Picking Cotton

Over the weekend, 60 Minutes made me cry. This normally doesn't happen. Unless I watch the entire Andy Rooney segment at the end. Kidding! (sorta)

But the story about How Accurate is Visual Memory was mind blowing. It tells the incredible story and saga of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton.

To read the transcript or watch video of the show, go here.

In a nutshell, when Jennifer Thompson was 22 she was a victim of a brutal rape. She picked Ronald Cotton out of a police lineup and he was tried and convicted of the crime. 11 years into his life sentence DNA evidence proved that he was innocent and he was released. Thompson was devastated that her eyewitness testimony had caused a man to go to jail and lose 11 years of the prime of her life. She requested a meeting with Cotton and here is her account of how it went:

"I started to cry immediately. And I looked at him, and I said, 'Ron, if I spent every second of every minute of every hour for the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am, it wouldn't come close to how my heart feels. I'm so sorry.' And Ronald just leaned down, he took my hands…and he looked at me, he said, 'I forgive you,'" Thompson remembered.

"I told her, I said, 'Jennifer, I forgive you. I don't want you to look over your shoulder. I just want us to be happy and move on in life,'" Cotton recalled.

"The minute he forgave me, it's like my heart physically started to heal. And I thought, 'This is what grace and mercy is all about. This is what they teach you in church that none of us ever get.' And here was this man that I had hated. I mean, I used to pray every day of my life during those eleven years that he would die. That he would be raped in prison and someone would kill him in prison. That was my prayer to God. And here was this man who with grace and mercy just forgave me," Thompson told Stahl. "How wrong I was, and how good he is."


The two have written a book, Picking Cotton, that I can not wait to read. They are also good friends and travel the country sharing their story and speaking about the dangers of eye witness testimony.

An amazing portrait of grace and mercy. Beautiful!