Lesley Stahl explores the task of an eyewitness to choose a criminal out of line up through memory. Jennifer Thompson falsely selected Ronald Cotton as her rapist.
Seeing their two pictures next to each other, I can understand how she made the mistake, especially based off the fact that her memory of him was during a rape attack. She was going through a traumatic event and still tried to visualise her attacker as best as she could. And I give her full credit that she has been able to come out and openly admit her mistake and her guilt. As a black man, my heart goes out to Mr Cotton, and as a person of empathy, I sincerely understand Jennifer’s regret.
you should read the book. They had blood evidence prior to the DNA test that didn't match Ron's blood because they tested it and it was blood type A and Ron was blood type O. Bobby Poole was blood type A but the judge said he wouldn't allow that evidence in trial even though it would have freed Ron.
Interesting video but it drove me nuts how the reporter kept saying, "This is exactly what happened to Jennifer." "I feel exactly like Jennifer." Jennifer's thoughts, Jennifer's feelings, Jennifer's suffering. Are we forgetting about the other victim here? What about Ronald Cotton? I'd like to see him emphasized more. I know the video is supposed to highlight the problems with memory and eyewitness testimony and that Jennifer is the one who was dealing directly with these problems, but for God's sake the man spent 11 years in prison and she's getting all the sympathy and credit.
😆😆😆 . Sure there was a reason for it , and that reason sits in something that was going thru my mind as I typed my comment. Definitely has nothing to do with women rights nor anything that has to do with females on that level. ☺️
It cracks me up how at first that professor is like "And obviously now you know better than to just pick one of them" but she stops him and says "No, I know who it is." and he just says "Oh, ok..." and watches her in amazement.
If you read the book Ronald and Jennifer wrote about the case, you learn that Ronald didn't even get $110,000 - the state refused to pay for the time he spent in county jail before his trials. After his lawyer appealed, the state only paid $109,150.69.
I'm just finishing up a class taught by Mr. Wells. He is an absolute genius, he is not only a master at what he teaches, but is a master at teaching. The best class Iowa State University has to offer!
it's scary knowing that this could really happen to somebody. even if you get exhonerated, you just lost all those years living in a cage while they sorted the whole thing out. And to know that this has happened around 233 times. really is scary.
one of the things I learned in life is that no memory is ever 100% reliable.....Even the most obvious thing that you are certain in memory might actually not be 100% accurate. Compounded with heat of emotion as well as traumatic experience can alter the reality we have conceived of in the past in a dramatic fashion.
Not here for the psychological journey. I'm still trippin' out on the inequality of the mathematical equation. 11 years= $110,000. It should have been closer to $11,000,000.
This was an excellent story. Forgiveness heals, unforgiveness carry the poison and you are the vessel that carry it. I'm happy for both person. GOD bless you.
I'm so glad that Jennifer has been putting her work in. I started this feeling disgusted with her and the whole conviction and how it got to be. Thank God for his grace and forgiveness. I too was so quick to judge. Justice prevails.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🧠 Memory is not like a videotape and can be malleable, full of holes, and susceptible to suggestion, which impacts the reliability of eyewitness testimony. 01:23 ⚖️ Real perpetrators were not present in initial lineups in cases where eyewitnesses identified the wrong person, contributing to false identifications. 02:03 🚹 Witnesses tend to pick the person in a lineup who looks most like the perpetrator when the actual person isn’t present, which may lead to misidentifications, as in Ronald Cotton’s case. 02:44 🧑⚖️ Eyewitness testimony can be highly persuasive to jurors despite its potential unreliability, especially when the eyewitness is sincere but mistaken. 03:40 ⌛ Instantaneous recognition is often associated with accurate memory recall, whereas taking a longer time to recognize might indicate less reliability. 04:19 💣 Subjects in a study often mistakenly identified a person after witnessing a simulated crime, highlighting difficulties in accurate identification. 05:31 🔄 Reinforcement (e.g., confirming the chosen person is the suspect) significantly boosts eyewitnesses’ confidence and alters memory, potentially reinforcing a mistaken identification. 06:27 🚨 Using independent administrators for lineups, who don’t know who the suspect is, can mitigate unintentional influence on the eyewitness's choice and memory. 07:51 🔄 Consistently selecting an incorrect or altered face can cement this selection in memory, making the eyewitness unable to recognize the real face when confronted with it later. 