Case Study on Marcus Dixon

Introduction

Marcus Dixon Dwayne Dixon was an ordinary 18-year-old, a male in senior high school. He was a 3.96-grade point average student. Dixon was a football scholarship at Vanderbilt University. Many students and teachers admired him at Peppered High school. For what is common with teenage boys in senior school, Dixon just did what a normal teenage boy would do; look for a hookup. As a result, he was convicted of rape and sentenced to prison for ten years, for being black.

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Marcus Dixon was born in 1984 in Rome, a community dominated with white people and high racism (Alford, 2005). A place where racial matter evoked strong emotions, therefore, it was such a big issue that Dixon was being raised by a white family. White supremacists flags were seen from every corner of the estates. This had happened after his father; Craig Hawkins abandoned him by signing off his parental rights while he was very young. He was a neglected kid; his mother was a drug addict and spent most of the time in a state penitentiary.

Surprising, he was adopted by a white couple, the Joneses, while in junior high school. Dixon performed exceptionally well in school both academically and as an athlete. He was an over-average athlete, and it resulted in him getting a scholarship in Vanderbilt. However, all that outstanding academic performance and potential was taken away from him after he had sex with a 15-year-old white girl. The girl was only three months away from turning 16.

Prior, Mr. Dixon had had two mishaps in high school, and they played a big role in getting him convicted. In the first incident, Dixon has exposed his body inappropriately in the classroom and charged with indecent exposure, the second act was in 2002, where he was charged with shoving his hands in 14-year-old girl shorts. The two acts got him suspended from his school in sexual misconduct charges. He was a victim of the infamous Old South injustice that convicted young black people to prison without a fair trial.

Case Facts

Dixon, at the time he was 18 years old boy, was arrested at his senior school Pepperrell High for an alleged incident of rape involving a young girl called Kristie Brown, in a classroom trailer. The police led him to the Principal's office while handcuffed. The Supreme Court found Dixon guilty of rape, child molestation, aggravated assault and causing bodily harm after the victim said that he confined him and raped her. An examination done on the girl indicated falsely that she was forced to have sex since there were virginal injuries and some bruises on her hands.

Although during the court trial, defense attorneys presented three classmates who retaliated that the girl was not raped and bruised because a few days back before the sex incidence, she had those bruises on the hand. Dixon defense lawyers believed that she was coerced by her father to say that the convict forced and raped her. Ignoring the disputed presentation from the defense lawyers, the Supreme Court lawyers sentenced him into prison for 10 years.

Issues of the Case

There were many emotions involved and media coverage of Dixon case v. Georgia State, meaning the case was highly followed. During hearing around 100 people gathered outside the state Supreme Court for the outcome. The crowd had candles and singing waiting impatiently for the verdict. They specifically wanted a lenient verdict because Dixon had consensual sex with the teenage girl (Cohen, 2007). The disputed issues, in this case, were that Mr. Dixon was not rightly charged. Interpretation of laws was wrong. Dixon case was not given a fair trial because even Marcus was anticipating to be incarcerated for 10 months or less according to the Georgia laws.

The racial card was another immense issue that played a great deal in ensuring that the teenage boy was thrown in jail for 10 years (Jacobs, 2004). It is evident that the state laws were interpreted differently when it came to dealing with black suspects. For the case of Marcus v. the state of Georgia, having consensual sex with an underage girl should have not guaranteed Dixon a ten-year sentence. However, because he was black the jury rushed the decision and gave its verdict in a very short time. It was like a premeditated ruling. Quoting Marcus Dwayne Dixon in a call from prison, he stated that "I never thought I was getting 10 years for having consensual sex with my classmate, I thought I was going to get a statutory conviction and go home." even his defense team insisted that his conviction was wrong and unusually cruel.

Under the state laws of Georgia, statutory rape is any sex involving a child and an adult, on the other hand, child molestation involves an injury (Cocca, 2004). If one is convicted however the statutory rape where it is proved that consent for sex was given, the sentence tends to be less harsh. But for Dixon, they charged him immediately with child molestation and rape which was not the case. This where justice was selective to Dixon because he was seen as an intruder who had infiltrated a white community, and that was an opportunity to send him away.

The Outcome

After false imprisonment, Marcus lawyers filed an appeal before the state of Georgia Supreme Court. They argued that Marcus Dixon case was faulty and surprisingly cruel. Also, they presented a motion that, under the laws of the state of Georgia, statutory rape carries a maximum of a one-year prison sentence as seen, and that was not the case with Dixon. As a result, the Supreme Court looked at the laws again and gave the defense adequate time to present their facts which made Mr. Dixon to be acquitted.

Mr. Dixon was acquitted of rape, aggravated assault, false conviction, and false imprisonment. The court did something which had earlier been ignored. The decision was reached after supreme judges 4-3 votes. Chief Justice Norman Fletcher indicated that the judgment had "a clear legislative intent" that such persecution should be treated as misdemeanor statutory rape, at the same time barring those prosecutors should have not chosen amongst molestation laws (Smith et al., 2006).

Further, the ruling gave Dixon 15-month imprisonment and gave him a redemptive way that helped him back to his normal life. However, the stains of the case were evident and follow him because his case was a highly publicized case. It was morally and ethically wrong for the state to ignore the basic human rights of the citizens regardless of their color or groups they identified with.

The outcome of the sex took away the dignity of the convict for being black and an outstanding person in academic and sports. Under no situation should state laws be used to put down people based on their ethnicity. This case also affected the Joneses, who had adopted Dixon financially, emotionally. They spend their savings on Mr. Dixon's defense lawyers; this resulted in the couple to run bankrupt. Nonetheless, their support for the falsely convicted Dixon showed how truthful they were in helping their adopted child regardless of being black while they were whites.

Dixon lost his scholarship after he was convicted, both the school and the state did not give him a chance, instead they got rid of him immediately. The case opened claims of systematic racism because the victim was white and a good black gentleman. One disturbing question that injected a high debate to this case was whether laws can effectively or legitimately convict teenagers to prisons for involving themselves sexually with another teenager. This is because many states have statutory rape laws in place; Dixon case presented a problem to a very long and continued tradition of sending and criminalizing men for rape which, in some incidence could have been consensual sex.

Such case presents controversial debates that determining them, needs critical issues to be analyzed. They leave a big dilemma that is hard to interpret, leave alone debating. Statutory rape laws although have a basic purpose of averting false accusations that mostly affect black young men especially when they get involved sexually with white girls and it turns wrong. These laws have only purpose of protecting female virginity than averting violence and other forms of rape. However, such laws have efficiently protected people from wrongly convicted despite the flaws in them.

References

Alford, R. P. (2005). Appellate review of racist summations: Redeeming the promise of searching analysis. Mich. J. Race & L., 11, 325.

Cocca, C. (2004). Jailbait: The politics of statutory rape laws in the United States. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Cohen, M. (2007). No child left behind bars: The need to combat cruel and unusual punishment of state statutory rape laws. JL & Poly, 16, 717.

Jacobs, A. (2004). Student sex case in Georgia stirs claims of Old South justice. The New York Times, 14-14.

Smith, C. E., McCall, M. A., & McCall, M. M. (2006). Criminal Justice and the 2005-2006 United States Supreme Court Term. QLR, 25, 495.