bill: once again, here it is. the lineup tonight on cbs. "60 minutes," a new episode of "big brother ." then "cold case," and "without a trace." that's all tonight here on cbs,

america's most-watched network. if steve stricker owens, then he will move just eight points behind tiger into second place. an updated look at the fed excup points standings. in the final round of the john deere classic. 36 holes today because of bad weather earlier in the week. they played the second round yesterday. steve stricker tied the course record with 61, shooting 29 on this second nine at t.p.c. deere run. seven under par for his final round. a two-shot lead from tim petrovic, who found the pond here at the 18th. ian: it's all over now as far as steve stricker is concerned. he worried that if tim petrovic had made birdie here, he had to get it up and down for par to win. now that tim has hit it in the

water, he'll be dropping it back here, in for two, out for three. playing his 40. the best he can do is hold his shot for par. which means steve stricker has a 2002-shot -- a two-shot advantage, i guess. bobby: really that's the only time in the world you'd ever think about shooting at this flagstick is when you have to have a chance to tie tournament. ian: exeektg exactly right. he had to have a go. bill: most importantly, if he doesn't get this out, he's not going to get the pass to the british open. it will go instead to brett quigley because of his final round 67. ian: so what you're saying is if tim petrovic bogeys here and ties brett quigley at 17 under, the best final round score today, which goes to brett quigley with a 67, gives him a nod for the open. bill: if they had been tied in the final round, it would be go back to the third round and

quigley would have won there too because he shot 62. bobby: wondering if he can get a seat on the plane. ian: i'm sure they saved him one. spin. that was a little unfortunate because there's a slope there. if it had spun a little bit, it would have eblinged down towards the cup. -- edged down towards the cup. bill: a nice ovation for one of their own. [the captioning on this program is provided as an independent service of the national captioning institute, inc., which is solely responsible for the accurate and complete transcription of program content. cbs, its parent and affiliated companies, and their respective agents and divisions are not responsible for the accuracy or completeness of any transcription or for any errors in transcription.] bill: a nice ovation. >> from austin, texas, tim petrovic.

bill: ian, your name is on the jug. you think about steve stricker playing at turnberry, what about his chances there? ian: good chances the way he's driven the ball this week. he didn't miss one ball left. you must drive it well at turnberry. it can get very windy there. if the greens are in good shape like the last few times, as good a putter as he is, that gives him a little bit of an edge as well. and he's so close to tiger now in the fedexcup points race. he's second. bill: just eight points behind tiger. he'll move ahead of kenny perry and zach johnson. ian: this actually wouldn't have been a very easy shot had he had to get it up and down to win. it's not an easy chip to get inside 10 feet. a little right to left slope. a little downslope as well on to the green. bobby: pretty gutsy to pull the

wedge out, too. ian: i guess when you're in that position, bobby, you're not going to putt it or chip it on to the edge. bill: his wife nicky and their daughters bobbie and isabella. bobby: nicky used to caddie for steve. ian: when they first came on tour. a good player herself. bill: i remember one year spotlighting steve stricker. feels like he's been around a long time. but kind of reborn in the last 12 months. that was pretty aggressive, but again, he's got a two-shot cushion. and petrovic is looking at bogey at the least. so he should be ok.

ian: fantastic victory here for him. some really good play. golf course was presented beautifully. the course was there for the taking. greens were soft, but very hard to get the ball close because of the spin on the soft, slow greens. bill: and statistically solid. third in putting, 17th in greens, and that was prior to this week. he has not gone more than two consecutive starts without a top 10 finish. ian: very consistent. bill: that's a heck of an accomplishment. ian: he's in the top 10 in all around ranking, which encompasses all of those statistics that we keep regurgitating. it's amazing stuff. third in scoring average. that's a really good one to watch. obviously fedexcup points now, he's second. as we watch darron stiles here, this is a long putt for par.

good week for darron. this should be a good confidence boost for him. i know he didn't finish in the top three or four, but he has played nicely today. 36 holes. a lot of pressure. bill: muttering a little bit. got off to a heck of a start. co-leader with lee janzen after the first round. shot 64. followed that up yesterday with a 64 in the second round. feels like a lifetime ago. but it was just the second round. and then 70 this morning. he had a three-shot lead. that really brought a lot of people back into it. petrovic.

ian: he needs that to tie for second. that was a costly double bogey. bill: the 18th has been tough all day. traditionally one of the harder holes out here. ian: yes. bill: takes its toll on tim petrovic. bobby: i still don't think he regrets that decision going at the flag, though. bill: 69. quigley decides he wants to do it, he's got a spot at turnberry. ian: even though steve stricker is further away here, darron stiles will clean up, leave the stage to the champion. bill: how about this setting. the reflection off the pond. all of the spectators here.

