Marcus Dixon, an African-American teenager, was sentenced to ten years in prison for having had sex with a white teenaged girl.
The facts of the case as presented in the e-mail are not in dispute: A young black man is serving a lengthy sentence for having had sex with an underage girl. In May 2003, Marcus Dixon was given a mandatory ten-year sentence for having been physically intimate with a girl two years, seven months, and eighteen days his junior - at the time of the incident (which took place in February 2003) she was 15-3/4 years old and he was 18-1/3. The girl was also white.The online community has come to hear of the case through e-mailed exhortations to support Mr. Dixon's cause, and from web sites such as the now defunct helpmarcus.com and www.act4justice.com. These entreaties present the matter as one of an overly harsh penalty being applied in a case where little or no penalty should have been imposed, and assert the sole reason for such prosecution was racism - a black teen boy had a physical romance with a white teen girl, and the authorities went after him for it. While that indeed might be what happened, there are other explanations that should be examined and considered. This is not as clear-cut a case as it has been made out to be.Although engaging in sexual relations with an underage partner is generally a punishable offense in every state, latitude is usually granted in consensual instances where the two parties are reasonably close in age. Many states in the U.S. have 'Romeo and Juliet' laws that make sexual relations with a minor a lesser crime if both parties are teenagers. Marcus Dixon, however, was convicted of aggravated child molestation and statutory rape, the former a felony carrying a mandatory ten-year sentence in Georgia. He was acquitted of charges of forcible rape, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and sexual battery arising from the same incident.Most accounts of this case recount the horrible circumstances of Mr. Dixon's early upbringing, stress his considerable scholastic and athletic record, and remind readers if this conviction is not overturned, this young man will not only have to serve a full ten-year prison sentence, but he will forever be branded as a child molestor and be made to register as a sex offender in any community he moves to. While all that is true, the following passage gleaned from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article gives pause because it presents the jailed student in a less flattering light:Prosecutors contended Dixon was a sexual predator. They presented evidence that the 6-foot-6, 270-pound football star had been suspended twice from Pepperell High School for sexual activity. Neither case was reported to police, and Dixon never was charged with a crime. But jurors were told he had been suspended for exposing himself in a classroom in 2001 and inappropriately touching a 14-year-old girl after track practice in 2002.Following Marcus Dixon's conviction, the unnamed girl involved in the incident that led to his prosecution did attempt to sue the school for $5 million on the basis of those two previous incidents, arguing if the police had been called in for either of them, or if the school had properly punished Mr. Dixon for them, she might not have been molested. These two other incidents are also not in dispute - the school's defense against the girl's lawsuit was not that these other two episodes hadn't happened, but rather that the school shouldn't have been held liable for them.It's hard to know what to make of the jurors in the Dixon case. Did they render the right verdicts on each of the six charges? Did they even understand the charges? At least four of them later said they did not expect such a severe sentence for the aggravated child molestation charge they found against Mr. Dixon, yet that crime carries a mandatory ten-year prison term.As for why the jury did not convict on any of the rape charges, one of the jurors afterwards reported the jury did not consider a guilty verdict because the victim 'didn't scream, didn't make any noise, didn't turn over the table or anything.' While fighting back can be taken as proof of non-consent, its lack does not necessarily prove the opposite. How much fighting back could a typical 15-year-old girl do against an 18-year-old, 6-foot-6, 270-pound athlete? Would she even be inclined to try, given that she knew no one was around to hear her cries and come to her assistance? Or would she conclude that attempting to resist would only get her harmed even more?Those agitating for the Dixon conviction to be overturned see this as an instance of two lusty teens who engaged in consensual sexual relations, something that should hardly be viewed as a crime even if one of the pair of lovebirds was technically a minor (15) while the other was fully an adult (18). However, prosecutors in the case are unwavering in their assertion the sex act was not consensual, and that the unnamed girl was forcibly raped. Whereas many of the popular accounts present the matter as one of an angered girlfriend crying foul and then shamefacedly changing her mind, the victim in this case has not withdrawn her claim of having been forced into sex. According to her account, which police and prosecutors appear to believe, she was taken by surprise while working as a student custodian after school in an on-campus trailer being used as a classroom. She testified that prior to the assault she and Marcus Dixon barely knew one another, and that she had never spoken more than a few words to him. She said she didn't scream or cry out for help 'because I was afraid he'd hurt me.' Yet Mr. Dixon claims a romantic liaison in which he suggested they go to his place, but she demurred (citing that someone might see them together and alert her racist father as the reason for that choice not being on the table), so they instead made out in a classroom trailer after school.In this hall of mirrors that is the Marcus Dixon case I am nagged by two points that might or might not form the crux of the consensual sex versus rape issue. Prior to the sex act with Mr. Dixon, the girl in question was a virgin. (Her loss of virginity, after all, was the physical damage upon which the aggravated child molestation charge was hung.) Also, it appears the two barely knew one another. (Marcus and the girl were in the same Home Economics class, yet beyond that no one seems to have pointed out where their paths could have intersected, let alone offered anything that would support the notion of their keeping company with one another as boyfriend and girlfriend.) Many girls want their first time to be special and so reserve it for, if not a husband, at least a boyfriend of some significance. Did this girl choose to have her first time in the non-romantic setting of a deserted classroom, with a guy she'd hardly exchanged hellos with?There are two distinct ways of looking at the case. From one vantage point, a black teen romantically entangled with a white girl has been put behind bars for a decade for no better reason than that someone judged him to be the wrong color. From another angle, a 15-year-old girl raped by a significantly larger and stronger 18-year-old man with a history of sexually predatory behavior saw her attacker sent to jail not because a jury believed she had been raped, but because a jury fortuitously mishandled one of the lesser charges brought against her attacker.Were the prosecutors in the case unbridled racists set on imprisoning a black man for engaging in sex with a white girl, no matter what it took to put him away? Or were they non-bigots trying to jail a rapist in a case which (lacking other evidence) would ultimately come down to a 'he said; she said' evaluation on the part of a jury, so they threw in every charge they could, hoping at least one would stick?The case is now on appeal before the Georgia Supreme Court. Perhaps it will make better sense of it.Updates: On 3 May 2004, the Georgia Supreme Court court overturned Marcus Dixon's conviction on the charge of aggravated child molestation (a charge which comes with a mandatory ten-year sentence), ruling that he should have been prosecuted only on the lesser charge of statutory rape, a misdemeanor. (The court allowed his conviction on the lesser charge to stand.) A lower court then ruled that Dixon had already fulfilled his sentence for the misdemeanor charge of statutory rape.In June 2005, the Floyd County Board of Education agreed to pay a $130,000 settlement to Marcus Dixon's accuser:The family had filed a federal lawsuit against the school system, claiming that improper punishment of Dixon for prior sexual offenses created 'an unreasonable risk' for the then-15-year-old girl that resulted in her 'eventual sexual assault.' One of those past offenses resulted in a sexual battery charge stemming from an accusation that Dixon forced his hand down a 14-year-old's track shorts in 2002. That case was never prosecuted. The original lawsuit sought $5 million as well as punitive damages, attorneys' fees and compensation for the victim's medical and psychological treatment. When asked if he felt the settlement awarded was adequate, [Cartersville attorney Mike] Prieto replied: 'I don't think that a young lady can ever be adequately compensated for something like this.'Also in June 2005, Paramount Pictures announced plans to make a movie about Marcus Dixon's struggles to overturn his controversial 10-year prison sentence, although the Dixon family has reportedly not yet signed a deal with the studio.Barbara 'Georgia on my mind' Mikkelson
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