What Is The Case Of Ronald Cotton Case Study

The Case of Ronald Cotton

Sol Ridgeway

University of North Texas The Case of Ronald Cotton

10 years in prison, is what Ronald Cotton endured for a crime he didn’t commit. Jennifer Thompson in 1984, was a college student making great grades and feeling hopeful 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 her. While being raped, she decided to study his face. She escaped her house by telling him she needed a glass of water. She fled out the back door and was able to find a neighbor to help.

When she went to the police station, they took her to the local hospital to obtain

In a study done four years before the rape accord, they found that memories can become contagious and manipulated. If the subject picks a face that is close to the face they are trying to identify, they are more likely to perpetually select that person thereafter (Loftus & Green, 1980). When Jennifer was choosing a suspect from the lineup, she selected Ronald with confidence. Jennifer was later given affirmation by the detective, who told her she chose the same person from the mug shot. Thorndike’s Law of Effect, from almost a century earlier, shows positive feedback to a choice or decision can strengthen a memory in any animal (Thorndike, 1898). In a recent study done by Iowa University (Semmler, Brewer & Wells, 2004), subjects were shown a shaky video of a suspect placing something into a chimney. Later they were told the object he placed into the chimney was a bomb and had the subjects choose the suspect out of a lineup. The man from the video was not in the lineup, but their were a few men that looked similar to the original man. The subjects were then split into two groups and tested on the confidence of their decision of the man they choose. The first group was told nothing about their decision, which only 4% of subjects were confident they got a clear view of the suspect. The second group were given affirmation of their choice, which caused

If she was given the mug shots one at a time and only for a brief instance, then she would have never picked Ronald (Lindsay & Wells, 1985). It is logical to believe the picking of Ronald’s mug shot created a snowball effect to all the other mistakes in the process. If this case happened today, there would have never been a false memory problem, because the DNA would have proven innocence and guilt from the beginning. In all the cases that rely on eyewitness testimony and do not have DNA to fall back on, brief mug shot exposure would be a viable solution to keep human memory from failing. I do believe there is one major flaw with this solution; the longer the memory is stored the less accurate the memory becomes (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). So, placing the sketch and the correct mug shot in front of the eyewitness is crucial for the identification to be