UNC-CH chooses 'Picking Cotton'

CHAPEL HILL -- "Picking Cotton," the true story of an unlikely friendship between a woman and the innocent man she sent to prison, will be the 2010 summer reading book at UNC-Chapel Hill.

UNC-CH asks all first-year and incoming transfer students to read a book the summer before they enroll and participate in small group discussions the day before classes begin.

A nine-member selection committee of students, faculty and staff began meeting last fall to consider books for the program, now in its 12th year. They chose "Picking Cotton" (St. Martin's Press, 2009) Monday in a unanimous vote, according to a news release.

The book was written by the reconciled pair, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton with help from ghost writer Erin Torneo.

Jennifer Thompson was 22 and a college student in 1984, when an African-American man broke into her North Carolina apartment and raped her at knifepoint. Thompson, who is white, subsequently picked Cotton, then 22, out of a lineup. He went to prison on a life sentence, proclaiming his innocence.

Eleven years later, a DNA test proved Cotton did not commit the crime. UNC law professor Richard Rosen was one of two lawyers who represented Cotton probono during that time.