Free Dixon Georgia Black leaders Say

A growing number of Black state legislators and civil rights leaders are urging the Georgia Supreme Court to overturn the conviction of Marcus Dixon, the 18-year-old Black Georgia high school football player, who is serving a 15-year sentence for having consensual sex with a 15-year-old White female classmate.

“Marcus Dixon is a modern-day Emmett Till,” an angry Rep. Tyrone Brooks, of the Georgia General Assembly, told BET.com Friday. “He was lynched by a judicial system in Floyd County – Rome – Georgia, by an overzealous prosecutor. As president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, I can tell you that 100 percent of us are supporting the movement to free Marcus Dixon.”Advertisement

Initially, Assistant District Attorney McClellan had sought a rape conviction against Dixon, but the jurors rejected it. Instead, they agreed on misdemeanor statutory rape. “The jury said, ‘We’ll convict him of the misdemeanor, and he’ll get to go home today,” Brooks says.

But McClellan used a loophole, “bundling” the misdemeanor statutes with aggravated sexual assault statutes in order to stick Dixon with the 15-year sentence, 10 years of which he must serve behind bars before a five-year probationary period, Brooks says.

“The prosecutor abused a law designed to protect children from predators, says Brooks, who, ironically helped draft the legislation. “The intent of the law is good. Only one prosecutor since 1996 has abused it. Marcus Dixon is not a predator; in this case, he is the victim of the judicial system.”

In fact, Dixon, an A-student and football star who had been granted a full scholarship to Vanderbilt University, is the first teen in Georgia history to be sentenced under a similar statute. The Web site actforjustice.com, reports that “more than 35 states … have passed ‘Romeo and Juliet’ laws that have either decriminalized the behavior or minimized the offense to misdemeanor status for consensual teen-age relations.”

Says David Balser, an attorney with McKenna Long & Aldridge who is leading Dixon’s pro bono legal team: “No teen-ager should be serving 10 years in a state prison for having a consensual sexual encounter with someone in his own peer group. Regardless of one’s view of whether it is appropriate for teens to engage in voluntary relations, it is unethical to punish someone this severely for what even a jury found to be consensual behavior.”

Like Brooks, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says that the race factor is impossible to ignore. Speaking at a recent candlelight vigil at a Georgia church, he likened Dixon’s case to those of countless other Black men who received cruel punishments after being accused of raping Whites.

"If it'd been a Black girl, nobody would give a damn," Lowery said.

McClellan and his boss, District Attorney Leigh E. Patterson, say that race has never been a factor in this case.

Brooks says he expects the Georgia Supreme Court to decide on the case within 90 days.

“Mr. Balser presented an eloquent case before the court,” Brooks says, “and I think there is compelling evidence for the court to overturn the conviction. I believe the court will do the right thing.”

But Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has not done the right thing, Brooks says, because he has let this sentence stand.

Loretta Lepore, the governor’s spokeswoman, says, however, that Perdue has no power of executive clemency or any authority to intervene in the Dixon case.

“That power rests with pardons and parole,” Lepore told BET.com. “The governor believes that the circumstances are tragic, but he does not have all the details.”

Brooks disagrees with the limited-power argument.

“As chief executive of this state, the governor can urge – and he should urge – the board of pardons and parole to commute the sentence or issue a full pardon,” Brooks says. “All of the members of the board are appointed by the governor. All he needs to do is to let them know that he believes there has been an abuse of the intent of the law, and they’d do it in a minute. He should use the moral force of his office to see that justice is done.”