09:35 🚔 Despite the challenges with memory and identification, eyewitness testimony remains a crucial element in criminal investigations and needs to be improved rather than discarded. 10:17 📸 North Carolina mandated reforms, such as showing lineup photos one at a time and employing computer software to conduct photo lineups, to enhance the reliability of eyewitness identification. 11:09 🚹 Ronald Cotton has worked hard to rebuild his life after being falsely accused and has a family. 11:22 🏠 Cotton received restitution from North Carolina, $10,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment. 11:35 🤝 Jennifer and Ronald have formed an unlikely friendship and work together for legal reforms. 11:47 ☎️ The two communicate regularly and their families have also become friends. 12:01 ✈️ When asked how they met, Jennifer and Ronald sometimes hesitate before sharing their unique story. 12:16 📚 They co-authored a book to share their story in hopes of informing and inspiring others. 12:29 🚫 Jennifer no longer sees any face associated with her traumatic past event since Bobby Poole, the actual perpetrator, is dead. Made with HARPA AI
Both Cotton and Poole look(ed) very similar & Poole wasn't in the original lineup so she thought she picked the correct person. After so long & so many trials, she was convinced she picked the right man. I would never want to be put in that position. How difficult it would be to decide a man's fate from memory???!!!! No way! My memory is awful!
Don't touch anything! If you walk in and start messing around with stuff then we won't be able to use any evidence that may be in there because you've contaminated it.
I don't think we can blame anyone for the wrongly conviction. Even the most educated/experienced person were shocked when hearing about this case. We learned from our mistakes and that's what matters.
I love how everyone i making this about race. The two men did in fact resemble each other, just like the two white men did in the fake trials they were using for the testing. It wasn't about race, it was about her wanting to get justice for a horrible crime that was committed to her. If anyone even payed attention to the study, you could see that memory can often be second guessed or clouded by other thoughts. But I guess I'm wrong though, huh, because I'm a white female. It is sad that people still make things about race in this day and age.
actually they look a lot alike. similar eyebrow shape, similar lip shape, similar facial structure, even their facial expression is similar. I also find it funny how you yourself are being racist while simultaneously implying she's racist as well. Hypocrite.
I can answer that question for you Joanna. History of race relations in this country. Especially in the South. In South, black men were falsely accused of hurting white women and often received false convictions. Race riots have occurred based on accusing a black man of hurting a white woman. The Tulsa Massacre was stirred up by an alleged incident between a black man and a white woman. A young boy named Emmett Till was accused of insulting a white woman and was murdered for it. His murderers got away with it. Even with illicit drugs.....Southerners demanded cocaine become federally illegal because they were making up the false narrative that black men high on cocaine were raping their white women. It stems from a conditioned mindset that goes back over a century, and continues to be passed to future generations. While, my focus of the video was on the weaknesses of eyewitness testimony instead of race, I do understand why people bring up race in this case. Some of American history's biggest atrocities on race stems from the racist, fearmongering narrative of black men attacking and raping white women. In criminal justice and criminology research, it is in breadth the evidence showing racial bias against black men in criminal cases. Double that when it comes to a black man accused of attacking a white woman. Research the case of Brock Turner compared to many other similar cases where the suspect was Black. Hope that helps you develop some sense of understanding. You mention---"It's sad when people still make things about race". You're right...Because as a black man myself, I would love to finally see race no longer matter in America. But, for some reason ma'am, there are still people in this country who still mistreat me and call me the n-word. I believe your message is better aimed at them instead of those who call out racism.
@@christophergreen4616 You are right about the justice system being unfair to blacks, and the history of race struggle, etc. All that wonderful speech, but in the end of day the real criminal was still a black man. So no, this case in particular is not about race at all.
They do look alike. It wasn't as if she made it up, she made an honest mistake. However, this poor man lost his freedom and suffered as a result of that mistake. I pray that I am never responsible for taking away an innocent person's freedom.
