Rikers Island; 30 years on death row; Eyewitness testimony reliability | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

There has been a lot of talk about criminal justice reform in the United States, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a place more in need of reform than Rikers Island, New York City's flagship jail located in the middle of the East River. Rikers' holding about 10,000 inmates is a volatile mix, some have been convicted of minor crimes but up to 80 percent are awaiting trial, many are there because they can't afford bail and in a trend that reflects a growing national problem. Rikers has a growing number of mentally ill people. Inmates, the mentally ill, now represent more than 40 percent of the population.

Correctional officers are not adequately trained to deal with this population. The result is a disturbing pattern of negligence and excessive force that is the focus of our story tonight led by the United States Attorney. preet bharara to intervene, I mean, what we really discovered was that there was a culture of violence in addition to a Code of Silence and that is a deadly combination and I mean, literally, as we found in several cases that we have presented. Regarding Rikers Island, concerned about those

death

s and a series of alarming reports about Rikers Island, Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, launched a two-year investigation into the prison complex that we found in an alarming number of cases. there was no discipline regarding the officers, there was one officer who had dozens of complaints against him and he was never disciplined once or maybe only once and that is something that has to change, people have to understand that there are consequences for their actions not only to the inmates but also to the officers how long has this been going on,

years

and

years

, too many Rikers is a 400 acre

island

right off the runway of LaGuardia Airport in the shadows of the Manhattan skyscrapers, A bridge leads in and out, it is surrounded by its own moat, the inmate population has decreased dramatically from a high of twenty thousand to ten thousand, but despite the decrease, city data shows that violence has increased over the last decade due to the US attorney's findings and an unusual collaboration was formed. along with plaintiff's attorneys, the Legal Aid Society and private attorney Jonathan Abadi, in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of a dozen Rikers inmates, the number of facial fractures, traumatic brain injuries, broken bones, serious physical injuries, It is simply out of control, which compounds the problems. at Rikers it's that increase in the number of mentally ill inmates and that just compounds the issues around violence and the issues around care and discipline, so it's a problem.

What was captured in this video obtained by 60 Minutes helps illustrate what federal prosecutor Bharara is talking about that had not been seen in public before Bradley Ballard, who was schizophrenic and diabetic, was taken to Rikers in 2013 accused of violating probation for an assault conviction. In the video he was seen twisting his shirt into a phallic symbol and making lewd gestures. and then taken back to his cell, according to an investigation by the New York State Commission of Corrections. He was placed in the functional equivalent of solitary confinement. They put him in a cell. They locked the cell and basically threw away the key.

Abadi represents Ballard. family in a pending wrongful

death

lawsuit against the city, the commission's report found that Ballard was locked in his cell for six days before his death and was denied access to life-sustaining prescription medications. day after day, officers, supervisors and doctors passed by. observed his deteriorating state but was unable to help him after repeated flooding of Ballard's bathroom a maintenance worker turned off the water entering Ballard's cell the report found Ballard lying on his own waist threw a deodorant yes, reports are that correctional officers were bringing aerosol cans from home because the stench was so strong coming from that cell here an inmate who handed out a tray of food pulled his shirt up over his nose the report found that the videotape indicated that the cell Ballard was extremely unsanitary finally, on the sixth day, medical workers were called according to the report, an officer asked Ballard if he could get up on his own.

I need help. Ballard said inmate workers took him out of his cell and put him on a stretcher. Records show Ballard went into cardiac arrest shortly after his death and was observed hours later. he languished for seven days while he died and they did nothing, he was the functional equivalent of torture, they killed him. The city medical examiner declared Ballard's death a homicide according to the commission's report. He called Ballard's medical and custodial treatment from the moment he entered Rikers as so incompetent. and inadequate enough to shock the conscience, the Department of Correction issued a statement saying it adjusted its practices to ensure that a similar tragedy does not occur again, but to this day no criminal charges have been filed against any of the supervising officers or health workers involved.

It's impossible to know if anyone stepped forward, but if they did it wasn't enough to help Bradley Ballard. In my opinion, that is inhumane. That should never have happened. Norman Seabrook is the president of the union that represents correctional officers, but not senior supervisors. We showed you the video of Ballard, who is responsible, the supervisor, what about his officers? Officers followed supervisor instructions in another incident captured on surveillance video. The inmate José Bautista tried to hang himself. He had been arrested on domestic charges and was awaiting trial. He could not. He did not post the 250 bail when he jumped.