this is a great event. it means so much to this community. brings in about $25 million. they give a lot of it back in terms of charitable contributions. and they run a first class event here. ian: well-done. bill: nice finish. 64, 65, 71 to conclude this afternoon. ian: still top 10. tied thinte, -- ninth, unfortunately, with the bogey there. bill: now stricker. won the barclays in 2007. as we mentioned in 2001, the match play championship. had not won a stroke play event since 1996. he went 11 years between victories in stroke play events. now trying to win for the

second time in just a few weeks. family looking on. and that's the way to end things. what a victory for steve stricker. fantastic. champion of the 2009 john deere classic. three-way tie for second. look at the lineup tonight once again. "60 minutes," "big brother," cold case, without a trace. so long from the quad cities.

captioning funded by cbs and ford-- built for the road ahead. >> pelley: shortly after 9/11, the pentagon ordered a top secret team of american commandos into afghanistan with a single simple order: kill osama bin laden. the man you are about to meet was the officer in command. >> our job was to go find him, capture or kill him. and we knew the writing on the wall was really to kill him. no one wanted to bring osama bin laden back to stand trial in the united states somewhere. >> pelley: the inside story of exactly what happened in that mission and how close it came to its objective has never been told. >> what is his voice? does he have an accent? does he have a scar? is there a tattoo? >> stahl: he's raping you and you're studying his face. >> it was just trying to pay attention to a detail that if i

survived-- and that was my plan-- i'd be able to help the police catch him. >> stahl: and just three days later, jennifer thompson made a positive identification. >> she picked up ron's photograph and said, "that's the man who raped me." >> stahl: and you must have said, "are you sure?" and she said yes? >> yeah, oh, yes, certainly. >> stahl: and then, she pointed to ron cotton in court. what did that feel like? >> it felt like someone pushing a knife through me. >> stahl: as you will see, ron cotton's case raises troubling questions about the reliability of eyewitness testimony. >> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bob simon. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm byron pitts. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories and andy rooney tonight on "60 minutes." ( music playing throughout )

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>> pelley: shortly after 9/11, the pentagon ordered a top secret team of american commandos into afghanistan with a single, simple order: kill osama bin laden. it was america's best chance to eliminate the leader of al qaeda. the inside story of exactly what happened in that mission and how close it came to its objective had never been told until we broadcast this story last fall. the man you are about to meet was the officer in command, leading a team from the u.s. army's mysterious delta force, a unit so secret it's often said delta doesn't exist. but you are about to see delta's operators in action.

why would the mission commander break his silence after seven years? he told us that most everything he's read in the media about his mission is wrong, and he wants to set the record straight. >> dalton fury: our job was to go find him, capture or kill him. and we knew the writing on the wall was to kill him, because nobody wanted to bring osama bin laden back to stand trial in the united states somewhere. >> pelley: in 2001, just ten weeks after 9/11, he was a 37- year-old army major, leading a team of america's most elite commandos. even now, we can't tell you his name or show you his face. we hired a theatrical makeup artist to take this former delta officer through a series of transformations to create the man you see now. he calls himself "dalton fury." he is the author of "kill bin laden," a book about his mission. dalton fury is used to disguises-- in fact, in 2001, his entire team transformed themselves in afghanistan. >> fury: everybody has their

beard grown, everybody's wearing local afghan clothing, sometimes carrying the same weapons as them. >> pelley: the idea was, that if this all worked out, osama bin laden would be dead and no one would ever know that delta force was there? >> fury: that's right, that's the plan, and that always is when you're talking about delta force. >> pelley: and there was no mission more important to the united states. >> president george bush: we'll smoke him out of his cave, and we'll get him, eventually. >> pelley: but the administration's strategy was to let afghans do most of the fighting. using radio intercepts and other intelligence, the c.i.a. pinpointed bin laden in the mountains near the border of pakistan. following the strategy of keeping an afghan face on the war, fury's delta team joined the c.i.a. and afghan fighters and piled into pickup trucks. they videotaped their journey to a place called tora bora. fury told us his orders were to kill bin laden and leave the body with the afghans.

