Picking Cotton: Our Memoir Of Injustice And Redemption

Twenty-two years ago, Jennifer was 22 and living in Burlington, North Carolina. Every day, she walked three miles to campus. She and her boyfriend, Paul, were talking about getting married. One night in July of 1984, she noticed the glow of someone smoking a cigarette near her apartment as she walked home in the dark. It was someone in a tree, and Jennifer notes, “I gave it no further thought” (10).

On Saturdays, she worked at Spa Lady, teaching aerobics and working the sales desk. One Saturday, she finished her shift and went out to lunch with Paul before going back to the apartment. The police later told her that she fell asleep around 11 p.m., and Paul left without waking her.

At 3 AM, she was woken by a noise and saw someone crouching by her bedside. A man leaped up and held a knife to her throat, telling her, “Scream and I’ll kill you” (12). After pulling off her underwear, he says he knew all about her: “You from Winston-Salem. They burned witches there, ain’t that right? Yeah. You a witch. We gonna have a good time tonight” (14).

As he raped her, she tried to study his face for identifying marks. She told him that she was afraid of knives and asked him to put it outside so she could relax. He stood and began to put on his shoes. She went into the bathroom with a blanket wrapped around her, and he followed her. She turned on the light to try to see him, but he made her turn it off. Then he opened the front door and tossed the knife outside. She went into the kitchen to make him a drink, then escaped through a door.

She made it to a house and rang the doorbell. A man and his wife let her in and called 911. Jennifer’s memories of the ambulance ride to the hospital are vague: “I was no longer me. The girl in my mind, the picture-perfect student who would soon be getting married to Paul, was sucked down by that black hole" (20). A doctor performed a post-rape examination on her as Jennifer thought that her body had become a crime scene.

Jennifer spoke with a detective named Mike Gauldin. She heard someone crying down the hall, and he told her that that woman was also raped. They thought it was the same man. When he asked if she would recognize the rapist if she saw him, Jennifer said yes.

Paul drove her to the police station. Her younger sister was there with her boyfriend, Andrew. She called her parents and told them what happened. Her mother said, “Do you think it was someone who saw you in your leotard at Spa Lady?” (22). Jennifer gave her statement to Gauldin with Paul in the room. After helping a sketch artist create a composite sketch of the suspect, Gauldin told her that she would need to go back to the hospital for another rape kit because they failed to give her a penicillin shot or a morning-after pill.

Paul took her home after the second hospital visit, and Jennifer “wondered if [she] was ever going to be able to be alone again. [She] knew, at least, that [she] would never be in this apartment alone again” (25). Gauldin walked her through the apartment and asked her to notice if anything seemed disturbed. He found a small black piece of foam on the floor that she said was not hers. A piece of foam from the sole of a shoe, it would later be used in court. Paul took her to his parents’ house for the night. As she tried to sleep, Jennifer knew that “somewhere out there in the darkness, he was waiting” (27).

The news stations broadcasted the composite image constantly. “A rapist was on the loose” (30), and the hunt for the man was intense. Paul took her to her mother’s condo at Grandfather Mountain, three hours outside of Burlington. Her mother was noticeably uncomfortable and did not seem to know how to talk to Jennifer.

While Jennifer was lying in bed, she became convinced that the rapist was outside. She began to scream, and her mother and Paul rushed in to check on her. Her mother held her until she fell asleep. In the morning, the Burlington police called to ask her to come and check some photos.

Detectives Gauldin and Sullivan showed her six pictures of Black men at the police station. She notes, “When I looked at one photo, the image of the man performing oral sex on me came back so violently I thought I would be sick right there” (33). She identified the man in the picture after looking at the photos for less than five minutes.

Jennifer began speaking with Sadie, a rape crisis counselor. Sadie met her at a building when the police were prepared for her to see a physical lineup of suspects. It was 11 days after her assault. She was taken into a room where seven Black men were standing against a wall on the other side of a table. It was a transitional building during a station renovation, and there was no one-way glass available to place the men on the other side.

She identified the man holding a card with the number five on it: “It was him. There was no doubt in my mind. If I didn’t get him, he was going to come after me” (37). Sadie and Gauldin told her that she had done a good job and that most people were too afraid to face their rapists, even to help bring them to justice.

Jennifer’s brother Joe was in Europe, and she began staying at his place in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She resumed her classes: “If I was busy, I could fake it OK” (38). But at night, she was fearful and thought of the night of her rape constantly. She needed Paul to take care of her all the time and knew that she was smothering him. Her sister Janet did what she could but had her own classes and boyfriend. She told Jennifer that if anyone ever attacked her, she would fight back, but Jennifer knew that no one could predict what they would do in a situation they had never experienced.

