Claim: Marcus Dixon, an African-American teenager, was sentenced to ten years in prison for having had sex with a white teenaged girl.
- Marcus Dixon was sentenced to ten years in prison on a charge of aggravated child molestation arising from his having had sexual congress with an underage girl: True.
- His conviction on child molestation charges was overturned : True.
- His prosecution was racially motivated: Undetermined.
- The sex act over which he was convicted was consensual: Undetermined.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2004]
There is an 18 year old African American honor student — Marcus Dixon In February 2003, Marcus Dixon, was a senior in high school. Marcus is not your typical senior. He had a 3.96 grade point average, a 1200 on his SATs, and was all state in football. He was offered scholarships to every major school in the South but chose Vanderbilt University because he felt they were the best academically. In essence, this alone, made Marcus a star. Think about it, how many But there is more. Marcus was born in Rome, Georgia a rural town about Again, most children born into Marcus' situation barely survive. Marcus is the exception. Beyond all the odds and probabilities he is a star. So what happened? How did this star come crashing down? It started in February 2003. Marcus had sex with a girl just shy of sixteen. She was a virgin. She is also white. Two days later, she accused Marcus of rape. Some speculate she made the accusation because she was afraid of her admittedly racist father. Regardless of the reasons, a jury of nine white jurors and three African Americans took only Marcus was indicted under six different statutes under Georgia law. Four of the statutes include use of force. He was acquitted on all charges that included force. The jury was very specific. It was not even close. It is not that they had reasonable doubt...they had no doubt - the sex was consensual. The girl was not there against her will. The prosecutor, in what can only be perceived as an act of complete disregard for the law, facts and justice in general, included a charge of "aggravated child molestation". Under Georgia law, if anyone (age of the perpetrator is irrelevant - he could be 15) has sex with a minor (under 16) that results in an "any injury", he is guilty of "child molestation". The jury deliberated for hours on this charge. In the end, technically, this situation fell under the purview of the statute as written. Marcus, admittedly had sex with the girl, she was under 16 (by three months), and, again admittedly, she was a virgin. It was the fact that she was a virgin that resulted in the Guilty verdict. You see, she sustained an "injury" as a result of intercourse. Technically, he is guilty. The absurdity of charging a high school boy with child molestation for consensual sex with a high school girl is beyond description. In essence, every girl in Georgia that loses her virginity before 16 can charge the boy with aggravated child molestation. By definition, he is guilty, even if he is younger than the girl. Taken to further extremes, if a teenager gives another teen a hickey (technically an "injury"), he or she is guilty of aggravated child molestation the way this statute was drafted. Clearly, this was not the legislative intent. In fact, no high school boy or girl has EVER been charged with child molestation of a classmate less than three years his or her junior, until Marcus. Never. In the history of Georgia, Marcus is the only one in prison for consensual sex with a girl less than three years younger. While the jury found him guilty, they had no idea of the consequences. They assumed Marcus would be released immediately. In the jurors own words, the look of horror across their faces when the judge sentenced Marcus to ten years minimum could be seen by everyone. They never knew the consequences. They could not fathom that a boy could go to jail for consensual sex, and certainly not for Why the prosecutor charged him under a statute that was clearly designed to apply to adult sexual predators of minors is beyond understanding. How the judge could allow the charge to stand is unconscionable. What their motives or rationalizations, one can only speculate. This is the kind of injustice that we Americans like to think is reserved for third world countries. |
Origins: The facts of the case as presented in the
The online community has come to hear of the case through
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
Most accounts of this case recount the horrible circumstances of
Prosecutors contended Dixon was a sexual predator. They presented evidence that the
Following Marcus Dixon's conviction, the unnamed girl involved in the incident that led to his prosecution did attempt to sue the school for
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
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,
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
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
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
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:
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."
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."
Also in June 2005, Paramount Pictures announced plans to make a movie about Marcus Dixon's struggles to overturn his controversial
Barbara "Georgia on my mind" Mikkelson
Last updated: 23 June 2007
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