
New York inmate's golf drawings lead to exoneration in murder - gadders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45582610
======
caseyscottmckay
The various Innocence Projects across the US are full of absolute heroes. The
number of innocent people currently serving time in US jails is tragic and
scary.

Prosecutors and judges should be held more accountable for malpractice. This
man lost his life when the facts were in his favor. Someone should be punished
for this injustice.

Even worse, lots of states won't even compensate the wrongly convicted for
taking their lives from them.

~~~
spamizbad
One of the many problematic things about criminal justice in the United States
is this:

Many prosecutors and police officers feel that, even if you weren't guilty of
_this crime_ , you were probably guilty of _something_ , the law just "caught
up with you." so if a plausible case can be made against you they'll do it.
And it's important to understand this isn't merely a cynical view held by
these people: it's a strongly held conviction. Had Mr. Dixon been thoroughly
exonerated at his original hearing, I can assure you both the arresting
officer and prosecutor involved would be absolutely furious that he "got away
with it"

Attempts to curtail this behavior are met with endless concern-trolling and
belly-aching from DA and police departments, claiming it lets criminals roam
free because they use these laws (civil liberties) to "cheat the system".

They are gas-lighting you, and don't want you to ask: how are a bunch of
impoverished teens, who never completed high school, and likely never left a 6
block radius of where they grew up, somehow out-maneuvering politically
powerful DAs with well-educated prosecutors backed up by well-funded
militarized police departments? The constitution is powerful, but it's not
_that_ powerful.

~~~
true_religion
There are more people commiting crimes than people investigating crimes. The
system is so log jammed that if everyone took a trial rather than a plea deal,
no one would ever see a court date for years.

In this condition its easy to see resources allocated to high profile cases
which impoverished, uneducated teenagers are not.

So a DA can believe someone is guilty, but also that there is unlikely to get
enough resources to investigate and prove it.

Now personally I believe the solution is to be more lax on crime, till the
numbers improve but thats another topic.

~~~
ChoGGi
_Prosecutors had omitted to reveal to Mr Dixon 's defence attorney that a
gunpowder test on his client's clothes had come back negative._

Sounds like they knew he wasn't guilty, but didn't care?

------
fjcp
>Prosecutors had omitted to reveal to Mr Dixon's defence attorney that a
gunpowder test on his client's clothes had come back negative.

>Perhaps even more egregiously, another man, Lamarr Scott, admitted to local
media only days after the murder that he shot Torriano Jackson. According to
the Buffalo News, prosecutors conceded that Scott had been admitting his guilt
in the case for a long time.

What kind of person sends an innocent man to prison just to score a win in a
case? They should face some kind of repercussion, a good start would be an
audit of all their cases looking for similar behavior. Of course that isn't
practical, maybe a "strike" system where you would be suspended after x cases
of unethical behavior.

~~~
mercurysmessage
It's also why the death penalty is wrong.

~~~
kstrauser
I’ve gotta agree. I’m morally OK with the death penalty for certain crimes,
not so much for punishment or deterrence but for the same reasons you’d put
down a rabid dog. But when prosecutorial misbehavior comes out in the news so
often, I couldn’t abide sentencing someone today unless there was overwhelming
objective proof that it was actually them.

~~~
village-idiot
Pretty much where I’m at too. The risk of a dodgy prosecution resulting in an
innocent person being executed is way too high.

~~~
mercurysmessage
Yep, and it has happened in the past, and as long as we have it, it will in
the future.

------
gizmo
Prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence from the defense team. That's a recurring
theme in cases like these.

The prosecutors will not face any real consequences for ruining an innocent
man's life. That's also a recurring theme.

~~~
BeniBoy
For foreigners (like me) this episode of last week tonight[1] is quite useful
to understand the role and possible abuses of prosecutors.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET_b78GSBUs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET_b78GSBUs)

~~~
justtopost
Except its not really.

~~~
BeniBoy
Well it felt that way, and it seems like a show of good reputation. But I
would be really happy to learn from more trustful sources! Care to share some
or your experience?

~~~
Hello71
It is mostly correct, but fails to elaborate on the culture of prosecutors
leading to these kinds of results, instead painting them as "prosecutors
suck".

[http://reason.com/archives/2016/06/23/confessions-of-an-
ex-p...](http://reason.com/archives/2016/06/23/confessions-of-an-ex-
prosecutor) (previously discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17594612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17594612))

~~~
slededit
It’s your 3 minutes of hate. Your not supposed to emphasize with them.

