Picking Cotton: Our Memoir Of Injustice And Redemption

In June of 1995, Ronald was summoned to visit with the warden. The warden told him he had good news and bad news. The bad news was that Ronald was going back to court. The good news was that the man who committed the rape had confessed. The warden told him, “You’re going home tomorrow” (200). He then asked Ronald to tell him which guards were helping run drugs into the prison. Ronald said he couldn’t be his snitch and went back to his cell. That night, he gave his few possessions away to his friends.

Two officers arrived in the morning to drive him to North Carolina. They took him to a McDonald’s and told him more about his case and about Bobby: “Even after the DNA linked him, it still took him five hours to confess” (205). Ronald would have to spend that night in the Asheville Prison, but it would be his last night behind bars. It was a long night, and he wondered if he was being tricked, but the officers returned in the morning to get him.

At the courthouse, Ronald saw the same judge who presided over his probable cause hearing in 1984 in the recess room. He told the bailiff to remove Ronald’s handcuffs. The Asheville officers gave him a bag of clothes and said that it was from his family. Ronald went into a bathroom to change. In the courtroom, the judge told Ronald he was a free man. He hugged his family and noticed Phil Mosely in the background with tears in his eyes. Richard and Tom embraced Ronald and told him that they did not expect to be paid for their three years of work, and Richard added: “All we ask of you is to make the most of your freedom” (209). Outside, Ronald looked at the sky and said, “Lord, where do I go from here?” (210).

In June of 1995. Gauldin and Rob Johnson returned to Jennifer’s house and told her that they were wrong: Ronald Cotton did not rape her. Bobby Poole was a DNA match and knew all of the details of the crime, which he finally admitted under questioning. Jennifer reflects, “I couldn’t speak. I knew I had to keep it together in front of them, although it felt like everything I staked my life on—how I made sense of what happened to me—suddenly fell through a trap door” (213). She felt that she had disgraced their investigation. They told her that Ronald was being released and left.

she reflects that her guilt over “[her] part in robbing this man of so many years was not [her] first concern” (214). She feared that he would want revenge on her—and her children—for what she took from him. She talked to the principal at their school, explained what had happened, and asked that he always have her children watched. She was often embarrassed and ashamed, and she recalls, “People hadn’t needed to know about my rape, and now I had to tell people not only was I a rape victim, but a rape victim with an extremely bad memory and someone had had to pay eleven years for that” (216). She had coffee with Gauldin, who told her that Ronald seemed to be at peace. Gauldin did not believe she was in danger, except, possibly, to herself.

A weekend after his exoneration, Ronald went to watch the Fourth of July fireworks with his family. He recalls, “While I finally had my innocence, I was a long way from independence” (219). He was staying with Tudy and her sons in Gibsonville. He had no money, and job prospects were minimal. Ronald noticed people watching him on the Fourth and felt that many of them were thinking he must have escaped justice on a technicality. He watched the fireworks and thought: “It was beautiful and frightening to me at the same time, how big and wide open the sky was. I was so hungry for life, but at the same time, it scared me” (220). Ronald was scared to go anywhere alone.

Tom and Ronald were invited to go on Larry King Live in Los Angeles, and everyone pitched in so Ronald could buy a suit. When he looked at himself, he thought he looked like a lawyer. On the flight, Tom told him that the governor of North Carolina had given Ronald a full pardon, which would be announced on the TV show. During the interview, after Ronald told his story, Larry asked, “And you’re not angry, right?” (225). Ronald said no. When Larry asked if he needed something, Ronald said a job and that any job would do.

In Burlington, Tom got Ronald a job at LabCorp, which happened to be the same company that tested his DNA. Ronald worked in shipping and receiving, which was where he met a woman named Robbin. They started having lunch together. One day, Robbin started crying and said he reminded her of an abused kid she had known. She said that no one should have to go through what he went through.

One Sunday, she took him to visit his father in a rest home, and they began going every Sunday to visit. Ronald began working a second job at Golden Corral and studying for his GED exam. One evening, Detective Lowe came into Golden Corral and told Ronald that he was sorry and that Jennifer was too. Ronald wondered why she didn’t tell him herself.

Robbin and Ronald got married on December 21, 1996, the day he turned 35. The following week, Ronald’s father died. His mother told him: “He was always proud of you, even while you were incarcerated. Damn proud” (233).

Jennifer recalls running into Phil Mosely at a McDonald’s. She felt ashamed and guilty and wanted to run. Phil said she was always in his prayers: “All these years, I had thought of Phil Mosely as a hideous bastard. I hated him as much as I had hated Ronald Cotton. His kindness was simply too much to bear” (236).

