A Victim&#39;s Reaction to Innocence

Monday, March 9, 2009

A Victim's Reaction to Innocence

This is a great article on eyewitness misidentification. A excerpt from the article detailing the victim's reaction to finding out the man she identified as her attacker, who had spent 11 years in prison, was innocent:

Gauldin broke the news to her. "Her reaction: 'No, that can't be true. It's not possible.' You know? 'I know Ronald Cotton raped me. There's no question in my mind.'"

"It was like someone had just taken my life and, like, turned it upside down," she told Stahl.

Gauldin said Thompson cried and broke down. "I mean, she took it all on herself, you know, the guilt, you know, 'I did this to that man.'"

Thompson told Stahl she felt terrible shame. "Suffocating, debilitating shame."

But when she thought or dreamed about that night, it was still Cotton's face she saw. To get past it, she asked if he would meet with her at a local church. "I remember him walkin' into the church. And I physically could not stand up," Thompson recalled.

"She was nervous. Scared," Cotton said.

"I started to cry immediately. And I looked at him, and I said, 'Ron, if I spent every second of every minute of every hour for the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am, it wouldn't come close to how my heart feels. I'm so sorry.' And Ronald just leaned down, he took my hands…and he looked at me, he said, 'I forgive you,'" Thompson remembered.

"I told her, I said, 'Jennifer, I forgive you. I don't want you to look over your shoulder. I just want us to be happy and move on in life,'" Cotton recalled.

"The minute he forgave me, it's like my heart physically started to heal. And I thought, 'This is what grace and mercy is all about. This is what they teach you in church that none of us ever get.' And here was this man that I had hated. I mean, I used to pray every day of my life during those eleven years that he would die. That he would be raped in prison and someone would kill him in prison. That was my prayer to God. And here was this man who with grace and mercy just forgave me," Thompson told Stahl. "How wrong I was, and how good he is."

Eyewitness: How Accurate Is Visual Memory? - CBS News