>> fury: right here, you're looking at, basically, the battlefield from the last location that we had a firm on osama bin laden's location. >> pelley: this ridge line is at about 14,000 feet? and back this way toward me is pakistan? >> fury: that's right. >> pelley: on a scale of, say, one to ten-- ten being the toughest-- how tough a position is this to attack? >> fury: in my experience, it's a ten. >> pelley: delta developed an audacious plan to come at bin laden from the one direction he would never expect. >> fury: we want to come in on the back door. >> pelley: you were going up over the tops of the peaks? >> fury: that's right. the original plan that we sent up through our higher headquarters, delta force wants to come in over the mountain with oxygen, coming from the pakistan side, over the mountains, and come in and get a drop on bin laden from behind. >> pelley: why didn't you do that? >> fury: disapproved at some level above us. whether that was central command, all the way up to the president of the united states, i'm not sure. >> pelley: the next option that delta wanted to employ was to

drop hundreds of landmines in the mountain passes that led to pakistan, bin laden's escape route. >> fury: first guy blows his leg off, everybody else stops. that allows aircraft overhead to find them. they see all these heat sources out there. okay, there a big, large group of al qaeda moving south. they can engage that. >> pelley: why didn't you do that? >> fury: disapproved. >> pelley: why was it not approved? >> fury: i have no idea. >> pelley: how often does delta& come up with a tactical plan that's disapproved by higher headquarters? >> fury: in my experience, in my five years at delta, never before. >> pelley: the military wouldn't tell us who rejected the plans or why. fury wasn't happy about it, but he pressed on with the only option he had left, a frontal assault on bin laden's dug-in al qaeda fighters. the delta team had only about 50 men. so the mission would depend on the afghan militia as guides and muscle. their leader was a warlord, a self-styled general named ali. >> fury: ali told us, after about 30 seconds of discussion-- he kind of listened to me ramble

on-- and then the first thing he said was, "i don't think you guys can handle it. you can't handle al qaeda in these mountains." >> pelley: ali, second from the left, met with this c.i.a. officer and accepted millions of dollars in cash from the agency. in short order, his mujahidin fighters were escorting delta force into the mountains. paint the picture for me of these afghan mujahidin troops. >> fury: they range anywhere from maybe 14 up to maybe 80. various dress. basically, we would probably consider it rags, which is the standard dress for a mujahidin warrior. >> pelley: this is video of the top secret mission, never seen by the public before. it was recorded by the delta commandos themselves. dressed like afghans, the americans maneuvered up the mountains, calling in air strikes on al qaeda. by day, they would advance, but at night, they soon discovered that their afghan allies went home.

well, i have to assume that, if you started up the hills of tora bora, and you and the mujahidin took territory, they didn't abandon that at night? >> fury: oh, yes, they did. >> pelley: they gave it up to the enemy? >> fury: absolutely. the mujahidin would go up, get into a skirmish, a fire fight, lose a guy or two, maybe kill an al qaeda guy or two, and then they'd leave. it was almost like it was an agreement, an understanding between the two forces fighting each other; almost, put on a good show and then leave. >> pelley: four days after arriving in tora bora, dalton fury was faced with a fateful command decision. three of his men were in trouble behind enemy lines, and at the same time, the c.i.a. had been listening to bin laden's radio transmissions and had a breakthrough. >> fury: and this is where it gets complicated. at about the same time, the c.i.a., george, comes into our room and he says, "guys, i got a location for osama bin laden. that's probably the best locational data we've had on osama bin laden ever.

>> pelley: it was night, so fury was without his afghan allies. still, he rescued his men and then found himself approaching bin laden's doorstep. >> fury: we're about 2,000 meters away from where we think bin laden's at, still, from where we're at. now, we have to make a decision. >> pelley: fury had two choices: advance his small team, with no afghan support, or return to camp and assault in the morning. he was under orders to make the afghans take the lead, and intelligence said there were more than 1,000 hardened fighters protecting bin laden. you write in the book: "my decision to abort that effort to kill or capture bin laden when we might have been with 2,000& meters of him"-- about 2,000 yards-- "still bothers me. it leaves me with a feeling of somehow letting down our nation at a critical time. " >> fury: that's correct. >> pelley: why do you feel that way?