------
gambiting
"He acknowledged being at the crime scene, but said he was at a nearby shop
buying beer when the gunshots rang out."

#1 proof that you should never ever talk to the police or confess to literally
anything. Even saying something that is true and innocent can land you in jail
with a 38-to-life sentence.

~~~
meowface
Agree you shouldn't talk, but if you talk you should probably tell the truth.
If they ask if you were at the crime scene and you say no, and they find you
actually were there, they'll consider your lying evidence of your guilt.

Not quite the same thing, but Nick Yarris spent 21 years on death row [1]
because he was (unjustly) facing life in prison for an unrelated offense and
thought he could maybe be released if he lied about knowing information about
a murder. When they found out his information was wrong, they charged him with
the murder and convicted him. He was exonerated based on DNA evidence.

So, yeah. If you tell the truth, you might be considered guilty, and if you
lie, you might be considered guilty. The best option is to say nothing.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Yarris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Yarris)

~~~
akurzon
I think this presentation about never talking to the police is relevant:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE)

Pretty much don't say anything, true or otherwise.

~~~
mindslight
This is easy to say before you've been kidnapped. A bit harder to stick to,
especially if you see no representation on the horizon, and think you can
avoid escalating the situation.

You should of course still watch this video and follow its advice. Just don't
let it preclude you from having empathy for the people who haven't.

------
danso
It's fascinating to read the original 2012 Golf Digest article, which has a
subhed of "Golf Saved My Life [0]. But he didn't know at the time that the
Golf Digest profile would lead to new interest in his case, just that it gave
him psychological resolve. This is an excerpt in which he describes being in
the same prison as the man who was actually responsible for the murder:

> _I now see LaMarr regularly. One year after I was convicted, LaMarr shot a
> teenager in the face after an armed robbery and made him a quadriplegic. I
> choose not to hold a grudge against LaMarr because psychologically, it would
> kill my spirit. LaMarr 's eligible for parole in 2018; I'm not up until
> 2030._

More than 3/4 of the Golf Digest article is about the details of Dixon's case.
According to the new story [1] (which should probably be the URL for this
submission, rather than the BBC recap), GD seems to have gotten interested
because of Dixon's drawings first, and then became even more interested when
they heard about the details of the case. Kudos to them for investigating it.

[0] [https://www.golfdigest.com/story/golf-saved-my-life-
valentin...](https://www.golfdigest.com/story/golf-saved-my-life-valentino-
dixon)

[1] [https://www.golfdigest.com/story/for-valentino-dixon-a-
wrong...](https://www.golfdigest.com/story/for-valentino-dixon-a-wrong-
righted-murder-charge-vacated-by-court-after-serving-27-years-in-prison)

------
audunw
It's crazy to me how often these kind of stories come out of the US. It just
shouldn't happen that often that someone is convicted of murder on weak
evidence. The number of prisoners per capita seems to indicate that it's not
just anecdotes. I can't help but feel that the US simply doesn't have a proper
functioning justice system.

~~~
gambiting
The biggest issue is the whole jury system - I don't understand how being
judged by 12 people with no formal law education is considered a working or
fair justice system.

~~~
IIAOPSW
Anything other than random citizens would necessitate a full time profession
of juror and would thus render members of this profession employees of the
state in some capacity. This violates the idea of an independent judiciary.

Furthermore a jury of your peers is at least as good as the society around it.
A jury of self selecting professionals is almost certainly worse. How many
people would choose to join the jury profession so they can enact their own
personal bullying by voting guilty on everyone? How many people become small
town cops because they like having a gun and barking orders?

Furthermore any bias in a juror gets averaged over 12 and affects at most one
trial.

Furthermore prosecution and defense get to cross examine and dismiss jurors as
part of the selection process. If you want a generally well educated jury you
can get one. Ask your trial lawyer which jury is right for you!

Furthermore it only takes one of the 12 to stop a miscarriage of justice.

Furthermore in the US everyone is at least somewhat indoctrinated with an
understanding of what a jury is and a respect for executing jury duty
faithfully. You have a pretty good shot of getting at least one person on the
jury that won't vote guilty instantly so they can still make the baseball game
latter that day.

Finally, a jury doesn't need law education. Their job is to judge the facts.
They are informed of the definitions of the crime, and the evidence, and must
reach a verdict of yes he did this or no he did not. Upon rendering a guilty
verdict, the actual law part of the law is executed by the judge.

