(Thompson-Cannino is Caucasian, Cotton African-American.) Convicted prisoners rarely receive attention when claiming innocence from their cells, and they usually lack the money, the legal assistance and the support network to make their assertions heard. Sophisticated DNA testing did not exist in the mid-’80s, and few people inside or outside the criminal-justice system understood the unreliability of eyewitness identification, especially across racial lines. He maintained his innocence from the time police approached him, but nobody except his family believed him. After working with a police sketch artist and examining mug shots gathered by police, she identified 22-year-old Cotton, who was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison. She saw him clearly and escaped the apartment before he could harm her further. Thompson-Cannino was a college student at Elon College in1984, when a knife-wielding man broke into her Burlington, N.C., apartment and raped her. A rape victim and the man she falsely accused-in good faith-collaborate to share an important, affecting story of fatally mistaken identity.
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