>> fury: had we gone up that ridge line towards that location, osama bin laden might have been 500 meters way. it wasn't worth the risk at that particular moment to go up there and play cowboy. it was better to be cautious, refit, go up there with the entire force the next day and play the battle out as we had planned. >> pelley: in the morning, bin laden was on the radio. the c.i.a., delta, and their afghan allies were listening. how did the afghans react when they heard from osama bin laden on the radio? >> fury: osama bin laden is many a muslim's hero. these guys, in my opinion, were more in awe of osama bin laden than they were willing to kill him. when they heard him talking on the radio, they would gather around the individual that held that handheld transistor. he would hold it up in the air, almost as if he didn't want the connection to break. and they just stood there with

wide eyes and somewhat in awe that here is the leader of the jihad, the leader of al qaeda, and they're actually hearing his voice over the radio. >> pelley: and these were the men who were supposed to help you capture or kill him? some allies. >> fury: some were better than others. >> pelley: the radio intercepts gave delta a fix on bin laden's location. and one of the delta soldiers narrated his own video. >> this top hill, the very top up there-- that's supposedly where bin laden is hiding out. we've seen movement along this saddle right here. we don't know if it's friendly or not, so we haven't been able to call fire on it. >> pelley: and then something extraordinary happened. fury's afghan allies announced that they had negotiated a cease-fire with al qaeda, something the americans had no interest in. when fury's team advanced anyway, his afghan partners drew their weapons on delta.

it took 12 hours to end the bogus cease-fire, precious time for al qaeda to move. >> fury: so we think he's moved over here. >> pelley: so osama bin laden starts here, as far as we know, and he's coming all the way around. now, he's doubled back. you got to figure he's heading for the valley and the pass into pakistan. >> fury: our assumption is he's going for the valley at that time. >> pelley: bin laden had changed direction, and the tone of his radio calls. >> fury: clearly under duress. clearly hurting. clearly caring for his men. >> pelley: inside this building, the american team listened to bin laden on the radio. fury wrote down the translation in a notebook. >> fury: quote: "our prayers were not answered. times are dire and bad. we did not get support from the apostates who are our brothers. i'm sorry for bringing you here. it is okay to surrender." end quote. >> pelley: when you heard that, what did you think? >> fury: i thought "it's almost

over." >> pelley: soon after that intercept, a delta team called "jackal" radioed that they had bin laden's entourage in sight. >> fury: the operation jackal team observed 50 men moving into a cave that they hadn't seen before. the mujahidin said they saw an individual, a taller fellow, wearing a camouflage jacket. everybody put two and two together. okay, that's got to be osama bin laden egressing from the battlefield. they called up every available bomb in the air, took control of the airspace. and they dropped several hours of bombs on the cave he went into. we believe... it was our opinion at the time that he died inside that cave. >> pelley: bin laden's radio went silent. and dalton fury believed the bombs had killed him. six months later, american and canadian forces came back for proof. they checked al qaeda fighting holes and used explosives to try to open up collapsed caves. this is where they hoped to find bin laden's body. it's an al qaeda graveyard

rising from the opium poppies. the troops dug up bodies and removed the fingers for forensic analysis. but there was no luck. in october 2004, bin laden released a message and fury knew that his team had failed. today, based on intelligence, fury believes he knows what happened. he says that bin laden was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel from an american bomb, and was then hidden in this town next to the al qaeda cemetery. >> fury: we believe a gentleman brought him in. a gentleman, him and his family were supporting al qaeda during the battle. they were providing food, ammo, water. we think he went to that house, received medical attention for a few days then. and then we believe they put him in a vehicle, moved him back across the pass. >> pelley: this is the trail bin laden would have used to escape. >> fury: it's my understanding they believe he got into a vehicle. he moved as far as he could, and then got out and walked across or was carried across into pakistan, free and clear.

when this is all over and this all dies down, and once we finally do grab osama bin laden, i think the fact that we lost him in tora bora will move out of my memory, so to speak. i'm looking forward to those days. >> cbs money watch update. >> good evening. in today's "washington post" president obama defended his economic stimulus plan urging americans to be patient and give the two-year plan a chance to work. gas fell 10 cents in two weeks to a national average of $2.56 a gallon. and the risque comedy "bruno" won the weekend box office. i'm russ mitchell, cbs news.

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>> stahl: it's a clicheé of courtroom dramas-- that moment when the eyewitness is asked, "do you see the person who committed the crime here in this courtroom before you?"

well, it happens in real courtrooms all the time, and to jurors, that point of the finger by a confident witness is about as damning as evidence can get. but there is one type of evidence that's even more persuasive, and that, of course, is d.n.a. there have been more than 235 people exonerated by d.n.a. in this country, and now a stunning pattern has emerged: more than three-quarters of them were sent to prison, at least in part, because an eyewitness pointed a finger, an eyewitness who we now know was wrong. it was hot and humid in burlington, north carolina, on the night of july 28, 1984. jennifer thompson, then a 22- year-old college student, had gone to bed early in her off- campus apartment.