Suddenly, the officers beat him so brutally that he suffered an intestinal perforation and needed emergency surgery according to case records. Batista's case was one of 129 serious injuries over an 11-month period documented in a revealing New York Times report. York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that was intended for internal use only, but 60 Minutes managed to obtain a copy. The report found that 77 percent of the injuries involved mentally ill inmates and their injuries were severe enough to require care beyond the jail's medical capacity. The doctors could take a third of the 77 percent and say okay, it was the inmates who were just being violent and needed to be subdued, but I think the 77 percent tell the story, it's a problem.

Dr. Daniel, who is now in private practice, was a problem. He was Rikers' executive director of mental health for five years until he left in 2014. Is it fair to say that Rikers is a mental institution? It is surely one of the largest mental institutions in the country, if not the largest. Can you tell me about the Bradley Ballard case, what does that say about how things work at Rikers? Probably the worst case I have experienced was a case where all systems failed, said the private medical contractor's staff did not do what was required on a daily basis. rounds and was never informed about Ballard's deteriorating condition the contract with the private medical firm was not renewed Bradley Ballard is not the only mentally ill inmate who died in custody in recent years in 2014, US Attorney Preet Bharara filed the first civil rights criminal case in a decade against a Riker officer or supervisor in connection with the poisoning of mentally ill inmate Jason Echeverria, who died after ingesting toxic soap while in solitary confinement, as seen in this video that was presented as evidence.

Echeveria, a robbery suspect who was also awaiting trial, was escorted to a cell where he swallowed toxic soap given to him to clean his cell. His father Ramon told us he believes he ate the soap in a desperate effort to get out of solitary confinement. my son was screaming because he was burning inside he's dying he's dying a few hours later, according to court documents, correctional officer Raymond Castro alerted the unit's supervisor, Capt. Terence Pendergrass, that Echeveria needed medical attention according to Castro's

testimony

. Captain Pendergrass said don't call me if you have living breathing bodies, just call me if you need a cell phone. extraction or if you have a dead body another correctional officer Angel Lazarte testified about what happened next a pharmacy technician on his rounds said echeveria could die so he approached Pendergrass and Pendergast told him to write an injury report which you can see on the tape Pendergast then went to look at Echeveria's cell he himself returned and interrupted writing the report Pendergrass LED Lazarte walked away from the desk after speaking Lazarte kept the report according to court records the report was never filed Echeveria was discovered dead the next morning the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide due to negligence and denial of medical care saw him he was suffering and everything why couldn't you just call an ambulance family it's okay he's a prisoner he's an inmate he's a human being he's a human being both It breaks your heart and makes your blood boil because you're thinking: here is someone who had the responsibility of ensuring that peace was enforced, but also responsible for the safety and security of those under his charge and that report was never submitted, You know?

One of the findings that we found in our research was that in case after case, sometimes you had people witnessing things and getting together and training each other on what their response should be, which makes it very difficult to retain someone. responsible that culture you're describing seems so ingrained that the officers felt almost comfortable behaving that way even with the cameras on I was just what does that tell you about that culture says the culture is broken says the institution is Captain Pendergrass was convicted in December 2014, a jury determined that Pendergrass violated Jason Echeveria's constitutional rights by deliberately ignoring his pleas for help and depriving him of urgent medical care, leaving Echeveria to die alone in his cell.

Pendergrass was sentenced to five years in prison. and lazarte have since been fired absolutely Union President Norman Seabrook said his officers do not have the training to deal with mentally ill inmates like Jason Echeveria and Bradley Ballard. His men are not trained and his women are not, they are not real men and not women. trained to deal with mental illness at all we asked Norman Seabrook about the internal report that shows the vast majority of excessive force cases involving mentally ill inmates at the end of the day, you shouldn't be wondering why these individuals didn't get their medication so they wouldn't attack a correctional officer, if you're talking about an inmate who has a mental health problem, then certainly something made this person angry.

Seabrook says it's not just a question of the mentally ill. Rikers is a dangerous place and many of its officers are attacked every year. Seabrook wanted to show us the conditions his officers have to deal with, but when he took us to the Rikers Department of Corrections, the staff prevented us from going in with our cameras to see the problems Seabrook talks about, that's all. As we walked with him around the perimeter of one of the buildings, we wanted to talk to the commissioner of the department of corrections about the problems at Rikers, but our three scheduled interviews were postponed.

