Picking the Wrong Black Man

Jonathan Adams

Picking the Wrong Black Man

1n 1984, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino wrongly identified, Ronald Cotton, an innocent black man, as her rapist, while her guilty black assailant went free. Years later, DNA evidence proved Cotton’s innocence, and he was released. Thompson-Cannino and Cotton are now writing a book together called Picking Cotton.

It’s hard to imagine what either person would say to the other in a situation like this. Thompson-Cannino wrote briefly,

By the spring of 1997, the psychological toll forced me to act. In a small church no more then a few miles from where I had been brutally raped, I met Ronald and struggled for words I could say to him. How completely inadequate “I’m sorry” seemed. As Ronald and his new wife, Robbin, came into the room I began to cry and shake. “Ronald, if I spent the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am it wouldn’t be enough,” I said. Ronald immediately took my hands and replied, “I forgive you. I want you to be happy and live a good life. Don’t look over your shoulders thinking I will be there because I won’t.”

The Innocence Project’s mission has been freeing innocent men many of whom were convicted simply for being Black.

The American Bar Association, meeting in New York, is considering whether to recommend that judges use their discretion to make juries aware of the problems that can plague cross-racial identifications.

California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Utah already employ such instructions in some cases.

“The majority race is not as good at identifying minorities as it is its own race. This is hard-wired in some way that we don’t completely understand. But the phenomenon should be presented to the jury,” said Barry Scheck, co-founder of The Innocence Project.

Prosecutors, however, do not want judges to raise the issue with juries.

“This is not an appropriate area for judges to go into,” said Josh Marquis, district attorney in Astoria, Ore., and a member of the executive committee of the National District Attorneys Association. “Yes, eyewitness ID across races has its issues. But is there a rampant problem to the degree that we need to get judges to start telling juries this is the law? No.”

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.

Posted at 4:50 PM, Aug 13, 2008 in Criminal Justice | Permalink | View Comments

Comments

The quote from the D.A. is classic and disturbing.

District Attorneys are often frightening people, human beings who've made themselves into tools of vengeance and rigorous incarcertation. They eat, sleep and breathe in a world where everyone is guilty until proven innocent -- their job performance is evaluated by how many people they jail, and people drawn to the job tend to be sort of bent up somewhere inside -- they have the perspective that jaded cops and cynical journalists have: that everyone is guilty, that all of the guilty lie, and that most of the accused are, simply by virtue of their having been fingered, deserving of the harshest punishment the law can mete out.