as she slept, a man shattered the light bulb near her back door, cut her phone line, and broke in. >> jennifer thompson: i remember kind of waking up and turning my head to the side and saying, "who's there? who is it?" and i saw the top of someone's head kind of sliding beside my mattress. i screamed and i felt a blade go to my throat. >> stahl: a knife? >> thompson: a knife. and he told me to shut up or he was going to kill me. >> stahl: her first thought was to offer him anything she had to go away. >> thompson: "you can have my credit card. you can have my wallet. you can have anything in the apartment. you can have my car." and he looked at me and said, "i don't want your money." and i knew what was getting ready to happen. >> stahl: she vowed to stay alert and study him so that, if she lived, she could help put him away forever. >> thompson: "what is his voice? does he have an accent? does he have a scar? is there a tattoo?" >> stahl: he's raping you, and you're studying his face. >> thompson: it was just trying to pay attention to a detail;

that if i survived-- and that was my plan-- i'd be able to help the police catch him. >> stahl: after about half an hour, jennifer tricked the rapist into letting her get up and fix him a drink, and she ran out the back door. he fled and raped a second woman half a mile away. detective mike gauldin met jennifer at the hospital. >> mike gauldin: the first comment i remember her making was that "i'm going to get this guy that did this to me." she said, "i took the time to look at him. i will be able to identify him if i'm given an opportunity." >> stahl: detective gauldin worked with jennifer to make a composite sketch, poring over eyes, noses, ears, lips, trying to recreate the face she had seen that night. the sketch went out, and tips started coming in. one of those tips was about a young man named ronald cotton, who worked at a restaurant near the scene of both rapes, and had a record-- a guilty plea to breaking and entering and, as a

teenager, to sexual assault. three days after the rape, mike gauldin called jennifer in to do a photo lineup. he lay these six pictures down on the table, said the perpetrator may or may not be one of them, and told her to take her time. >> thompson: i can remember almost feeling like i was at an s.a.t. test-- you know, where you start narrowing down your choices. you can discount a and b, and... >> stahl: oh, like multiple choice. >> thompson: exactly. >> stahl: according to the police report, jennifer studied the pictures for five minutes. >> gauldin: she picked up ron's photograph and said, "that's the man that raped me." >> stahl: and you must have said, "are you sure?" and... and she said, "yes." >> gauldin: yeah. oh, yes, certainly. >> stahl: ronald cotton heard the news from his mother's boyfriend. >> ron cotton: he told me, he said, "ron." he said, "the police are looking for you." and i said, "for what?" and he told me, "for rape." and i said, "i haven't committed such a crime like that." >> stahl: did you panic? >> cotton: i didn't panic. i tried to figure out, you know, why. >> gauldin: he comes in and gives me a very detailed account

of where he was, who he was with that night. as it turns out, that was a false alibi. >> cotton: i realized later that i had got my weekends confused, so therefore it gave them reason to think that i was lying. >> stahl: this was august 1, 1984. >> cotton: right. >> stahl: you go in to clear yourself. when did you actually leave? >> cotton: i didn't. >> stahl: he was locked up, and days later, put in a physical lineup. >> cotton: i'm number five. >> stahl: were you scared? >> cotton: i was very scared, nervous. i was so nervous, i was trembling. i felt my body just shaking. >> gauldin: they were asked to step forward, speak, and step back. >> thompson: i could remember looking to the detective and saying, "it's between four and five. can i have them do it again?" >> stahl: and then she knew. it was number five, ronald cotton. did you feel absolutely certain? >> thompson: absolutely certain. >> stahl: did anybody say to you, "good job?" >> thompson: well, what was said to me afterwards was, "that's the same person you picked out

in the photo lineup." so, in my mind i thought, "bingo. i did it right. i did it right." >> stahl: in a week-long trial, the jury heard about ronald cotton's faulty alibi, his clothing that matched jennifer's description, and a piece of foam found on her floor that seemed to come from one of his shoes. and most powerfully, they heard from jennifer. when they asked you, "do... do you recognize the man who did this to you?" did you point to him? >> thompson: absolutely. >> stahl: it was ron cotton. >> thompson: it was ronald cotton, yes. >> cotton: she called my name, point a finger. and that's all... that's all it takes, it seemed like. >> stahl: what did that feel like? >> cotton: it felt like someone pushing a knife through me. >> stahl: it took the jury just 40 minutes. the verdict-- guilty on all counts. >> thompson: he was sentenced to life and 50 years. and it was, for me, that moment that you know the justice system

