Racist sentencing overturned in Georgia
Marcus Dixon was freed on May 3 by the Georgia
Supreme Court on appeal of his conviction of "aggravated child
molestation" for having sexual relations with an almost
16-year-old white classmate when he was 18. Dixon, an honor
student, all-state football star, and member of the high school
chorus, had received a 10-year sentence, declared by NAACP
President Kweisi Mfume to be "a travesty of justice." The
Children's Legal Defense Fund had filed a friend-of-the-court
brief in Dixon's support, saying that the Georgia law "was
intended to protect children from predatory adults, not
imprison teenagers for having sex with other teenagers," and
that his conviction was a "legal lynching" that "echoed the old
Southern obsession with miscegenation."
--Minnie Bruce Pratt
Reprinted from the May 13, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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