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Ronald Cotton Case Study

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The Case of Ronald Cotton Sol Ridgeway University of North Texas The Case of Ronald Cotton 10 years in prison, is what Ronald Cotton had to endure for a crime he didn’t commit. Jennifer Thompson in 1984 was a college student making great grades and feeling really good about her future. While sleeping in her bed one night, she heard something in her bedroom and when awoke, saw a man crouched by her bed. The man jumped on top of her, put a knife to her neck, and began to rape. While she was being raped she decided to study his face. She escaped her house by telling him that he is she wanted to go get a glass of water. She fled out the back door and was able to get a neighbor to help her. When she went to the police station, they took her to the local hospital to get the evidence from her,; for …show more content…

F., & Greene, E. (1980). Warning: Even memory for faces may be contagious. Law and Human Behavior, 4, 323–334. Semmler, C., Brewer, N., & Wells, G. (2004). Effects of post identification feedback on eyewitness identification and nonidentification confidence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 334–346. Lindsay, R., & Wells, G. (1985). Improving eyewitness identification from lineups: Simultaneous versus sequential lineup presentations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 70, 556–564. Atkinson, R. C., and Shiffrin, R. M. Some speculations on storage and retrieval processes in long-term memory. Technical Report 127, Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences, Stanford University, 1968. Thorndike, E. L. (1898). Animal intelligence: An experimental study of the associative processes in animals. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 2(4), i-109. Greene, E., & Heilbrun, K. (2011). Wrightsmans psychology and the legal system (7th ed.). 20 Davis Drive Belmont, CA 94002 USA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Thompson-Cannino, J., Cotton, R., & Torneo, E. (2010). Picking Cotton: Our memoir of injustice and redemption. New York: St. Martins

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He then committed the same crime to another woman 1 mile away from her home, that night. Ronald cotton worked near the scene of both rapes and had a criminal record for sexual assault as a teenager and breaking and entering. When Ron gave his alibi he accidently had his weekends confused giving the detective an idea that he was lying. Both on photo and physical line up, Jennifer had chosen Ron Cotton and evidence of clothes and foam from his shoes added to the testimony. Ron was charged with rape and burglary and the sentence given was life plus 54 years.

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