POLICE CARELESSNESS AGAIN

For years, Jennifer Thompson wished the worst kind of horrors on Ronald Cotton, the man sentenced to life in prison for brutally raping her. Today, 10 years after DNA evidence exonerated Cotton of the crime, the two call themselves friends and close phone calls with the words "I love you." "He taught me that anger and joy cannot exist in the same heart," Thompson told delegates attending the Unlocking Innocence conference, an international conference on avoiding wrongful conviction. "The one person who brought me to a place of healing was the person I had hated and wanted to see dead."

In 1984, Thompson was a straight-A college student in Burlington, N.C., when an intruder broke into her home and raped her at knifepoint. As the man raped her, Thompson made a decision not to close her eyes -- she wanted to know what the man looked like and tell police. "I looked for distinguishing marks, scars, tattoos. I paid attention to the shape of his eyes, how long his hair was." A police sketch artist worked with Thompson to come up with a likeness of her attacker. After seeing several mugshots, Thompson picked Cotton's photo, thinking he looked most like her picture. The African American had his hair cut short to his head.

What Thompson didn't know was Cotton's photo was three years old. At the time of her attack, Cotton had a thick afro. A week later she picked Cotton out in a police lineup. In 1985, after a two-week trial, a jury convicted Cotton of rape. He was sentenced to life plus 50 years in prison. Ten years later police came to her with startling news: They had arrested the wrong man. DNA evidence and a confession by the real rapist, Robert Poole, exonerated Cotton.....

Now an advocate for the wrongfully convicted and a fierce opponent of the death penalty, Thompson said her experience shows how easily justice can go astray....

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