The city recently initiated a series of policy changes, such as installing more cameras. and reduce the use of solitary confinement a federal monitor was appointed to ensure that the reforms are implemented. US Attorney Bharara is going to hold the city to compliance if there is a decrease in violence, you know, it remains to be seen how much that decrease will be over time. I think the training will take some time and is happening as we speak. It has taken some time to build this culture of violence. Yeah, how long do you think it'll take to unravel it?

I'm not going to put a watch on it. but I will say that we are impatient people and we like to see results, that's what we get into in the first place. There may be no greater miscarriage of justice than wrong

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y convicting a person of murder and sentencing them to death, but that's exactly what happened to Glenn Ford. He spent nearly 30 years on death row in solitary confinement at Louisiana's notorious Angola prison until new evidence revealed he did not commit the murder. He was one of 149 inmates released from death row since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the capital. punishment in 1976 in all those exonerations you've probably never heard a prosecutor admit his role and apologize for his mistakes in sending an innocent man to death row, but tonight theProsecutor Marty Stroud's confession speaks of an injustice he believes so great that it destroyed two lives, Glenn Ford and his own.

I ended up single-handedly putting a man on death row who didn't belong there. I mean, at the end of the day, starting in Medio whatever you want to call it, I did something that was very, very bad, it was 1983 Shreveport Louisiana and 32-year-old prosecutor Marty Stroud was assigned his first death penalty case. A local jeweler, Isadora Roseman, had been robbed and quickly murdered. Stroud focused on Glenn Ford. Ford had done yard work for Roseman and was known to be a petty thief. He admitted that he had pawned some of the stolen jewelry, all of which was enough to make him the prime suspect.

Stroud knew that a conviction would boost his career. I was arrogant, narcissistic, caught up in the culture of winning when, regardless of the facts, the truth, looking back, was. there was a question about other people's participation that I should have followed up that I didn't do that why didn't you do it I think my failure to say something can only be described as cowardice I was a coward Stroud now admits the cards and the The system was against Ford from the beginning. His court-appointed attorneys had never practiced criminal law. What type of law did they practice?

One guy was in general civil practice and another was dealing with probate wills and inheritances, you know, they were trying to murder a trial in Louisiana where a man was being tried for his life and at the time I didn't see anything wrong with that. In fact, I laughed from time to time saying you know this was going to be we want to finish this case pretty quickly Stroud's case was not strong there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime the main witness incriminating Ford admitted in the court that the police had forced her to fabricate her

testimony

, but what was more important to Marty Stroud was the composition of the jury, there were no African Americans on the jury, it was that by design at the time of the case we excluded African Americans because we felt that they would not consider a death sentence where there was a black defendant and a white victim I was a person who sometimes made the final decision regarding jurors and I was wrong.

Caddo Parish Louisiana is predominantly white, yet 77 percent of those sentenced to death here in the last 40 years have done so. been black, so when Glenn Ford walks into the courtroom he has an oh-and-two charge against him and a fast boss coming right at his head for strike three. It took the jury less than three hours to find Glenn Ford guilty after Stroud and his attorney. The team came out and celebrated sending Ford to death row. I had a few drinks, I slapped people on the back, we sang songs that were absolutely disgusting. You know, sometimes you see Mother Justice and the statutes and she's blindfolded.

She was crying that night because I. It wasn't justice that wasn't justice at all Ford was placed in solitary confinement in one of the most infamous lockups in the United States Angola's maximum security prison has a well-earned reputation for its harsh sentences and conditions harsher summer temperatures in the death row commonly exceeds 104 degrees on death row, maybe you have a five by seven foot cell, in there every day, you go out for an hour a day to walk and you come back, you do it day after day, year After year and that's it, basically thrown into a cell and forgotten, Ford would become one of the longest serving death row inmates in the country.

Stroud went on to a successful legal career, but that all changed when one of the initial suspects, a man named Jake Robinson, told a police informant that he had killed the jeweler. Three decades earlier, Robinson is now in prison for another murder. A judicial review of the new information found there was credible evidence. Glenn Ford was not present or involved in the robbery and murder of Isidore Roseman Stroud. Isidore Roseman Stroud's reaction when told that Ford was innocent. I thought he was going to vomit with nausea and I felt like my face was turning feverish, but then the horror of knowing that yours truly had caused him all this pain last year, Ford was exonerated and released from Angola.

