Picking Cotton: Our Memoir Of Injustice And Redemption

When Ronald was taken to prison, he was scared but tried not to show it. When people asked him what he was in for, he said he didn’t want to talk about it. He was assigned a case worker who gave him two weeks’ worth of tests to see where he should be placed. Ronald asked to work in the kitchen because he had cooking experience, even though a man named New York worked there. New York had been telling everyone that Ronald belonged to him.

Three months later, Ronald was lifting weights when he saw a new inmate who looked familiar. The man’s name was Bobby Poole, and he looked like the composite sketch of the man who had raped Mary Reynolds. Bobby told Ronald that he was in for rape, but Ronald couldn’t be sure he was actually the man from the sketch.

Ronald describes the advantages of working in the kitchen. Kitchen workers ate dinner earlier and spent more time alone. One day, he got in a fight with New York, who left him alone after deciding that Ronald was more trouble than he was worth. However, a man named Kenny soon started following Ronald around, even into the showers, telling him that he was beautiful and that he was going to be his.

Days after the shower incident, Ronald talked with an inmate named Roger Blackstock, who was like a big brother to many of the inmates. Roger said Kenny kept talking about him. Ronald knew that if he gave Kenny enough chances, Kenny would eventually catch him: “If word spread that Kenny broke me, I’d be a goner” (106). He went to where Kenny was and fought him. The guards broke up the fight, and when Ronald explained what had been happening, Kenny was given 30 days in lockdown, which meant he was isolated in a smaller prison block within the prison.

Ronald continued to watch Bobby Poole and tried to learn more about him: “In the trial, my attorney had tried to say it was mistaken identity. And here was proof” (109). He wrote frequently to news stations and to Mosely but rarely received a response.

One evening Kenny came to his cell and apologized. He said he would like for them to be friends. He said that he had been studying with Bobby and knew that Bobby had committed the crimes for which Ronald was convicted. Ronald didn’t trust Kenny but was intrigued. He agreed to keep listening and watching. Ronald managed to get a picture of himself and Bobby taken and sent it to Mosely.

One day, his sister, Diane, called; their mother had had a stroke. She was temporarily blind and paralyzed. Ronald reflects, “Rage ate at me like a cancer. I could scream and shatter my own eardrums, but no one else heard me. The rules were different if you were a Black man” (112). Ronald felt that he had no hope and that he would continue to serve the time for Bobby's crimes.

Weeks later, Bobby was transferred to Ronald’s dorm. Ronald notes, “I knew I had to do something then” (113). His father visited him, and he told his father that he felt killing Bobby was his only option. He didn’t tell him that he had already made a weapon. His father told him, “If you take this man’s life, you ain’t never coming home. You’ll belong in here” (114). That night in his bed, Ronald decided he was unwilling to become a killer. He dismantled the shank he had made and flushed it down the toilet.

Bobby was soon transferred to another prison. Ronald is glad that he did not hurt him, reflecting, “Letting go of the weapon was one of the first important decisions I made. There wasn’t much I could control about the way my life was going, but I could control whether I let my rage get the best of me” (118). One day, he heard a group of inmates singing, harmonizing a gospel song, and he joined them.

At the start of his second year, Ronald received a letter from Mosely. The Supreme Court in North Carolina had granted him a new trial because the evidence that the second raped woman could not pick him out of a lineup had not been admitted. The new trial would begin in November of 1987. Ronald was sent back to Graham jail for nine months to prepare. Shortly before the trial, Mary Reynolds, the second victim, said that she had identified Ronald as her rapist. She claimed to have been too scared to admit it before. Now he was charged with the second rape. Ronald notes, “Just like that, my problems doubled” (121). That night in his cell, he read the Bible and wondered if and how the cops had gotten Mary to change her story.

There was a new Assistant District Attorney, Luke Turner. Luke was Black, which worried Ronald that “[h]e’d have more to prove” (121). The judge determined that there was enough evidence to charge Ronald with Mary’s rape. The judge appointed a man named Dan Monroe to co-represent him with Mosely, given the complicated nature of the case. After Ronald told them about Bobby, the two of them went to Central Prison to interview Kenny.

During jury selection, no Black people made it onto the jury. As a result, Dan and Phil filed a motion for a mistrial. Turner argued that the Black jurors were excluded because three out of the four prospects knew Ronald’s family to some degree. The motion was denied, and the trial proceeded with the all-white jury.

The next morning, as he was preparing for trial, Ronald saw Bobby and then Kenny. Kenny was worried that he would be killed for “snitching” on Bobby. Ronald asked him if he would really rather live with knowing that he had helped keep an innocent man in prison. He said that Kenny “earned [his] respect that day” (126).

