn't do it, but they usually just said, 'You had to, if you didn't do it, you wouldn't be here.'" (pg. 152)
"Put a man in a cage with beasts and throw away the key, and it's usually not very long before the man is a beast himself." (pg. 155)