Images of his first freedom. The moments captured a rainbow in the sky and a smile on his face. What was it like for him to leave the walls of that prison? I entered a whole new world like breathing fresh air for the first time. I felt good, but not that good feeling. Finally, shortly after being released, Ford learned that he had stage four lung cancer. Doctors told him he only had a few months to live when we met Glenn Ford. He was living in New Orleans in a home for released prisoners and it hurt him just to swallow water.

I feel like a flame. You were on death row for 30 years. Yes, have you ever been close to an execution date? It arrived within a week because the judge said he was retiring and wanted to give me a death date. Did Mr. Ford get justice in this? case, I think he's late. Judge Dale Cox, Caddo Parish's acting district attorney, got Glenn Ford released after receiving the information because he sees that the justice system worked and no one, including Marty Stroud, did anything wrong. I don't know what it was. Is he apologizing? I think you are wrong that the system did not fail, Mr.

Ford, it did not, in fact, how can you see that? Because he's not on death row and that's how I can say I'm out of prison after 30 years. It's Justice, well, it's better than dying there and it's better than being executed. There may be no more controversial prosecutor in the United States than Dale Cox. Between 2010 and 2014, its Caddo parish office placed more people on death row per capita than anywhere else in the country. I think society should use the death penalty more, not less, but there have been ten other death row inmates in Louisiana who have been exonerated.

Clearly, the system is not perfect. Are you sure he's done it right all along? reasonably sure I've done it right reasonably sure am I arrogant enough? Am I narcissistic enough to say I couldn't make a mistake, of course not, but until this information came out the state was convinced Mr. Ford was guilty, yes I could? They would have killed me, yes, and it would have been a mistake. Yeah, it sounds like you're saying it's just a risk we have to take. Yes, if I had received this information too late, we would all have been distressed. Beyond description, uh, we don't.

I don't want to do this to people who are not guilty of the crime they are charged with under Louisiana law. Glenn Ford was entitled to $330,000, about eleven thousand dollars for each year of wrongful imprisonment, but the state denies him the money. Why? At the original trial, prosecutors said Ford knew a robbery was going to happen at Roseman's jewelry store, but he didn't report it. Ford was never charged with that crime, but the state says that is reason enough to deny him. Do you think he should be compensated? For the time you spent in prison, no, I think we should follow the law and the statute does not require you to be charged, convicted or arrested for any of these other crimes.

The statute only requires that Mr. Ford prove that he did not commit these. other crimes, so you are guilty until proven innocent in this case no, because it is not a question of guilt or innocence, it is a question of whether you are entitled to the taxpayer's money, which you see, you have to prove that yes , who is innocent of these other charges, these other crimes. for which he has never been accused for which he has never been tried that is correct, he has to prove that he is innocent in order to obtain the correct compensation.

I'm trying to understand that he was punished for something he could have done and it doesn't seem fair you want justice isn't the law supposed to provide justice? it's supposed to provide justice you don't think it deserves compensation I think the law should be followed. I've never heard of something like this where he says it's okay to do what he did to me without any conversation. There was some compensation. Glenn Ford was given a twenty dollar gift card the day he was released from Angola prison. He gave me a card for twenty dollars and said, "I wish you luck.

How long did it last?" yes I had some fried chicken tea and the fries came with it. I had four dollars left in change after 30 years in prison you're right 30 years on death row in solitary confinement and the state of Louisiana releases Mr. Ford with a 20 gift card you're trying to portray the state of Louisiana as some kind of monster. I got him out of jail as quickly as I could, that's the state's obligation and as far as I know, that's the end of the state's obligation. Worried, what about compassion? Don't you have compassion for what Mr.

Ford has been through? Well, he doesn't know me at all, does he? But you have no problem asking that question. I do it because I'm looking for an answer. in the business of compassion none of us, as prosecutors or defense attorneys, are in the business of compassion. I think the ministry is in the compassion business, we are in the legal business, so to suggest that somehow what happened to Glenn Ford is abhorrent, yes, it is unfair, but it is not illegal and it is not even immoral. , it just doesn't fit their perception of justice. I would say that in this case many people would see this as unfair.