Ronald saw his mother in the courtroom and was heartbroken by her condition. Her memory was deteriorating, and she was easily confused, which would be obvious later when she took the stand. Jennifer took the stand and was “more determined than ever” (126). She identified Ronald again and told the story identically to the first trial. Mary Reynolds had a hard time describing her rape. When she described her attacker, it sounded exactly like Bobby to Ronald, right down to his smirk and mannerisms, but Mary identified Ronald as the rapist.

Mosely cross-examined her, focusing on the fact that she had waited three years to identify Ronald as a man she had seen in the lineup. Ronald’s hope was that the evidence concerning Bobby Poole would help, particularly when the jury saw that Bobby matched Mary’s physical description of her attacker better than he did. But the judge had not decided yet whether the Bobby information was admissible. Bobby was brought in, and Mosely began to question him about his blood type. The blood found at the second crime scene was type A, the same as Bobby's. Cotton was type O positive. Bobby denied that he had done anything wrong, and Kenny was summoned next. Kenny told them about Bobby's confession, but the judge ruled that no discussion of Bobby be allowed in the trial. The jury would not know he existed.

During the trial, Ray Byrum, Ronald’s former boss, said that Ronald was always touching and harassing his female employees, which was a lie. Ronald did not understand why he or anyone else would say this. One evening, an inmate named Duncan Bass told Ronald that he also knew Bobby and that Bobby had also told him about the crimes. When Mosely told the judge this new information, the judge refused to admit it as evidence. The jury found Ronald guilty. This time, Ronald agreed to speak when he was asked if he had anything to add. He sang a song that he had written in prison about his innocence, fear, and faith in God.

Back in prison, Ronald was determined not to let it crush him. He reflects, “Now it was time for me to make peace with the fact that I might never get out” (144). It was easier for him now that Bobby and Kenny were gone. He made friends with two inmates, David and Randy. They devised a plan to start using ingredients from the kitchen to make “buck,” a cheap wine that they could sell. Ronald began buying items from the canteen with his money and opened his own business as a salesman: “Eventually I got a reputation for wheeling and dealing” (148).

In June, he was transferred to a medium-security facility, Caledonia, a farm in Halifax County. One day, he was pounding on a heavy bag for exercise when he saw Bobby Poole watching him. He wrote to his appellate defender and asked that they move him back to Central Prison to avoid trouble with Bobby. Bobby avoided him, but Ronald began fighting frequently with an inmate named Donnie, who had taken a disliking to him. Ronald did not want to get himself in worse trouble. He notes, “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. I knew my innocence would not matter if I gave in to the violence all around me” (155). One morning, Donnie came to Ronald’s bunk with a shank, but someone yelled, and guards arrived in time to take Donnie to lockup before the fight could start.

One afternoon, an inmate asked Ronald if he wanted a cat. He handed him a tiny calico kitten that Ronald named Judy. In 1991, the Supreme Court upheld Ronald’s conviction. Judy disappeared a few weeks later, just before Ronald was transferred to the Correctional Institute in Troy.

In September 1992, an attorney and law professor named Richard Rosen agreed to look into Ronald’s case to see what could be done. Ronald had now been incarcerated for eight years. When Ronald met him, he liked him instantly. Richard was going to ask a local attorney named Tom Lambeth—one of his former students—to help with the case. During the rest of the year, Richard and Tom reinvestigated the case and conferred with Phil and Dan. Richard asked Ronald to be patient because he wanted to take as long as they needed to make sure they did not overlook anything. He said the timing of their motions would be critical.

In February, Ronald was moved to Harnett, a penitentiary in Lillington, North Carolina. A year passed, and he had now been a prisoner for a decade. He was no longer angry. He remarks, “You had to be free in your heart […] Guilt, fear, anger—they were all their own kinds of prison” (170).

In 1994, the murder of O. J. Simpson’s wife took place, and DNA testing became a focal point of the trial. He discussed it with Tom and Richard. Tom told him that if they found any of Ronald’s DNA there, that would be the end of their efforts, and he would never have another chance. He promised them that they would not find anything and asked them to pursue the test.

Months later, Ronald was flown on a plane to a prison in Tennessee as part of an initiative to reduce prison overcrowding. Now his family couldn’t visit him because he was too far away. Ronald began working in the prison laundry and tried to keep up with his case. Rich and Tom sent him a document of affidavits from the waitresses at the restaurant where he had worked: They had all legally sworn that he was never inappropriate with them in any way.

DNA testing was approved a few months after that. A private lab performed the test early in 1995. After the test, Richard told him that they had not found his DNA, but they did not find any mystery DNA either. The only traces there were from Jennifer and her boyfriend. The case would still need to be litigated.