works, because i am the victim, and he's a horrible person, and he will never, ever be free again. >> stahl: ronald cotton was handcuffed, shackled, and taken to north carolina's central prison. he was 22 years old. >> cotton: you know, they say grown men doesn't cry, but it's a lie, you know. i grabbed my pillow many times and hugged it, wishing i was hugging my mom, my dad, sister, brother. wish it didn't have to be this way. >> stahl: he started working in the prison kitchen, singing in the choir, and writing letter after letter to his attorneys, hoping to get a new trial. then one day, as he watched a new inmate being brought in, he had a strange feeling. >> cotton: i said, "excuse me." i said, "you look familiar." i said, "where are you from? he said, "i'm from burlington." i said, "i am, too." i said, "you kind of resembling the drawing of a suspect in a crime in which i'm falsely imprisoned for. did you commit this crime?" and he told me, no, he did not. >> stahl: wait a sec-- you saw him and thought of that composite drawing?

>> cotton: uh-huh. >> stahl: his name was bobby poole, and he was in for rape. he started working in the prison kitchen, too. >> cotton: the stewards were calling me "poole" instead of "cotton". >> stahl: they were calling you by his name? >> cotton: yes. >> stahl: in other words, people were mistaking the two of you? >> cotton: yes, exactly. >> stahl: then, a fellow inmate told him that he'd heard bobby poole admit to raping jennifer and the other woman that night. ronald cotton won a new trial, and his lawyers called bobby poole to the stand with jennifer sitting right there. it was the moment ronald cotton had been hoping for. bobby poole is in the courtroom. you look over there. what happens inside you? >> thompson: nothing. >> stahl: nothing? >> thompson: nothing. as a matter of fact, the strongest emotion i felt was anger at the defense because i thought, "how dare you? how dare you question me? how dare you try to paint me as someone who could possibly have forgotten what my rapist looked

like-- i mean, the one person you would never forget. how dare you?" >> stahl: ronald cotton was convicted again; this time, given two life sentences. back in prison seven years later, he and everyone else was riveted by a big news story-- the trial of o.j. simpson. >> cotton: i would get my radio and put my earplugs, and go outside and sit in a corner... >> stahl: and listen to the trial? >> cotton: yes, uh-huh. >> stahl: he was intrigued by something he'd never heard of-- d.n.a. he wrote to his new attorney, law professor rich rosen. rosen warned him that there probably wasn't any evidence left to test, and if there was, d.n.a. could cut both ways. >> rich rosen: understand, if the d.n.a. comes back and shows that you did this crime, whatever legal issues we have don't make any bit of difference-- you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison. >> stahl: he warned you that, if it comes up positive, you're sunk?

>> cotton: i told him to put his foot down and go with it. >> stahl: packed away on the shelves of the burlington police department was ten-year-old evidence from the two rapes that night. inside one of the rape kits was a fragment of a single sperm with viable d.n.a. it proved what ronald cotton had been saying all along-- he was innocent, and the rapist was bobby poole. within days, ronald cotton was back in court... >> you're walking out of here today a free man. >> stahl: ...this time, to be released. so, not only do you find out that ron didn't do the crime, you find out bobby poole did. >> gauldin: it was just utter shock, really. disbelief. i mean, by this time-- this is 11 years later. and, you know, i know that i've been involved in a case where a man has lost 11 years of his life.

and i just... i was so sad for him and his family. >> stahl: in the years since ronald cotton's conviction, jennifer had married and had children. are you the one that tells her? >> gauldin: yes. her reaction-- "no, that can't be true. it's not possible." you know? "i know ronald cotton raped me. there's no question in my mind." >> thompson: it was like someone had just taken my life and, like, turned it upside down. >> stahl: she cry? >> gauldin: oh, she cried. she broke down. i mean, she took it all on herself, you know, the guilt-- you know, "i did this to that man." >> stahl: but when she thought or dreamed about that night, it was still ronald cotton's face she saw. to get past it, she asked if he would meet with her at a local church. >> thompson: i remember him walking into the church. and i physically could not stand up. >> cotton: she was nervous. scared. >> thompson: i started to cry immediately. and i looked at him and i said, "ron, if i spent every second of

every minute of every hour for the rest of my life telling you how sorry i am, it wouldn't come close to how my heart feels. i'm so sorry." and ronald just leaned down, he took my hands... >> stahl: oh, gosh. >> thompson: ...and he looked at me, he said, "i forgive you." >> cotton: i told her, i said, "jennifer, i forgive you. i don't want you to look over your shoulder. i just want us to be happy and move on in life." >> thompson: the minute he forgave me, it's like my heart physically started to heal. and i thought, this is what grace and mercy is all about. this is what they teach you in church that none of us ever get. and here was this man that i had hated with... i mean, i used to pray every day of my life during those 11 years that he would die, that he would be raped in prison and someone would kill him in prison. that was my prayer to god. and here was this man who, with

grace and mercy, just forgave me. >> stahl: that is overwhelming. it's overwhelming. >> thompson: how wrong i was, and how good he is. >> stahl: how is it that jennifer could have studied her rapist so carefully and still made this mistake? and how could she have failed to recognize bobby poole, the actual rapist, when he sat right in front of her in the courtroom three years later? that part of the story, when we come back.