I agree. I can't disagree with that, for one, Marty Stroud says Glenn Ford. He deserves every penny he is owed. He went to see Ford to apologize. How do you apologize to someone for taking 30 years of their life? Well, there are no books you can read to do it. I just walked in and apologized. You forgive him. Not only did he take me, he took my entire family, so it seems like you don't think you can forgive him. Well, I don't, but I'm still trying. Do you think you deserve his forgiveness? Not if someone had done that. to me I don't know if I could forgive them you say you destroyed their life it sounds like this incident destroyed your life I also have a hole in me through which the north wind blows it is a cold feeling it is a feeling of I I just argued that no there's nothing out there that can fill that void he says I want it's okay good it's not okay it's not okay after we met him Glenn Ford died penniless his last months he lived on charity donations he covered the cost At his funeral there was a tragic outcome and These tragic results happen all the time in life.

Not that the Glenn Ford case is the only tragedy you will or will see in our lifetime. The question is: was something illegal done? done incorrectly that led to this and I can comfortably say, based on review of the record, that it was not in Glenn Ford's will, he directs that any state money he may receive go to his ten grandchildren so they can have better opportunities than him . He did, and Marty Stroud asked the Louisiana Bar Association to discipline him for his role in the Ford case. It was an attempt at injustice and I was the engineer.

Glenn Ford will be a part of me until the day I die. It's a cliché in court. dramas that moment when witnesses asked if you see the person who committed the crime here in this courtroom before you. Well, it happens in real courts all the time and for juries, that finger point from an unsuspecting witness is about as damning as the evidence can be. But there is a type of evidence that is even more persuasive and that is of course DNA. There have been 233 people exonerated by DNA in this country, and now a surprising pattern has emerged: More than three-quarters of them were sent to prison, at least in part. because a witness pointed the finger at a witness we now know was wrong, it was hot and humid in Burlington, North Carolina, on the night of July 28, 1984.

Jennifer Thompson, then a 22-year-old college student, had going to bed early at his off-campus house. her apartment while she was sleeping a man broke the light bulb near her back door cut her phone line and entered. I remember waking up and turning my head to the side and saying who's there, who's that and I saw the top of someone's head. from sliding next to my mattress and I screamed and I felt a blade in my throat a knife a knife and he told me to shut up where he was going to kill me his first thought was to offer him anything he had to leave can you have my credit card can you stay with my wallet you can have anything in the apartment you can have my car and he looked at me and said I don't want your money and I knew what was about to happen, she promised to stay alert and study it so that if she lived she could help to lock him up forever what is his voice does he have an accent does he have a scar does he have a tattoo is he raping you and are you studying his face was just trying to pay attention to a detail that if he survived and that was my plan I could help the police catch him after About half an hour Jennifer tricked the rapist into letting her get up and making him a drink and she ran out the back door, he fled. and he raped a second woman halfwaymile away.

Detective Mike Galden met Jennifer at the hospital. The first comment I remember him making was, "I'm going to get this guy who did this to me," he said. "I took the time to look at it. I will." Be able to identify it if I have the chance. Detective Galden worked with Jennifer to make a composite sketch spilling over eyes, noses, ears, lips, trying to recreate the face he had seen that night. The sketch came out and the tips started coming in on one of those. The clues involved a young man named Ronald Cotton who worked at a restaurant near the scene of both rapes and had a history of pleading guilty to home invasion and, as a teenager, to sexual assault three days after the rape.

Mike Alden called Jennifer to do it. a series of photographs, he placed these six photographs on the table, said the perpetrator may or may not be one of them and told her to take her time, she immediately says it's him? No, he studied every photograph. I remember almost feeling like it was a s.a.t test you know we started narrowing down your options you can discount A and B and I like multiple options exactly according to the police report Jennifer studied the photos for five

minutes

, took Ron's photo and He said thank you Amanda raped me and you should have said are you sure? and she said yes, oh yes, certainly Ronald Cotton heard the news about his mother's boyfriend, he told me to run, he said the police are looking for you and I told him, so he told me really, my son committed a crime like that. you panic.

I didn't panic. I'm trying to figure out, do you know why he comes in and he gives me a very detailed account of where he was and who he was with that night, as it turns out it was a false alibi. I realized later. that I mixed up my weekends and that's why I gave them reason to think he was lying. This was August 1, 1984. Well, you come in to clarify, when did you leave? Not me, I was locked up and days later he posted. in a physical line I am number five, you scared, I was very scared, nervous, I was so nervous that I was shaking, you know, I felt my body shaking, they asked them to step forward, speak and step back.

