Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see!

Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see! So the old saying goes.
2008
Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Ronald Cotton, and Erin Torneo from ~
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/usprograms/focus/justice/programs/justice_fellows/grantees/thompson_2008
Over 200 people in the U.S. have had their convictions overturned by DNA evidence. Three-quarters of these cases involved mistaken eyewitness testimony, making it the leading cause of wrongful conviction. Picking Cotton: A True Story, by Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson-Cannino (with Erin Torneo), will illuminate the problems with eyewitness testimony through Thompson-Cannino and Cotton's own story.
Thompson-Cannino has become an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, frequently addressing the need for judicial reform. After a brutal rape she suffered as a 22-year-old college student, Thompson-Cannino gave eyewitness testimony that sent Ronald Cotton to prison not once, but twice, for crimes he did not commit. Together, they successfully lobbied state legislators to change compensation laws for the wrongly convicted in North Carolina. Thompson-Cannino is now a member of the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission, the advisory committee for Active Voices, the Constitution Project, and Mothers for Justice. Her op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Durham-Herald Sun, and the Tallahassee Democrat.
Ronald Cotton was arrested in 1984 and wrongfully convicted of first-degree rape, sexual offense, and breaking and entering, and sentenced to life in prison plus 54 years. Cotton won a new trial in 1987, only to be charged and convicted of a second rape, resulting in two life sentences. Largely through his persistence in proclaiming his innocence and the development of sophisticated DNA tests, Cotton was exonerated in 1995, after serving nearly eleven years. With Thompson-Cannino, he has spoken at various venues including Washington and Lee University, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Georgetown Law School, the Chicago Museum for Contemporary Photography’s Innocence Exhibit, and the Community March for Justice for Troy Anthony Davis in Savannah, Georgia.
Erin Torneo’s work has appeared in various publications including the Kyoto Journal, SEED, Cosmopolitan, Variety’s V-Life, the Independent, and indiewire. In 2007, she was awarded a nonfiction fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Picking Cotton will be her second book.
The gift of Forgiveness
Jennifer said two years after Ronald Cotton was released She felt she needed to see him, and some how let him know how terrible she felt for having him convicted for a crime he never committed. The burden of knowing she had robbed this innocent man of 11 years of his life in insurmountable. She went over all of the possible scenarios of how he would react but never imagined in her wildest Dreams what really happened when they actually met. He forgave her, that’s right he forgave her, this wonderful man would have been justified by any one to hate her for his entire life but he forgave her. Since that time they have become very close friends, working together on many different projects as well as with an author Erin Torneo, to tell there story.
I had the opportunity to here about this wonderful and moving story on the Dian Rehms show on NPR the best unbiased radio on the air. So once again teaching me the wisdom in the old saying “Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see!”
Just Something to think about.