Social Psychology and the Law
In 1984, a 22-year-old college student named Jennifer Thompson was raped at knife point by an intruder in her apartment. Despite the terror and pain of being raped, Jennifer was determined to bring the rapist to justice. She paid careful attention to the man’s facial features, hair, and identifying marks, trying to commit them to memory so that she could identify the man later. Based on her memories, Jennifer identified a man in a police photo as her rapist. Jennifer felt completely confident that this man, Ronald Junior Cotton, was the man who had raped her.Jennifer was confident enough to pick Cotton out of a lineup of possible suspects. In fact, she was so confident that she testified against Cotton in a criminal trial.
Although Cotton maintained his innocence, the trial ended in a guilty verdict, and Cotton was sentenced to life in prison. However, the case took a surprising turn when another prison inmate named Bobby Poole began bragging that he actually had been...