~~~
Aaargh20318
> Anything other than random citizens would necessitate a full time profession
> of juror and would thus render members of this profession employees of the
> state in some capacity.

Why have jurors at all ? Over here in the Netherlands people are judged by ...
judges (what's in a name).

~~~
moftz
There was a case in the US where two judges were getting kickbacks for sending
kids to a specific detention center for offenses as trivial as mocking an
assistant principal on Myspace or trespassing in a vacant building. There's no
jury in a juvenile court anyway but this is a case of a judge using their
position of power to line their pockets at the expense of the futures of those
kids. Not every judge is a good person but at least your lawyer can help pick
the jury for you so some of the jurors might be more understanding of your
accused crime and the circumstances.

~~~
toomanybeersies
I think that corrupt judges is a separate issue to whether a judge employed by
the state cam be impartial.

It's also possible to bribe jurors to get off a conviction. Possibly easier
than bribing a judge.

All classes of people are corruptible.

~~~
WillPostForFood
You'd have to bribe 12 jurors to guarantee a conviction for a single case.
Bribe one judge, and you control hundreds of cases.

~~~
ben_w
This leads to an obvious question: should anyone have the right to know who
the jury is?

After all, if you don’t know who they are, you can’t bribe them or blackmail
them. Same argument applies to the judge.

One-way-glass might be a work of fiction, but video cameras are not.

~~~
gowld
How do you guarantee a trial by jury, if you don't have to prove to the
defendant that the jury exists?

~~~
knodi123
How do you guarantee a trial by jury, if an entire jury could be paid actors?

It's a bit silly to worry about that level of conspiracy.

But even if it weren't silly, there are easy answers. An oversight board, or
revealing the jurors after the case is decided, or revealing the entire juror
pool of 50 some-odd people, etc.

------
DoreenMichele
The system seriously failed in this case. The actual killer confessed just
days after the crime and repeatedly over the years. It wasn't even a mystery
who did it.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> [prosecutors] also said he was an "up-and-coming drug dealer" in Buffalo at
the time of his arrest.

"He's a bad guy, so he deserved to be in jail anyway".

~~~
matwood
This seems to be a common rationalization from prosecutors and police. What
they fail to realize is that falsely imprisoning even a 'bad guy' undermines
the whole system. It has led us to the point where no one should ever speak to
the police. A cycle that makes it even harder for police do properly do their
job.

~~~
fhood
The real problem is that it also seems to be a common rationalization from the
jury.

------
menacingly
A lot of people assume it's "evil people" that are responsible for this stuff.
Evil people can't hold a candle to the damage done by normal people
rationalizing bad behavior as good.

------
jMyles
So they release the guy, but smear him as an "up-and-coming drug dealer" when
he was a kid, 27 years earlier.

~~~
frou_dh
Here's a quote from Dixon himself in the Golf Digest article:

> I started dating a girl whose brothers were drug dealers, and before long I
> was in it, too. It's no excuse. It was what you did in my neighborhood if
> you wanted to make money. I became a mid-level cocaine dealer and pulled in
> enough to drive flashy cars and cover friends, but not much else. I rode
> with a weapon, same as everybody.

~~~
jMyles
Yeah, but that's not the point. This person sold a plant derivative to willing
buyers; the state locked him in a cage for 27 years. Both are obviously
illegal, but wildly different proportionally.

And yet the latter, when finally made to acknowledge their mistake, pulls this
"up and coming drug dealer" thing out as their excuse?

------
somabc
It shouldn't take having a special talent in art to get a fair hearing.

------
darkerside
> prosecutors say he did provide the murder weapon

I get that it's not fashionable to defend police and prosecutors in this
zeitgeist, but this sure seems like it's more complicated than a simple frame
job. If you don't technically pull the trigger but your friend does while you
go next door to pick up a six pack and an alibi, are you really not guilty?

~~~
bilbo0s
Prosecutors say a lot of things.

For instance, they said he shot the victim.

Where is the _evidence_ that he shot the victim?

Where is the _evidence_ that he provided the weapon?

These are the questions we should remain focused on when trying to ascertain
guilt or innocence. Not what the prosecutor said. (Prosecutors have in-built
incentives to persuade you to one side.) Nor, indeed, should we even focus too
much on what the defendant said. (He could have been tortured, or he could
just be lying.)

Do you have evidence or not? If not, gtfo.

Now in this case, the prosecutor _hid_ evidence. And that's what complicates
everything. When the prosecutors are willing to go to those lengths to cover
their untruths, then there is little that can be done to check that lack of
integrity given the structure of the current system. That's certainly a
problem. But the _idea_ is that if we focus on _evidence_ we won't go wrong.

