Wrongful Conviction: Ronald Cotton

One dark nigh of July 1984 Jennifer Thompson Canino was sexually assaulted on her own apartment. After the episode occurred she managed to escape from the assailant and ran into a neighbours home where she called the police. During the attack Jennifer did great effort to try and remember as much details as possible hoping she would survive and afterwards provide this information to the police in order to help them catch and imprison the criminal. That night the assailant not only raped Jennifer, but also another college student.
After she made the complaint to the police, they presented a photo line-up so that Jennifer could identify the criminal who assaulted her. She chose the picture of Ronald Cotton and this is how his nightmare began. Following the photo line up, the live line-up came, and Jennifer again identified Cotton as her rapist and argued she was absolutely sure she caught the right person. Also some evidence was found where Cotton's shoes seemed to match the criminal's footprints on the apartment plus the fact that Ronald owned a flashlight that looked similar to the one the assailant seemed to have used. The police chose to believe Jennifer's arguments.
Months later on January 1985 Ronald Cotton was convicted by a jury on one count of rape and one of burglary; two years later he was convicted for both rapes and sentenced to life in prison. Ronald Cotton along his group of lawyers tried to appeal and failed several times, though he never lost his faith, he was innocent and he wanted to prove it.
Finally in 1995 the Burlington police department once and for all turned over the whole evidence; this included a semen sample of the assailant. The sample was tested and it turned out not to be a match of Cotton's DNA, beyond any doubt he was innocent. In July 1995 he was cleared of all charges.
Ronald Cotton served ten years and a half in prison for wrongful conviction. Posterior to his liberty, he managed to live a normal life, got married and had a child. Additionally he received $ 110.000 u.s from the state. Nowadays Jennifer and Ronald are good friends since she arrange a meeting with him in order to apologise where Cotton admit to her he had forgiven her long before during his time served because he understood it was all an unjust misunderstanding. Now they are both traveling the world together in order to spread the word about wrongful conviction and the problems regarding eyewitness identification procedures and the reforms that need to be made in order to avoid this kind of mistakes that can genuinely ruin someone's life.