Wrongly Convicted Man and His Accuser Tell Their Story。
NEW YORK,NY, January 5,2010. St.Martin’s Press has announced the release of the paperback edition of Picking Cotton, a remarkable true story of what novelist John Grisham calls an “account of violence, rage, redemption(救赎)，and, ultimately forgiveness.”
The story began in 1987, in Burlington, North Carolina, with the rape of a young while college student named Jennifer Thompson. During her ordeal, Thompson swore to herself that she would never forget the face of her rapist, a man who climbed through the window of her apartment and assaulted her brutally.________(1) When the police asked her if she could identify the assailant(袭击者) from a book of mug shots, she picked one that she was sure was correct, and later she identified the same man in a lineup.
Based on her convincing eyewitness testimony, a 22-year-old black man named Ronald Cotton was sentenced to prison for two life terms. Cotton’s lawyer appealed the decision, and by the time of the appeals hearing, evidence had come to light suggesting that the real rapist might have been a man who looked very like Cotton, an imprisoned criminal named Bobby Poole._______ (2) Jennifer Thompson looked at both men face to face, and once again said that Ronald Cotton was the one who raped her.
Eleven years later, DNA evidence completely exonerated(证明……清白) Cotton and just as unequivocally(明确地) convicted Poole, who confessed to the crime. ________(3) “The man I was so sure I had never seen in my life was the man who was inches from my throat, who raped me, who hurt me, who took my spirit away, who robbed me of my soul,” she wrote. “And the man I had identified so surely on so many occasions was absolutely innocent.”
_______ (4) Remarkably both were able to put this tragedy behind them, overcome the racial barrier that divided them, and write a book, which they have subtitled “Our memoir of injustice and redemption.”
Nevertheless, Thompson says, she still lives “with constant pain that my profound mistake cost him so dearly______ (5)”