Jennifer Thompson suffered the horror of rape when she was a college senior in North Carolina sixteen years ago. During the attack, she studied her attacker's features in the hope that if she survived and if he were apprehended, she could do her part to bring him to justice. She wanted to prevent him ever from raping anyone else. When the police arrested Ronald Cotton, she made a positive identification. There was no doubt in her mind that he was her attacker and based on her absolute certainty, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

While Mr. Cotton was in prison, another prisoner in the same institution, Bobby Poole, began boasting that he had committed the crime. When Cotton won a new trial based on trial errors, Mr. Poole was brought into court, and Ms. Thompson was asked if he could have been the rapist. She again identified Mr. Cotton, who again was convicted and again sentenced to life in prison.

When, after the trial, she was asked to cooperate in DNA testing, she promptly agreed, thinking it would erase any lingering doubt about Mr. Cotton's guilt. She was devastated when the results established that Mr. Poole, not Mr. Cotton, had raped her eleven years before. Rather than denying her mistake, as similarly situated victims typically had done, she chose to seek Mr. Cotton's forgiveness, and to atone by telling her story as testament to the tragic results of human fallibility in the criminal justice system.

In June of 2000, Ms. Thompson joined the speakers bureau of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, a capacity in which she has spoken on the issue of eyewitness error to various legal and university groups, testified in favor of reform legislation in several states, and given scores of media interviews on eyewitness fallibility.

Last updated April 16, 2002