Ronald Cotton Case Study

Did you know Around 11% of college students are sexually assaulted; 23% female and 5.4% male? In America between 2% to 10% of people in prison are innocent people that are falsely accused. “Picking Cotton” by Jennifer Thompson-Cannion and Ronald Cotton. Jennifer Thompson was a college student living off campus in an apartment. One night her apartment got broken into and she was raped at knifepoint.

On December 5, 1984, in the heart of New Orleans, the lives of two men made a wrong turn towards death. Ray Liuzza, a 34-year-old businessman, was recently promoted to Vice President of a hotel. To celebrate, he enjoyed the night on Bourbon Street. After a night of celebration, Liuzza returned to his apartment and robbed at gunpoint. He begged not to shoot, but the perpetrator shot Liuzza five times.

On July 8, 1981, three men forced entry into a Tampa home. The five people living in this home were threatened with a gun and robbed. One of the assailants was armed with a shotgun. After the robbery two victims were taken, a 38-year old woman and a 12-year old girl.

Alan Crotzer—DNA Exoneration In the United States, there have been a total of 321 DNA exonerations to date, with twenty of these exonerees having served time on death row (“The Innocence Project,” n.d.). Alan Crotzer was not one of these twenty, however he was sentenced to 130 years in prison for a crime that he didn’t commit. Charged and convicted of sexual battery, kidnapping, burglary, aggravated assault, robbery, and attempted robbery, it wasn’t until 24.5 years later, on January 23, 2006, that Crotzer was released from prison after post-conviction DNA testing proved his innocence (“The Innocence Project,” n.d.).

There are many different cases about a wrongly convicted suspect. One of them was in the Brooklyn Murder. In the Brooklyn Murder, the victim was a drug dealer whose name was Darryl “Black” Rush. With this information, the detectives think that the suspect was the rival of the drug dealer with the name Jonathan Fleming. The detectives asked him whether or not he was the murderer. He said that he was 1100 miles away in Disney Land when the crime happened.

In 1982 a woman named rebecca williams a nineteen year old mother of three was raped and stabbed over 30 times in her virgina apartmant she could only describe her attacker as a black man acting alone then she passed away later that week about a year after the incident took place a man named earl washington jr was arrested in a nearby fauquier county for burglary and malicious wounding it took two whole days of questioning the police said he had confessed to five different crimes including rebecca's murder of the crimes 4 were thrown out for insufficient evidence however he did confess to killing and raping rebecca though he admitted to it he describes a different story he didn't know her address her race and said she was short when she was

In the book “Picking Cotton”, the former Burlington Police Chief Mike Gauldin, who was the lead detective on Jennifer’s case, was certainly sure that Ronald Cotton was the guy he was looking for after Jennifer picked him twice (Jennifer, Ronald, Erin 80); also, on the McCallum’s case, the polices also chose to trust eyewitnesses when they did not have enough physical evidences. Furthermore, judges can be wrong sometime. Wise and Safer, who are authors of the report “ what US judges know and believe about eyewitness testimony”, surveyed 160 U.S. judges to determine how much they know about eyewitness testimony on a small test( Wise, Safer, 427-432). However, the survey responds the average judges in the U.S. only 55% correct within 14 questions (Wise, Safer, 431-432). Moreover, most of the judges who were surveyed did not know key facts about eyewitness testimony.

To conclude with, yes, both Browder and Cotton’s cases caused changes to occur within the system. Due to Cotton’s case, they have enforced new rules when conducting eyewitness testimonies. Programs have been created that have shown just how difficult it is to identify an attacker and most people fail in doing so. A double-blind experiment has also been created in lineups meaning that both the victim and the person performing the lineup don’t know if the perpetrator is included or not. Browder’s case, on the other hand, has gone more widespread due to his suicide.

Police were called to a Gas station where a man had been shot and upon arrival the man was found to be shot and was able to tell officers that he had been shot by Bryant at bryants house and that he made it to the gas station. The victim saw Mr. Bryant as a constant threat so he left the area but did not tell the police if the problem was only with him. The victim died shortly after which left a lot of unanswered questions. ("Law school case brief Michigan V Bryant", 2013). In 2010 in Michigan Richard Bryant was found guilty of murder in the second degree and was a felon who was in control of a firearm which had been used while a felony was committed.

In previous court cases, such as Manson v. Braithwaite, the Supreme Court deemed that if identification can be determined to be “reliable”, such evidence could be used. The study continues further to document a specific case of mistaken identity. In 1984, Ronald Cotton was sentenced to prison for the rape of 22-year-old, Jennifer Thompson. While many were pleased that a rapist was off the street, the police has gotten the wrong man.

The Cotton Club was located in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. The club was previously owned by heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson, who named the club Club Deluxe in 1920. Two years later, Owney Madden took over the club and renamed it the famous name of the Cotton Club. He renewed the club to where it was only limited to a white audience, and the only black people allowed were the best performers at the time. However, the only exception to that was when white performers and dancers guest starred.

So, in many, if not most, of the cases, the accusers and the accused were unacquainted. Boyer and

A: Plan of Investigation To what extent did the Murder Trial of Ruby McCollum in 1952 bring exposure to the “Paramour Rights” in the south? On August 3, 1952 in Live Oak, Florida, Ruby McCollum, a wealthy African American woman married to a well known local racketeer, shot and killed white doctor, C. Leroy Adams. McCollum claimed Dr. Adams forcefully raped her and forced her to carry his children. Adams continued to force sex upon McCollum, and her husband threatened to kill her if she had another child by Adams. However, Adams threatened to kill McCollum if she tried to get an abortion.

Throughout the trial, Hooks and the prosecution present no concrete facts and build an entire case for the jury’s bias to act on. One of the witnesses, the deceased’s wife, was brought to the stand not for her testimony, but for the jury to see the distress of this white woman. Hooks described his thinking of Susan Marie Heine on the stand as “she would persuade them not precisely with what she had to say but with the entirety of who she was” (Guterson 287). He hoped that the jury would shift their focus towards their emotions and disregard the facts of the trial. If the jury focuses more on “the entirety of who she was”, a devastated white woman who allegedly lost her husband to a Japanese man, their emotions will provoke their unconscious bias to convict Kabuo.

In April 26, 1913 a young girl named Mary Phagan was found sexually molested and murdered in the basement at the pencil factory in Atlanta Georgia ,where she worked. Evidence was found near the girl which at first led the crime to be pinned on Newt lee, the night watchman at the factory, but the police quickly came to notice that it was a bad attempt by Jim Conley to cover up his own involvement. Jim Conley was the factories janitor, a black man and a will known drunk. Jim Conley then tried to pin the blame on Leo frank ,the Jewish owner of the factory. Without much evidence and the absurdity of Conley’s claims the police took hold to Conley’s statement.