Summary Of Picking Cotton By Jennifer Thompson

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At the beginning of the book, I felt bad for Jennifer Thompson. My mind was not prepared for what I was about to read. Before this book I thought I had a pretty good understanding of how the Criminal Justice system worked. I also never put much thought in the victim 's role in the matter or what part they played in the process of the trial. Most of all, I had a belief that if you were truly innocent there is no way that you could be convicted of a crime that you did not commit. As I continued to read on I realized how they were both victims in one way or another. I also realized how flawed our system truly is. There have been 330 people exonerated with DNA evidence, out of the 330 of those people. 205 of them were African American. Innocent …show more content…
It took an hour and a half and then they had a face. In the book Picking Cotton, Jennifer says, “the mouth wasn 't quite right and the ears stuck out too much, but it was close. “The police were happy.” Cannino, J., & Cotton, R. (2009)(23) Jennifer had to go back to the hospital to endure yet another rape kit examination. I felt for Jennifer, no women should have to go through an experience like that once in their life, much less twice. I do not understand why they did rape kits because DNA testing did not become a thing until after the O.J. Simpson case. If they did not test for DNA, why were the rape victims put through such an invasive process if DNA testing was not performed at that time? Siegel, L. (2000)(61) in the textbook states, “that the suffering endured by the crime victims does not end when their attacker leaves the scene of the crime.” Women often suffer from PTSD after such a tragedy and that is exactly what Jennifer suffered from. I believe this contributed to her desire to make sure the investigation went …show more content…
Ron Cotton didn 't even fit the height description of the criminal. The worse part I think happened to him is the police stated several times that the women were raped by the same guy, so why would he be taken back to court and convicted with a second life sentence for the rape of Mary 's rape. When Ron 's blood type does not match the blood found at the second crime scene. Mary could not even Identify her attacker. So the only evidence linking Ron to the second rape was speculation and same MO. Ronald cotton had no Police or Criminal Justice training was even able to figure out that it was Bobby Poole that was guilty of the crimes he was being punished for. Why did no one listen to him, several times Bobby Pool confessed to multiple people that he was responsible for the rapes of the two women? Nothing was looked into or even done, they had a chance at the Voir dire hearing. The judge had enough evidence to have a reasonable doubt and they excluded it, and threw it out. So the jury would never even know the Bobby Pole was a potential suspect. One of the witnesses at the Voir dire hearing stated they saw him wearing white gloves when he rode his bike around town, which Ron said he does indeed have white gloves, but he cuts out the fingers of them. Cannino, J., & Cotton, R. (2009) The attacker was wearing white gloves during the rape if they were Ron 's gloves they would have left fingerprints because they

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