I remember looking at the detective and saying it was between four and five, he would ask them to do it again and then he knew he was number five. Ronald Cotton, did you feel absolutely safe? absolutely safe, did someone tell you good job? Well, what they told me later was that he was the same person you picked in the photo lineup, so in my mind I thought bingo. I did it well. I did well in a week-long test. The jury heard about Ronald Cotton's flawed alibi, his clothing matching Jennifer's description and a piece of foam found on his floor that appeared to come from one of his shoes, and the most powerful thing they heard was from Jennifer when she was asked if recognize the man who did this.

You pointed out Cotton, what he called me, he's not giving me a finger and I saw that's all it takes, it seemed to me like it felt like someone stuck a knife through me. He took the jury only 40

minutes

. guilty verdict on all charges and he was sentenced to life in prison in 50 years and it was for me that moment where you know the justice system works because I am the victim and he is a horrible person and will never be free again. Ronald Cotton was handcuffed. Chained and taken to North Carolina Central Prison he was 22 years old.

You realize that they grow up as men and cry a lot for us. Know. I grabbed my pillow many times and hugged it, right? I was hugging my mom, my dad, sister, brother, I wish. It didn't have to be this way, he began working in the prison kitchen, singing in the choir and writing letter after letter to his lawyers in the hopes of getting a new trial, and one day, while watching a new inmate brought in, He had a strange feeling. that's sorry I said I said are you looking for me I said where are you from yes I'm from Burlington like I also said you look like a drawing of a suspect in a crime in which I'm false from prison for committing this crime and he told me no, no You didn't wait even a second, you saw him and thought of that composite drawing, his name was Bobby Poole and he was convicted of rape, he also started working in the prison kitchen and the stewardess was calling me.

Pooh, instead of Cotton, they called you by his name. Yes, in other words, people were confusing the two. Yes, exactly, then a fellow inmate told him that he had heard Bobby Poole admit to raping Jennifer and the other woman that night. Ronald Cotton won. a new trial and his lawyers call Bobby Poole to the stand with Jennifer sitting there it was the moment Ronald Cotton had been waiting for Bobby Poole is in the courtroom you look there what's going on inside you nothing nothing nothing like a matter of the strongest The emotion What I felt was anger towards the defense because I thought: how dare you? how dare you question me?

How dare you try to paint me as someone who could have possibly forgotten what my rapist was like? I mean, the only person you would never forget. Ronald Cotton was sentenced again, this time with two life sentences in prison. Seven years later, he and everyone else were fascinated by a big news story, The Trial of O.J. Simpson, who would make my radio put in earplugs and go outside and sit in the corner and listen. At the trial yes, I was intrigued by something I had never heard of about DNA. He wrote to his new lawyer, law professor Rich Rosen.

Rosen warned him that there was probably no evidence left to analyze and that if there was DNA it could cut both ways. the DNA comes back and shows that you committed this crime, whatever legal problems we have, it makes no difference, you will spend the rest of your life in prison, he warned you that if it comes back positive, you are sunk. Okay, tell him to stand his ground and move on. On the shelves of the Burlington Police Department was 10-year-old evidence of the two rapes that night; inside one of the rape kits was a fragment of a single sperm with viable DNA. proved what Ronald Cotton had been saying all along: he was innocent and the rapist was Bobby Poole in a matter of days.

Ronald Cotton returned to court. Today you come out here a free man, this time to be set free, so you don't just find out about that. Ron didn't commit the crime, you find out that Bobby Poole did it, it was just complete shock, disbelief really. I mean, at this point, this is 11 years later and you know, I know I was involved in a case where the man lost 11 years of his life and uh, I was just very sad for him and his family in the years since. since the conviction of Ronald Cotton. Jennifer had married and had children.

Are you the one who says yes, yes? Her reaction no, it can't be true, it isn't. You may know that Ronald Cotton raped me, I have no doubt, it was like someone had just taken my life and turned it upside down. She cried, oh she cried, she broke down, I mean, she took it all on herself. you know I did this to that man shame shame terrible shame suffocating debilitating shame but when she thought or dreamed about that night it was still Ronald Cotton's face that she saw to get over it she asked him if he would meet her at a local church, I remember him He walked into the church and I physically couldn't get up she was nervous scared I started crying immediately and I looked at him and said Ron if I spent every second of every minute every hour for the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am I am you wouldn't come close to what my heart feels, I'm so sorry and Ronald just leaned down, took my hands, oh God, and looked at me, he said, I forgive you, I told him, I told him, Jennifer, I forgive you, I want to. that you look over your shoulder that I just want us to be happy and move on in life the moment 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 that they teach you in church that none of us ever get and here is this man that I had hated.