A month later, at a Swenson’s ice cream parlor, Paul asked her why she didn’t fight back. Jennifer recalls, “I was shocked that I had to defend myself to the one person I felt closest to” (40). Then Paul asked her if she liked it. Jennifer said that was where the relationship ended, although they would see each other for several more months: “Paul sat there for support but somehow came to the conclusion that I didn’t fight hard enough and that somehow being raped at knifepoint may have actually been enjoyable” (40).

Jennifer learned that the man she identified was named Ronald Cotton. She wanted to know as much about him as she could and asked Sullivan for details. He worked at Somer’s Seafood, and a manager there had called after seeing the composite image. Cotton had also “gotten out of prison in February for breaking and entering, and when he was sixteen years old, he’d served eighteen months for breaking and entering with intent to commit rape” (44).

Jennifer learned Cotton would have a probable cause hearing on August 28, but she didn’t know what a probable cause hearing was. She reflects, “For me it was simple: I had been raped, the police caught the guy, and I picked him out of a lineup” (45). She said she would like Cotton to have the death penalty, even though it wasn’t possible.

She met the assistant district attorney, James Robertson, who was known as Jim. Jim told her that the purpose of the hearing was to ensure that the prosecution had a case against Cotton. The second rape victim had not picked Cotton out of the lineup. He asked her if she would be willing to take the stand and tell the judge what happened. She reflects on the irony of being asked to testify when her family refused to talk about what happened to her. Jim told her that it would be difficult for her, but the other victim was fragile and unwilling to testify. She told him everything that happened that night and agreed to do whatever he asked.

At the hearing, Jennifer met Mary Reynolds, the woman who was raped after Jennifer. Jennifer later learned that Mary fought her rapist, and he had bruised her badly. He also shined a flashlight in her face. After Jennifer told her story to the judge, the bond on Cotton was raised from $150,000 to $450,000. He would not get out before the trial.

Joe returned from Europe in October. He said he was sorry about what happened and hinted that he needed his place back one day later. Jennifer remarks, “It was as close as we would ever come to talking about what had happened to me” (49). She found an apartment that was much farther away from campus. Most days, she drove to school. She lived alone and found herself compulsively checking the locks on the doors and windows at night. She could not understand how she had done everything right—she had not put herself in a dangerous situation—and still wound up being raped at knifepoint. At least once a week up until the trial, she called the police and asked them to come investigate a noise she heard outside at night.

When Paul came to see her, they argued each time he had to leave. She needed more time from him than he could give her. They were still planning on getting married at that point and fought about where they would live. His family’s business was in Burlington, but Jennifer had come to hate the city and wanted to move to Greensboro. She acknowledges, “Even if Paul had been able to be there twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, I don’t know if it would have been enough” (53). At a party, she did cocaine with him, hoping it would make her happy. She notes, “It made me not care for a while that I wasn’t happy. I didn’t care that I was miserable. And that was a big improvement” (55).

In November, Cotton pleaded not guilty on all charges. The trial would begin in January. She went home for Christmas, where most of the conversation was about Joe and his trip to Europe. No one mentioned the trial.

On the morning of the trial, Jennifer chose a conservative outfit. Jim had told her that the defense would do whatever they could to portray her as promiscuous. She wonders, “What kind of people would judge a woman who had been asleep in her bed when she was attacked?” (61). In the courtroom, the defense attorney, Phil Mosely, told her that he was sorry for what happened to her.

She was called to the stand after Cotton was brought in. Jim asked her to describe the oral sex that Cotton performed on her. She tried and noticed that her father had tears in his eyes. Jennifer began to sob, and the judge ordered a break. In a private room, her father came in and squeezed her hand. After returning to the stand, she identified Cotton as the rapist.

When Mosely questioned her, he asked her about her fear of waking with someone in her room, wondering why she would sleep in her underwear if she was afraid of someone looking in the window at her. She answered his questions confidently and did not let him derail her or make her emotional.

Cotton’s family members made appearances as character witnesses over the next few days. They all said he had been asleep at home during the rape. Jennifer reflects, “It was so pathetic, I thought, as if they had all been given a script to memorize” (66).

During the closing arguments, Mosely asked the jury to consider the lack of physical evidence. There was no forensic evidence to indict Cotton on, only Jennifer’s words. He showed the jury that Ronald had scarring on his face that Jennifer never mentioned despite her insistence that she could not forget the face that had been over her during the rape. Ronald Cotton was found guilty and "sentenced to life in prison plus fifty years” (70). When asked if he wanted to say anything in his defense, he said no.

That night, after a celebration dinner with Jim, her family, and Sadie, Jennifer “prayed for Ronald Cotton to die miserably in jail, alone and afraid. But before he left this earth for hell, [she] asked that he know the horror of being raped. Sleep came over [her] easily” (72).