There are few situations in life that are more appalling than the imprisonment of an innocent person. I once sat next to Dwayne Allen Dail, who spent 20 years in a North Carolina prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and it was tragic to realize what had been taken from him. That’s why the folks at UNC Chapel Hill deserve a pat on the back for choosing “Picking Cotton” for their 2010 summer reading program. The book tells the story of Ronald Cotton, who was wrongly convicted of raping a North Carolina woman after he was wrongly identified by victim Jennifer Thompson. DNA ultimately proved his innocence and freed him. Cotton and Thompson co-authored the book.