~~~
darkerside
The prosecution did their job, supplied evidence, and got their conviction. If
anyone failed, it's the defense.

~~~
bilbo0s
That's a dangerous road to go down when you imply that the prosecutor's job is
to hide exculpatory evidence from the court.

I _definitely_ can't travel that road with you.

~~~
darkerside
That's not what I'm saying. And you're right to correct me. The prosecution's
job included providing that evidence, and they failed.

------
eggy
What I don't get is this line, "But despite Mr Dixon's exoneration,
prosecutors say he did provide the murder weapon, which they described as a
machine gun."

So he was at the store buying beer, and the other guy used his gun? So at most
he is guilty of owning an illegal firearm, or automatic weapon?

~~~
darkerside
Or he concocted a scheme where his friend, with no motive, would perform the
murder while he had an alibi.

~~~
eggy
I am not questioning that what I presented is unbelievable; I am trying to
confirm that the gun was indeed his. Who admitted it was his gun? It's
obviously illegal, and the other guy confessed to the crime soon after. Did
the shooter say it was the other guy's gun?

~~~
darkerside
> He acknowledged being at the crime scene, but said he was at a nearby shop
> buying beer when the gunshots rang out.

> Mr Dixon said multiple witnesses could have testified he did not fire the
> gun.

Sounds like some weasely words to me. He was clearly involved in the crime
even if he didn't pull the trigger.

~~~
eggy
Whether he was an up and coming drug dealer, or not, or had possession of an
illegal firearm, he didn't deserve to be incarcerated for that many years if
he didn't pull the trigger. I wonder if he had a relationship to the victim or
a vendetta of some sort as well. There was mention it was over a dispute about
a girl.

------
TheMagicHorsey
A few observations: 1) This man, by all accounts, is free only because he has
an extraordinary talent. It's not that his case for innocence was stronger
than any specific other inmate's. It's that his talent attracted the attention
of people that could work for his release. How many people without artistic
talent are nonetheless languishing unjustly in prison?

2) Bureaucracies where the individual cogs (here the prosecutors) have no skin
in the game, will always tend towards inhumane outcomes. They don't even need
to hold the power of life and death over citizens for this to be the case.
Prosecutors face no consequences for wrongly incarcerating people, so
naturally, they tend to be overly aggressive in prosecutions.

When designing government agencies in the future, citizens should first figure
out how to make sure the bureaucrats have skin in the game before they empower
them. Once the bureaucrats are given power, they become petty tyrants. It's
just human nature.

------
avryhof
> Mr Dixon, 48, had maintained his innocence during 27 years behind bars for a
> shooting in Buffalo, New York.

> Mr Dixon had served nearly two decades at a notorious prison in upstate New
> York when his artistic flair attracted the notice of correctional
> authorities.

Isn't 27 years closer to three decades than two...

~~~
tmm
> sn't 27 years closer to three decades than two...

The article is a little oddly worded at that point, but it clarifies later on.

After he had been in jail for 19 years the warden noticed his artistic skills
and asked him to draw a picture of a hole at Augusta.

It was after that that the review of his case started. It took another eight
years for that review to result in an overturn of the conviction.

------
fallingfrog
The police in this country are absolutely savage. Someone I know was in a
major US city this week and saw a police cruiser rev its engine, drive onto
the sidewalk and intentionally hit an unarmed man on a bicycle, head on at
high speed. The power of that impact and sound of snapping bones was something
which will stay in my friend's head forever. There was blood everywhere. My
friend was sure the man was dead, although evidently he somehow survived. The
cop was white and he's still on active duty. No investigation was made. The
man on the bicycle was black. The police department issued a statement stating
that it was the bicycle that hit the cruiser. This is America.

