Occasionally I run across a really good story; a story full of redemption, a surprise hero and things worth thinking about. Like most good stories this one starts with something bad.
A young woman named Jennifer Thompson was raped. She identified a man named Robert Cotton as her attacker. He was sentenced to life in prison.
A couple of years into the sentence, a man named Bobby Poole was housed in the same cell block as Robert Cotton. Poole began bragging that Cotton was doing time for him since he was Jennifer Thompson's true rapist. Cotton fashioned a knife intending to kill Poole. His dad encouraged him not to become a man who deserved to spend his life in prison. He told his son to put his faith in God instead.
Years later, DNA evidence in the case was examined using technology that didn't exist at the time of the original trial. It proved that the real rapist was Bobby Poole and not Robert Cotton. Cotton was released from jail after serving 11 years, and that's when the story gets really interesting.
Jennifer Thompson was in anguish over her own crime. Unintentionally she had stolen 11 years of an innocent man's life. She knew there was no way to give back those years, but she wanted to do what she could, so she arranged to meet Robert Cotton face to face.
They met in a church. She apologized and he forgave. They talked for hours about what had gone wrong. They talked about DNA and faith. Miraculously, they actually became friends. The man whose face had haunted Jennifer Thompson's nightmares for years, became her role model of forgiveness. She determined to forgive her real attacker.
15 more years have passed and Cotton and Thompson remain friends.
"Ron just calls to make sure I'm doing OK," Thompson says.
"He is an amazing human being. He has been a real good teacher for me."
Together they have written a book entitled, Picking Cotton and they work together for reforms of eyewitness identification procedures.
It is a story that is just worth thinking about.
Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just...think about these things. Philippians 4: 8
I gathered information for this post from the following web sites.
http://truthinjustice.org/positive_id.htm
http://nersp.osg.ufl.edu/~malavet/evidence/notes/thompson_cotton.htm
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