The Story of an Unlikely Friendship Sparked by Injustice

02.25.09

“Picking Cotton,” a highly anticipated new book set to be released next week, tells the story of a wrongful conviction from the perspectives of both the victim of a 1984 sexual assault and the innocent man who spent a decade in prison for the crime before DNA testing set him free. But the story doesn’t end at exoneration. The book goes on to describe the unlikely friendship between the crime victim, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, and Ronald Cotton, who she misidentified in the attack. The two met two years after Cotton was exonerated and today they travel around the country telling their story and urging states to reform eyewitness identification practices to prevent wrongful convictions.

Written with author Erin Torneo, “Picking Cotton” will – in the words of Sister Helen Prejean – “break your heart and lift it up again.”

The book is set to be released Tuesday, March 3, but

you can preorder your copy from Amazon.com today and a portion of proceeds will support the Innocence Project

.


Watch a video here

to hear the moving story in the words of Cotton and Thompson-Cannino.

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