I mean, I used to pray every day of my life for those 11 years that he would die, that he would be raped in prison and that 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 that's overwhelming it's overwhelming how wrong she was and how good she is how could Jennifer have studied her rapist so care

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y and still do this? mistake and how she could not have recognized Bobby Poole, the real rapist, when he sat across from her in the courtroom three years later, that part of the story, when we come back now, DNA has exonerated over 230 men, mostly for sexual crimes. and murder cases, criminologists have been able to go back and study what went wrong in those investigations.

What they have focused on is the erroneous testimony of witnesses. More than 75 percent of these innocent men were convicted in part because a witness pointed the finger at the wrong person in the heart. One of the problems is the fragility of memory, as one researcher told us. We now know that memory is not like a video recorder: you don't record an event and play it back, but memory is malleable, full of holes that are easily contaminated and susceptible to suggestions. In the case of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton, before this case, did you think there were a lot of innocent people incarcerated?

No, no, no, not me, innocent people are not convicted for crimes they did not commit. I believed. What do you think now? Oh, I know better, I mean over 200 cases nationwide, we've had half a dozen and in this state alone, the first of course was my case and as these innocent men have been released in state after state, I've learned something else: In every case where witnesses got it wrong, the real perpetrator wasn't in the starting line-up. When you're sitting in front of a photo lineup, you just assume one of these guys is the suspect. My job is to find it. and Jennifer did her job, she found out that the problem with the suspect's photo is the suspect Ronald Cotton was not the rapist Bobby Poole's photo was not on the photo list, right, he was not on the physical list when the real perpetrator is not on the set, he is none of Witnesses find it very difficult to recognize that Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, has been studying witness memory for 30 years and says that when the real man is not is there, witnesses tend to choose the person who looks most similar.

He thinks Ronald Cotton and Bobby Poole look a lot alike, they have very similar lips, the shape of their eyes, their eyebrows rise in a look of surprise, yes, without him in the lineup, Ronald Cotton was the one on Jeopardy, well, he says. Eyewitness testimony has two key properties: one, it is often unreliable and two, it is very persuasive to jurors. I can see why it's so persuasive. Someone says I was there. You would believe that person. You believe that person because he has no reason to lie. Yes. The legal system is set up to distinguish between liars and people who tell the truth and it's actually pretty good at that, but when someone is really wrong, the legal system doesn't really know how to deal with it and we're talking about a genuine mistake. here.

He explained to us what went wrong, somewhat counterintuitively. When Jennifer spent five minutes studying the photographs, she and Detective Galden thought she was being careful. I didn't want to sound like I don't think I'm someone like that. I really wanted to be sure, well, no good recognition memory is really fast enough, so we found in our studies, for example, that if someone takes longer than 10 to 15 seconds, there's a good chance they're doing more than just using a reliable recognition memory. so you're saying that if she actually recognized a guy, it would have been almost instantaneous and pretty quick.

Yes, he says a better way would have been to show Jennifer photos or people in a row, one at a time, so he could compare each one directly to her. memory instead of each other Well, he showed me a study in which over 300 subjects were shown a deliberately shaky videotape of a simulated crime. You look out a window and see some suspicious behavior. What happens is that we tell them later that this person you saw. Right there, place a bomb in the air duct, then the subjects are shown a lineup and asked to identify the bomber, that would be so difficult.

I just saw you and of course you're particularly cautious right now, you know, after we've talked probably not to pick anyone, no, actually, I know, I really know who you are because if I had, yes, who has come across that. I think he's this guy. I'm wrong? I'm wrong? Yes, I'm wrong, yes. Well, there you have it. and I'm already saying how hard it is it's none of them it's not and it's like that it's like that and you know what's strange you know about this we've talked about this so this is how hard this is what makes it so what do you finish it for me of doing.

I'm mortified. I feel like Jennifer says it right in real life. The error is often compounded by what happensafter. Remember the seemingly innocent information Jennifer says she received from the police after she chose Ronald Cotton from the physical lineup. She chose the same person in the series of photographs, so in my mind I thought bingo and I did it well, I studied well what that reinforcement does after half of his subjects did what I did. I chose an innocent person from this lineup, he didn't tell them anything and then asked them questions. about what they had seen, very few felt very confident about their choice, only about four percent say they had a great view, which is good because we gave it a lousy view, only about three percent say they distinguish details of the face that are also Well, because they really couldn't, but he told this to a second group of subjects after they made the same incorrect decisions.