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>> stahl: now that d.n.a. has exonerated more than 230 men--

mostly in sex crimes and murder cases-- criminologists have been able to go back and study what went wrong in those investigations. what they've honed in on is faulty eyewitness testimony: over 75% of these innocent men were convicted, in part, because an eyewitness fingered the wrong person. at the heart of the problem is the fragility of memory. as one researcher told us, we now know that memory is not like a video tape recorder-- you don't just record an event and play it back. instead, memory is malleable, full of holes, easily contaminated, and susceptible to suggestion, as in the case of jennifer thompson and ronald cotton. before this case, did you think that there were a lot of innocent people put away? >> gauldin: no. >> stahl: you didn't? >> gauldin: no, i didn't. innocent people aren't convicted of crimes they didn't commit. i believed that.

>> stahl: what do you think now? >> gauldin: i know better. i mean, well over 200 cases, nationally. we've had a half a dozen in this state alone. the first, of course, was my case. >> hallelujah! >> stahl: and as these innocent men have been freed in one state after the next, we've learned something else-- that in all the cases where eyewitnesses were wrong, the real perpetrator was not in the initial lineup. >> thompson: when you're sitting in front of a photo lineup, you just assume one of these guys is the suspect. it's my job to find it. >> stahl: and jennifer did her job. she found the suspect's photo; the problem is, the suspect, ronald cotton, was not the rapist. >> thompson: bobby poole's photograph was not in the photo lineup. >> stahl: right. >> thompson: he was not in the physical lineup. >> gary wells: when the real perpetrator is not in the set, is... is none of them, witnesses have a very difficult time being able to recognize that. >> stahl: gary wells, a

professor of psychology at iowa state university, has been studying eyewitness memory for 30 years. he says, when the real guy isn't there, witnesses tend to pick the person who looks most like him. i think that ronald cotton and bobby poole look very much alike. they have very similar lips, shape of their eyes. their eyebrows kind of go up in a look of... >> wells: yes. >> stahl: ...surprise. >> wells: without him in the lineup, ronald cotton was the one who was in jeopardy. >> stahl: wells says eyewitness testimony has two key properties-- one, it's often unreliable; and two, it is highly persuasive to jurors. i can see why it's so persuasive. someone says, "i was there," you'd believe that person. >> wells: you believe that person because they have no reason to lie. >> stahl: yeah. >> wells: the legal system is set up to kind of sort between liars and truth-tellers. and... and it's actually pretty good at that. but when someone is genuinely mistaken, the legal system doesn't really know how to deal with that. and we're talking about a genuine error here. >> stahl: he walked us through

what went wrong, some of it counterintuitive. when jennifer spent five minutes studying the photographs, she and detective gauldin thought she was being careful. >> thompson: i didn't want to come across, i don't think, as somebody who's like, "that's the one." i really wanted to be sure. >> stahl: wells says, "no good." >> wells: recognition memory is actually quite rapid. so we find in our studies, for example, that if somebody's taking longer than ten, 15 seconds, it's quite likely that they're doing something other than just using reliable recognition memory. >> stahl: so you're saying, if she really recognized a guy, it would have been almost instantaneous? >> wells: quite quick, yes. >> stahl: he says a better way would have been to show jennifer lineup photos-- or people-- one at a time, so that she would compare each one directly to her memory, rather than to one another. wells showed me a study in which more than 300 subjects were shown deliberately shaky videotape of a simulated crime. >> wells: you look out a window

and you see some suspicious behavior. what happens is we tell them later, that "this person that you saw right there put a bomb down that... down the airshaft there." >> stahl: then subjects are shown a lineup and asked to identify the bomber. that would be so hard. and i just saw it. >> wells: very difficult. >> wells: and of course, you're particularly cautious right now. you know now, after we've talked, probably not to pick anyone. ( laughter ) >> stahl: no. no, actually, i... i actually know who it is, because... >> wells: yeah? yeah, who is it? >> stahl: i think it's this guy. am i wrong? >> wells: yeah. >> stahl: i'm wrong? >> wells: yeah. >> stahl: okay, so there you go. and i'm already saying how hard it is. >> wells: it's none of them. >> stahl: it's none of them. >> wells: and it's so... it... it's so... >> stahl: isn't that bizarre? >> wells: and you know about it. you know about this. we've talked about this, so... >> stahl: look what you just did to me. i'm mortified. i feel like jennifer.