Psychology students also learn from that sometimes without realizing it, that positive reinforcement increases witness's confidence in picking the wrong suspect, which leads to false convictions. Remember the part in the video of a man putting something down the hole and the groups were told he put a bomb in the hole? Then asked the participants to pick the suspect out of a line up? The experimental group was given positive reinforcing statements after making their pick, while the control group was told nothing. Over 1/4th of the experimental group not only was wrong in their pick (every person in the line up was innocent), but before they were told of their error, they reported having significantly higher confidence in their pick than the control group.
"[Bobby Pool] died in prison, and Ronald Cotton is my friend." Well I'm glad everything worked out well for you, nevermind the victim you put in prison.
@papabungle You didn't watch the video, did you? This video is about EVERYONE'S memory, not just Ms. Thompson's. Literally ANYONE could make a similar mistake.
Great information about memory but it also revealed a flawed justice system which simply put, is sorry as hell. I was so sick of hearing about "Jennifer" that I wanted to vomit. No dialog whatsoever for an innocent man who was locked up for 11 years! Really Lesley? No wonder you're no longer relevant in media.
The topic is about memory and how it sent an innocent man to jail. What Ron went through certainly deserves it own coverage, but as a completely separate story from this one. Jennifer's mistake is what sent him there and they're trying to figure out how it happened and what to do to make sure it doesn't happen again. If anything they could talk about how he mixed up the days when giving his alibi, since that's also a way memory worked against him. Other then that, he's not the one that messed up so he's not the one they're going to focus on when they're talking about how they need to do these investigations differently.
this is infuriating, I can barely get threw these ideas , ugh the justice system is so flawed and leans so hard towards white woman as the innocent victim , honestly that man deserved so much better
10k per year ? That is absolutely ridiculous. Are you kidding me? I don't think someone could survive on 10k a year, and also he was put wrongly in jail and 11years of his life was wasted and the least he deserves is more than 10k a year. they didn't even give him 110000 they gave him less
I don't think that should even be a step in the investigation (picture or suspect line-up.) That makes it so easy for someone's brain to form an implanted memory.
I am watching this because one of my classmates was kinda being annoying and saying how Hammurabis code was brutal. Our teacher is showing us this because to prove how some things now may not be as different from Hammurabis code.
@pirell You're very, very fond of telling people to "shut up". I know it's hard to read things that don't confirm your world view, but it's a sign of maturity to engage rather than lash out.
no but people think they look the same. its what saved cotton. they ended up in the same prison and none of the inmates could tell Poole and Cotton apart. Poole was there from another sexual assault so cotton suspect him of being the one behind rape then Poole told another inmate that he did it. when dna testing came around Poole was the one they tested right behind cotton
@papabungle You said she was a "monster". She's HUMAN, which is exactly why this happened. It is THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE STORY that these are normal consequence of how human memory works. Also, if you watch the story, you can see the remorse and pain she went through because of her mistake. So: Due to completely normal and universal human attributes, she makes a mistake, and she feels great remorse for the mistake and works to make things better. And you call her a "monster"?
This is absolutely fascinating. Again the problem seems to be bringing in a person that looks like the description to the line up but I don't see a way round this. There was a case in the U.K. where a woman picked a guy she saw on the street as someone that tried to take her kid. She was convinced and he was arrested and tried but only let off when they discovered his face was on the same page as the story about her child in the local press regarding an unrelated fluff story about his career.
If over 200 cases have been proven to be false...then common sense dictates that there are thousands upon thousands more that have yet to be discovered as false. Ronald Cotton is not anything other than AWESOME! Truly. I can only hope that I would be as forgiving, if I faced this, as he is. Bless his heart.
I don't like the name of that book...I get it but I still don't like the name! Also I would really like to hear more from his point of view. He still looks a little sad...
What needs to happen for sure is whoever the person that they pick needs to in some way be made to have a conversation with that person behind glass that's the only way to know positively it's common sense
eye witness testimony and the tricks it plays on memory. Two people could be very similar but different. Just like two crops can look alike but biologically different. DNA and science solves the problem of eye witness testimony.
Damn, I cant blame Jennifer. Those guys are almost twin brothers, I dont think this case should be abou of memory failure, but about how two unrelated people can look very similar
