"Picking Cotton"

In the part of the state where I grew up that's something that happens every summer on the sun baked fields of Eastern North Carolina.

But now it's the title of a book and the subject of a 2 part series that I finished editing today and aired on our 10 o'clock news.

Jennifer Thompson was brutally raped in her Burlington, NC home in July 1984. Through her recolection, a composite sketch and a couple of police lineups she picked Ronald Cotton as her assailant. She was wrong.



Ronald spent 11 years in prison before DNA evidence and a chance prison yard encounter with the real rapist set him free.

Jennifer and Ron met each other some time after he was released...and now they are great friends...and they both take up the cause of helping those who are falsely accused.

Here is the 2 part Buckley Report - Picking Cotton...