wells says, in real life, the mistake is often compounded by what happens next. remember the seemingly innocent information jennifer says she got from police after she picked ronald cotton out of the physical lineup? >> thompson: "that's the same person you picked out in the photo lineup." so, in my mind i thought, "bingo. i did it right." >> stahl: wells studied what that reinforcement does. after half his subjects did what i did-- picked an innocent person from this lineup-- he told them nothing, then asked them questions about what they'd seen. very few felt highly confident about their choice. >> wells: only about 4% are saying they had a great view, which is good, because we gave them a lousy view. only about 3% are saying they could make out details of the face. that also is good because they... they really couldn't. >> stahl: but he told a second group of subjects, after they made the same incorrect choices, "good, you picked the suspect." >> wells: now what happens is... >> stahl: oh, my.

>> wells: ...40%... almost 45% of witnesses now report that they were positive or nearly positive. notice that over one fourth of them now say they had a great view, and... >> stahl: this is really what happened to jennifer. >> wells: it is what happened with jennifer. >> stahl: what this seems to be saying is that a reinforcement alters memory. >> wells: it does. >> stahl: dramatically. >> wells: it does. >> stahl: he says the solution is to have someone independent administer the lineup, someone who doesn't even know who the suspect is, and certainly not the detective on the case. >> stahl: you shouldn't have been there. >> gauldin: i shouldn't have been there. >> stahl: no. but nobody did anything wrong. i mean, that was the practice... >> gauldin: well, no. that was the common practice then. >> stahl: yeah. >> gauldin: it was... it was the tradition. it was how it was done then. law enforcement wasn't schooled in memory. we weren't schooled in protecting memory, treating it like a crime scene, where you're very careful, methodical about what you do and how you use it. i mean, we weren't... we weren't

taught that in those days. >> stahl: but none of these errors explains perhaps the most puzzling part of this story-- how it is that jennifer could see bobby poole in the courtroom and not realize her mistake. you're looking into the face of the man who raped you, whose face you had studied so intently... >> thompson: yes. >> stahl: and there's no flicker... >> thompson: nothing. >> stahl: ... nothing between you and bobby poole. >> thompson: nothing. and i've gone back there many times trying to think, "was there? was there ever a moment? did i ever look at him and think ( gasps )?" and i didn't. >> stahl: elizabeth loftus is a professor of psychology and law at the university of california irvine, and an expert in memory. she showed me an experiment she says might help explain jennifer's mistake. she asked me to study these faces. then, after a few minutes, she gave me a memory test. >> elizabeth loftus: which of these two faces do you recognize?

>> stahl: right. >> loftus: you picked right. >> stahl: left. >> loftus: you picked left. >> stahl: i said left, but i wasn't 100% sure. and then, the tricky part. well, i'll tell you why i'm stymied. >> loftus: okay. >> stahl: because i just picked this one on the left two seconds ago. but now, i'm not sure, because those two look very much alike to me. but i'm going to tell you the left. but i was wrong! it was the one on the right. loftus explained how i had been duped. >> loftus: so you saw this face. then i gave you a test where i presented you with an altered face... >> stahl: oh, my gosh. >> loftus: ...along with a novel one. so i pretty much induce you to pick a wrong face, because i don't even have the real guy there. it's an altered version. and later on, when you now have a choice between the altered one and the real one, you stuck with

your altered left... >> stahl: yeah. >> loftus: ...choice. >> stahl: this is exactly what happened to jennifer. >> loftus: this can help us understand why jennifer can be sitting in a courtroom and be looking at bobby poole, the original rapist, and looking at ronald cotton and saying... saying, "no, it's not poole. it's cotton." because she has been picking him all along. >> stahl: i begin to wonder whether there should ever be eyewitness testimony in trials... >> gauldin: well... >> stahl: ...because of the tricks that memory plays. >> gauldin: i think what's important, though, is... is to understand that, know that, know it as a police officer, as an investigator, as... as attorneys. >> wells: we need eyewitnesses. i mean, if we couldn't convict based on an eyewitness, that's giving a lot of comfort to criminals. we have no choice. we have to find ways to make this evidence better. ( applause ) >> stahl: and that's something