Well, now you choose the suspect. What happens is uh 40. Almost 45 percent of witnesses now report that they were positive or near positive. more than a quarter of them now say they had a great view this is really what happened to jennifer is what happened to jennifer what this seems to say is that a booster alters memory does it dramatically says the solution is having someone independent manage the lineup someone who doesn't even know who the suspect is and certainly not the detective on the case you shouldn't have been there I shouldn't have been there but no one did anything wrong I mean, that was that was common practice so it was It was the tradition it was how it was done so law enforcement was not educated in memory we were not educated in protecting memory treating it like a crime scene where you are very careful and methodical with what you do and how you use it, I mean, We weren't taught that in those days, but none of these errors explain perhaps the most baffling part of this story: how Jennifer could see Bobby Poole in the courtroom and not realize her mistake. you're looking at the face of the man who raped you, whose face you had studied so closely and there's no blink, nothing between you and Bobby Poole, nothing, nothing, and I've gone back there many times trying to think if there ever was anything like that.

At one point I looked at it and thought and didn't do it. Elizabeth Loftus is a professor of psychology and law at the University of California, Irvine and an expert on memory. She showed me an experiment that, she says, could help explain Jennifer's mistake. She asked me she. to study these faces and after a few minutes she gave me a memory test which of these two phases do you recognize well, well, you chose right, left, you chose left, okay, I said left, but I wasn't 100 sure and then the part difficult, oh well. I'll tell you why I'm blocked because I chose this one on the left two seconds ago, but now I'm not sure because those two look very similar to me, but I'm going to tell you the one on the left, but I was wrong, it was the one on the right.

Loftus explained to me how I had been deceived. See this face. Then I gave you a test where I presented you with an altered face along with a novel one, so I practically induced you to choose the wrong face. because I don't even have the real guy there, it's an altered version and later when you can now choose between the altered and the real one, you were left with your altered left choice, this is exactly what happened to Jennifer, this can help us. I understand why Jennifer can sit in a courtroom and look at Bobby Poole, the original rapist, and look at Ronald Cotton and say no, it's not pool, it's cotton because she's been picking him, yeah, all along. .

I'm starting to wonder if there ever should be.

eyewitness

testimony in Trials, well, because of the tricks that memory plays, yes, I think the important thing is to understand it, to know it as a police officer, as an investigator, as lawyers, we need

eyewitness

es, I mean, if we couldn't convict based on an Eyewitness who is giving a lot of comfort to criminals, we have no choice, we have to find ways to improve this evidence and that is something Jennifer has tried to do since then by telling her story to prosecutors, lawyers defenders of the police and has had some success in his estate.

North Carolina was the first in the country to impose reforms to the law that show victims' lineup photos one at a time and emphasize that the correct answer can be none of the above and that the lineups be performed by one person who doesn't know who the suspect is or isn't. by one person at all the person who committed the crime may or may not be a system that is now used in a handful of cities is a computer software that my galden helped develop to have a laptop that makes photo lineups is this person but law professor Rich Rosen says that in the vast majority of places there has not been any reform and that needs to change this is something that police officers can and should be in favor of because you are not taking out the real kind of the street, yes, Bobby Poole raped other women because he went after Ron Cotton so Ron is not the only person who suffered this mistake Ronald Cotton is now 47 years old he has worked hard to rebuild his life he works the graveyard shift in a factory He has been married for 12 years and has a 10-year-old daughter.

They live in a house paid for with money that North Carolina paid him in restitution ten thousand dollars for each of the 11 years he spent in prison when he can join Jennifer in her campaign for reform one of the most surprising things to come out of this miscarriage of justice is the most unlikely friendship Jennifer and Ron say they talk on the phone about once a week they are families of friends they say they have a shared bond that is difficult to understand For most people, have they ever met you? the first time they are together and they said something cheerfully hey, how did you meet?

Yes, they delivered it a lot on the plane. Oh yeah, we're traveling and I usually just tell them what you say. We looked at each other. and we laugh, you know, and finally we go ahead and tell him that they've recently co-authored a book in the hopes that their story can inform and inspire others today when you try to think about what happened that night when you were 22 years old. . Face, there is no one, oh God, that's it, that's for me one of the most beautiful things is that I don't have a face. Bobby dies. I never have to worry about him hurting another woman.

He died in prison and Ronald Cotton. he is my friend