Trumps Science: The Case Of Picking Cotton

DNA testing has been changing lives for the wrongfully convicted. Innocent people are being released from prisons because of DNA. Ronald Cotton was fortunate to have been found innocent thanks to DNA evidence after being imprisoned for years. It may not always be that way, though, there are still people being locked up once DNA has ruled them out.

Picking Cotton: is the story of a young woman, Jennifer Thompson, and a young man, Ronald Cotton, and how they’re lives were forever linked together and changed. They both went through a life-changing event in their early adulthood. She was home alone sleeping when a man came into her home and destroyed her life as she knew it. Jennifer was raped. When called to pick out of a line-up the attacker

Appleby and Saul M. Kassin, we are told DNA testing might not be enough evidence if an individual confesses to crime. Coerced confessions and eyewitness misidentification are factors that lead to wrongful convictions (Appleby & Kassin, 2016). In the case of Cotton, Cotton was wrongfully accused and convicted due to eyewitness misidentification, but just thinking if he had let police officers bully him into falsely confessing for the crime, would he be free today, even with the evidence of DNA proving his innocence. According to Appleby and Kassin, 2016, he might still be sitting in that jail cell, especially if prosecutors were presenting their theories on why his DNA was not found at the crime scene. Since 1992, DNA has been used to exonerate the innocent that were unjustly condemned, thanks to the Innocent Project (Appleby & Kassin, 2016). In the studies conducted by Appleby and Kassin, it was reported that conviction rate went up by 20-30% with a confession, exculpatory DNA, and theory that might seem plausible was told by prosecutors (Appleby & Kassin, 2016). So far there are 19 cases known of innocent defendants that were still convicted with the exculpatory DNA because of their confessions to the authorities (Appleby & Kassin, 2016). The purpose of the article was to demonstrate the degree to which a confession, and not DNA, may be

DNA has given some innocents their freedom, but others are still being locked up. Jurors are giving guilty verdicts to people who don’t deserve it based on theories and confessions that may have been beaten out of them. It was reported in the studies that exculpatory DNA does sometimes help a defendant that had confessed, but then prosecutors come up with theories and that doesn’t help the defendants, as was the case of Joseph Buffey (Appleby & Kassin, 2016). I didn’t expect for exculpatory DNA not to be taken into consideration when prosecutors told a theory that can explain why DNA of the accused was not at the scene of the crime. It just doesn’t make sense.

The book and the article opened my eyes at the countless innocent people that are wrongfully convicted. It is terrible to think that, so many are still sitting in prison because of factors like misidentification or forced confessions, or of the innocent people that have been executed because of those same