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Picking Cotton

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Picking Cotton
PICKING COTTON
BY DAVID GRAVES

Abstract
This story is about two people, two victims of crime. Two people that suffered from circumstance and circumstantial evidence. Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson are these two people. This story is about the way circumstantial evidence convicts and the way DNA exonerates.

Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson are living the ultimate human story. It is one of error, recognizing it and being redeemed. Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson were living in Piedmont North Carolina during the crime. Anyone who has lived there in the past twenty years knows their names, but probably not their entire story.
In 1984, Jennifer Thompson was 22 when a man broke into her house and raped her. As the man assaulted her, she studied and memorized his face, as well as his voice, and everything she could about him. Jennifer’s intention was to survive, and when the assault was over, she wanted to put him in prison for the rest of his life for what he did to her. After Jennifer was treated for her injuries she helped the police draw a composite sketch of the man who raped her.
The Police Department of Alamance County had never seen a victim so composed, so determined and so sure. Just a few hours after her horrifying ordeal, after the emotionless doctor swabbed her vagina for semen samples at the hospital, Jennifer sat down at the police station with Detective Mike Gauldin. "The first comment I remember her making was that, “I'm going to get this guy that did this to me.” She said, “I took the time to look at him. I will be able to identify him if I'm given an opportunity," Gauldin remembered her saying (Hansen, 2001). She began combing through photos, trying to help come up with a composite of her rapist.
The sketch went out, and tips started pouring in. One of those tips was about Ronald Cotton. Three days after the rape, Detective Gauldin called Jennifer in to the police station to do a photo
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