Race, Justice Go on Trial in Sex Case

At the age of 12, Marcus Dixon left his old neighborhood in Rome. The van that picked him up from his grandmother’s took him south, past the Piggly Wiggly that marks the invisible line between the city and the predominantly white suburbs.

Dixon, who is black, was clear about his goals. No boy growing up in northwest Georgia could miss the annual ritual of Signing Day, when high school football stars, flanked by beaming coaches, announced which college scholarships they had accepted. As Dixon saw it, the path to that scholarship led straight to the suburb of Lindale, whose high school is about 94% white.

Pepperell High School was the place where his dream crystallized -- and where it collapsed.

Last year, on Feb. 5, Dixon -- a popular, 18-year-old defensive lineman and straight-A student -- accepted a scholarship to Vanderbilt University in Nashville. A week later, a 15-year-old white classmate told authorities that Dixon had raped her on school grounds. Although he was acquitted on the rape charge, Dixon was convicted of statutory rape and received a mandatory 10-year sentence for a second charge, aggravated child molestation.

His scholarship was rescinded and he was sent to prison.

Dixon’s case is now before Georgia’s Supreme Court, which will decide whether he was charged and sentenced inappropriately. A decision is expected within the next three months.

In the meantime, Dixon’s case has become a celebrated one, attracting high-profile legal advocates who depict him as a victim of Old South justice. Dixon’s defenders argue that relationships between black men and white women are still so frowned on in this region that the prosecutor was overzealous in charging him -- and the mandatory minimum sentence, intended for adult sexual predators, sealed his fate.

Support for his appeal has grown in recent weeks. One legal observer said the Georgia Supreme Court decision could prove as momentous as the Rodney G. King, Abner Louima or O.J. Simpson cases.

“This is the next significant one, regardless of how it plays out,” said Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization that monitors racial disparities in sentencing. “It’s not just an event that took place between two people, but very much symbolic of how race has played out in the criminal justice system for a century.”

The event itself took place after the last class of the day, in a trailer adjoining the school where the girl, who worked as a student custodian, was vacuuming. Dixon and the sophomore had intercourse on a table. Two days later, the tearful girl told school authorities she had been raped.

Dixon told investigators the sex was consensual, but that the girl warned him that the relationship had to be kept from her father because he was a racist.

Floyd County’s prosecutor indicted Dixon for six offenses, including rape, sexual battery and imprisonment. Although jurors acquitted him on four charges, they found him guilty of statutory rape, which in Georgia means sex with anyone under 16 -- a misdemeanor carrying a maximum sentence of one year. They also found him guilty of aggravated child molestation -- a felony that, as part of a “Seven Deadly Sins” law passed by the Georgia Legislature in 1995, carries a 10-year minimum sentence.

Several jurors protested the prison term, and at the sentencing hearing in May, Judge Walter J. Matthews said his “hands [were] tied by the Legislature.” Dixon’s attorney, David Balser, argued last month before the Georgia Supreme Court that the law was aimed at adult sexual predators molesting children.

Although it is normal to combine the molestation charge with statutory rape, one prosecutor said, molestation has seldom been used in cases where the sex was between teenagers. Balser said there was no other teenager in Georgia history who had been given this sentence under similar circumstances.

“I think there needs to be a way for a review when you’ve got this kind of case,” said J. Tom Morgan, district attorney of DeKalb County. “Usually you’re dealing with adults and children.”

Although Dixon’s future hinges on a legal question, much of the attention has been drawn by his life story, as his supporters tell it: Born to a 15-year-old single mother who became addicted to cocaine, Dixon distanced himself from the city and nearly bucked the sociological odds.

In this small city 70 miles northwest of Atlanta, where he lived with his grandmother, the boy caught glimpses of his mother’s chaotic life. She was in and out of jail, “cursing and fussing,” said the Rev. Terrell Shields, who was friendly with Dixon’s family. “Marcus was a child at risk.”

Sports provided a different world. At 10, Dixon began spending nights in Lindale -- a mostly white community outside Rome -- at the home of his Dizzy Dean Baseball coach, a genial school custodian named Kenneth Jones. Peri Jones, an elementary school teacher, remembered with affection the boy’s campaign to join their family; at one point, she said, he began announcing his move before they had consented.

Dixon, looking back, recalls a practical motivation -- he was thinking about a football scholarship.

At Rome High School, which is largely black, “I heard the coaches didn’t care about you,” Dixon said in an interview from Burris Correctional Facility in Forsyth. Pepperell High School had a well-known coach, Lynn Hunnicutt. “He’s going to get you into some college,” Dixon said.

The boy’s arrival in Lindale caused friction. Kenneth Jones’ brother, who opposed racial mixing, said Dixon was not welcome in his house. “I didn’t let it get to me,” Dixon said.

But Dixon was accepted at school, where he became so popular that the Joneses hoped that he would nudge their own son, Casey, to become more social, they said.

Josh Pilgrim, who played sports with Dixon from the age of 8, said Dixon’s race was not an issue at Pepperell -- but there were limits. Most local people dislike the idea of interracial dating or marriage, said Pilgrim, adding that he feels that way himself.

Those relationships developed nonetheless, Dixon said.

Race was not an issue “as far as the dudes I hung out with. The girls’ parents didn’t accept the fact that they were hanging out with a black guy,” Dixon said. According to Dixon, the girls would say, “You can’t call, but we can talk on the computer.”

As Dixon’s star rose at Pepperell, there were also problems. Twice he had been suspended over sexual allegations -- first for exposing himself to a female classmate in his sophomore year. Dixon said the incident occurred while he and friends were joking around. The second complaint came from a girl who said he touched her inside her underwear, a charge he denied.

Leigh Patterson, Floyd County’s district attorney, has said she is planning to charge Dixon with sexual battery in the second allegation after his appeal is decided.

After Dixon’s arrest, some parents blamed the school for failing to report the earlier offenses to police, and suggested that Pepperell’s athletes lived by different rules.

“I think Marcus was in a state of mind where he thought he could do anything and get away with it,” said Mark Mansell, 45, whose daughter accused Dixon of exposing himself.

A year later, anger toward Dixon has not cooled in some households. But others say his case has served a powerful function, drawing attention to racism that has not disappeared but only become less visible in Lindale.

Like most young people growing up today, Dixon had been raised to believe racism did not affect him, one veteran activist said. “I don’t think he really looked at it as a black-and-white issue,” said Alvin Jackson, 54, former president of Rome’s NAACP. Young people, he said, “are not on guard. That’s the category Marcus fell into.”

Dixon agreed that he has begun to look at Lindale differently. “I didn’t even realize that there are a lot of racist people,” he said.