In 1996, Jennifer agreed to be part of a Frontline episode about eyewitnesses making mistakes. The episode was called “What Jennifer Saw.” She participated on the condition that she did not have to have contact with Ronald. When she watched the episode, she saw Ronald's appearance, in which he said: “I would like to hear what she has to say—in her own words—to me” (237). She cried. She and Ronald were the same age, and she felt that he didn’t have any of the good things she did because she had taken away his chance. She called Gauldin and asked for his help meeting Ronald.

Vinny supported her, but Janet hated the idea. Janet said that Ronald was no choirboy and would have wound up in jail anyway. Her parents did not try to talk her out of it, but her father said: “I just wanna caution you, just know that every time you lift the lid off the garbage can, it’s gonna stink” (240).

Robbin was furious when Ronald agreed to meet Jennifer. She wanted to know what Jennifer wanted with him now. No matter what he said, she grew more resistant. She did not think that he was angry enough, and he couldn’t see what he could get out of more anger. He told her he was going with or without her.

Jennifer and Ronald met at a Baptist church. Ronald and Robbin went into a private room with Vinny and Jennifer, and Jennifer apologized: “If I spent the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am, it wouldn’t come close to how I feel. Can you ever forgive me?” (244). Ronald said yes and that all he wanted was for them to move on and have happy lives. He reached for Jennifer’s hands, and she hugged him. They all cried together. Then, Robbin asked if she could talk to Jennifer alone.

Jennifer knew Robbin was angry. She recalls, “Her anger seemed packed up like a closed jack-in-the-box, ready to spring as soon as there was an opening” (247). Robbin said that Ronald was the best man she had known and demanded to know why Jennifer took so long to come forward. Ronald came in and asked if they were okay. Robbin began crying and said that she didn’t know if she could ever be at ease with someone who hurt Ronald so much. Jennifer watched Ronald and the peace on his face and thought, “He was free. Truly free” (249). The four of them embraced in the parking lot, and she felt as if Ronald was holding them all up.

Jennifer found that she could finally forgive herself with Ronald’s forgiveness. She wondered if she could forgive Bobby Poole. She wrote to him after learning that he had cancer and asked to meet with him. Bobby did not respond, but Jennifer found herself becoming friendlier with Ronald. They began talking frequently on the phone. One day, she took her children to meet him, and they loved him.

Governor Hunt signed a bill entitling Ronald to $10,000 for each year he was incarcerated. Jennifer, Rob Johnson, and Mike Gauldin had all written letters on his behalf. Ronald and Robbin bought land and a modular home in Mebane, a town outside of Burlington. Robbin soon gave birth to a baby girl they named Raven.

Ronald was surprised when he and Jennifer began talking on the phone. Initially, it was because she wanted his consent or company when she was asked to give media interviews about their case, but then it became a friendship. He and Jennifer went to Seattle together for an interview and then explored the city. When she was nervous around a rough-looking group of men, Ronald told her he would never let anyone harm her. When Bobby Poole died, Ronald sent Jennifer a newspaper clipping of the obituary.

When Jennifer learned that Bobby Poole was dead, it made her sad. She reflects, “At the end of this man’s life, all that could be written about him was that he was an inmate at Central Prison who had died of cancer” (267). She began volunteering with an organization called SCAN (Stop Child Abuse Now). She asked her supervisor to put her wherever no one else wanted to go. For four years, she worked with families who had been court-ordered to participate, trying to help parents learn ways to cope with their children that did not lead to abuse.

She and Ronald spoke at Wake Forest in connection with an event about a wrongfully convicted man named Alfred Rivera. Robbin came and brought Raven, and she told the crowd, “I was keenly aware that if the evidence had been lost, Ronald would still be in prison. Raven, this other miracle of DNA, would never have been born” (269).

Jennifer says she still “had a hard time forgiving [her]self for being less than perfect” (270). Her mistake with Ronald continued to haunt her, even though she could speak about it openly. She went to a park with Ronald and Raven, and Ronald told her that he saw Mary Reynolds working at a cookie shop in the mall. Mary didn’t say anything to him. Jennifer thought about Mary often and wondered what she might need to move on from the ordeal.

After a talk, a woman confided to Jennifer that she felt that her own rape happened because she was sinful and God was punishing her. Jennifer wonders, “How many women still feel that way? No wonder so many women do not prosecute, with their lives opened up like wounds. For some, the only way is to bury it. They do their best to pretend it never happened” (275).

On a phone call with Ronald, he and Jennifer told each other that they loved each other. Brittany and Morgan overheard it, and Morgan said, “Mom, that’s really weird” (276). They all laughed and agreed that it was weird. Jennifer reflects that “to say we were friends just wasn’t enough” (276).

In October of 2007, Ronald and Jennifer marched at a rally for Troy Davis, a man who was on death row, his conviction largely due to troubling, inconsistent eyewitness testimony. After the march, Jennifer and Ronald each spoke to the crowd through a megaphone. After they finished, they hugged each other. Jennifer told him, “Thank God I picked you” and Ronald said, “I know what you mean” (281).