On August 1, 1984, 22-year-old Ronald Cotton came home—where he lived with his mother and her boyfriend—to find that the police had already been there. He borrowed a neighbor’s car and asked his sister, Tudy, to go with him to the police station so that he could clear his name. On the way, they picked up Teresa, a woman he had been dating. He reflects, “We were too afraid to talk, too afraid to make promises about it all being a big mistake and everything working out. That’s not the way it is in some Southern towns. At least, not for everybody” (76). When he arrived at the station, the first cop he saw looked familiar to him. Ronald realized that “this officer had trailed [him] before” (77) when Ronald had been out riding his bike.

Ronald told a detective named Lowe that he didn’t need an attorney because he hadn’t done anything. He said on the night in question, he had been with his brother, Calvin, at a boardinghouse on Ireland Street. Then they went to the Candlelight Club at 10:20 p.m.. At 2:30 in the morning, he met a friend named Janice in the club and asked her for a ride home.