Part 2

Part two of the novel, Picking Cotton, was just as exciting as the first one. This part, however, was written through the eyes of Ronald Cotton, the man wrongly convicted of raping Jennifer Thompson and Mary Reynolds. When Ronald first learned the police were looking for him, he went to the headquarters and was arrested. He had to go through very harsh interrogation and he was only allowed a short break after three long hours of being questioned. After a few days Ronald was picked out of a lineup and had to go to court. He kept insisting on not pleading guilty and I felt a mix of anger and sadness as I read Ronald going through the trial and being judged as guilty. Ron got taken to Central Prison, a huge jail right near Raleigh, North Carolina, and he begin to work out a lot more at the gym. But then he met Bobby Leon Poole, the man who actually committed the rapes of Jennifer and Mary. He was suspicious of Bobby, but he wasn't really sure.

As Ronald was working in the kitchen he met a person named Kenny, who had already been in the prison for 5 years already. Kenny always taunted Ron and even confronted him in the shower. Ronald ended up getting in a fight with Kenny, but Kenny told Ron that he thinks that Bobby really did commit the crimes that he was in for. That was when Ron started writing to his lawyers. He sent them things that confirmed Poole had done it and even included a picture of him. As life went on in prison, he realized he was turning into a madman and was only 15 feet away from killing Poole. Not only was he starting to decompose, but so was his family.

His mother had a stroke and his sister's boyfriend had committed suicide right in front of her, so she was going through some very intense trauma. The only thing that he thought would save him was to continue believing in God. He was allowed another trial, and this time Kenny would speak and Bobby would also be tried. It might've looked like Bobby had done it, but the judge did not use the evidence in the ruling of the court, and Ronald was again convicted. At the end of the trial, he sang a song about how God came into his life. After one of his prison mates committed suicide, he felt much closer to god.

After 8 or so years, they discovered DNA testing and that the blood on Mary Reynolds' door matched Poole's blood type, and not Ronald's. This sparked new hope in Ronald and he said that he definitely wanted to do DNA testing to finally prove that he was innocent. The DNA order was approved and I felt happy for Ronald because he finally had a chance to get out of prison. The DNA wasn't his, but it didn't necessarily clear him. Throughout this part of the novel, I was very moved by his letters to his lawyers and his faith in God as he went through 11 years in prison as an innocent man.