~~~
isoskeles
This reads like an urban legend about racist white cops. How do you know this
actually happened?

~~~
fallingfrog
Because the person called me, shaking and described what they just saw. The
car was half on, half off the curb, after the collision. The cop definitely
goosed the gas right before the collision. It was the indiana story. Everyone
on the scene was sure he was dead. The exact words my friend used: "I just saw
someone die".

What's really shocking is hearing the police department issue flat out lies
about what happened.

Edit: after I wrote the original post, due to the fact that somebody caught it
on camera it looks like there will be an investigation after all- I'm glad.

------
onemoresoop
Prosecutors don't seek justice, they just want to lock up as many of what they
perceive as bad guys, and a black man fits their stereotype. They clearly knew
that this guy wasn't guilty of murder since somebody else confessed to the
murder yet they let the innocent guy behind bars probably thinking "i got no
hard feelings, that guy would have ended up killing someone one day". I
sometimes wonder how these people sleep at night.

------
konschubert
Wouldn't it be nice if everybody was given the benefit of doubt?

~~~
deaps
You know how often I watch "Live PD" and believe the guy (or girl) that got
pulled over, only to find out that once the K9 arrives, they had pounds of
individually-packaged drugs and guns in their vehicle.

~~~
leetcrew
how often do they show car stops that result in no charge on "Live PD"?

------
southphillyman
re: American Justice System. I recently had to explain to a Chinese coworker
of mine how in the U.S you can be held in jail for years pending trial because
you can't afford to post bail. He was legit blown away and had no idea how
that was possible. Apparently in China they have a couple of days to present
evidence from the numerous CCTV cameras in the country or they must release
you. Mechanisms like cash bail and these numerous wrongful conviction stories
really highlight how the "land of the free" is anything but.

~~~
refurb
Did you ask him how he felt about secret trials in China against political
opponents or made up evidence that results in execution because they are an
"enemy of the people"?

~~~
southphillyman
I questioned the high conviction rates, but I think that is a sensitive topic
for him as he often says U.S news of what's going on in China is misleading.

------
jhowell
We seems fine with a future where AI becomes integrated into our legal system.
Here is an excellent opportunity for AI to identify potential innocent people.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
How? What could AI possibly have done here?

~~~
kylnew
I’d assume it should have less bias on any given case and we’d hope cases like
this would be flagged by that system somehow. However, completely unbiased
machine learning seems like something as hard to achieve as being completely
unbiased ourselves.

~~~
cuboidGoat
AI tends to have both the biases of the programmers plus various unknown
biases that it creates itself from the input data.

"The evidence photos are all on bright sunny days and contain blue rectangular
objects in the top left, probably guilty."

------
tw04
I mean, great he got out. But how is everyone involved not being punished?
Someone else admitted to the murder 20 years ago!!

------
jcutrell
The title is a bit misleading. Expected the drawings to be more directly
responsible for the exoneration.

Still a very interesting story.

~~~
isoskeles
Yeah, this is kind of a clickbait title.

------
Dowwie
Same inmate, different story: [https://www.georgetown.edu/news/georgetown-
students-help-fre...](https://www.georgetown.edu/news/georgetown-students-
help-free-prisoner-wrongfully-convicted-of-murder)

------
newswriter99
"But despite Mr Dixon's exoneration, prosecutors say he did provide the murder
weapon, which they described as a machine gun.They also said he was an 'up-
and-coming drug dealer' in Buffalo at the time of his arrest."

Welp.

~~~
spraak
> Welp.

I don't understand what you're trying to communicate with that.

------
zethraeus
I wonder how he'd have fared if he'd drawn anything other than gold courses.

------
edoo
You can partially thank the media for this. They like to sway opinion on
issues for profit. Look at all the cartoons and TV shows and movies from the
80's and 90's demonizing Arabs to make way for the endless middle east wars.

The endless stream of crime dramas that make it clear the police never do
wrong and if you make it to a trial you are certainly guilty. We have a prison
industry in this country that is predatory to everyone but especially the
poorer uneducated classes, and crime dramas are their commercials.

~~~
nwatson
>> The endless stream of crime dramas that make it clear the police never do
wrong and if you make it to a trial you are certainly guilty.

I've been watching "The Good Wife" seasons 1 and 2 recently. The show deals
with people in private law firms, government prosecuting agencies, law
enforcement, and random folks caught up in the legal process. The seasons are
set in Chicago during the post-2008-crash time frame, so there's a lot of
financial pressure all around.

The show depicts well the financial and political game, the skewed incentives,
and deal-making, the disregard for truth, racial and economic biases, how law
enforcement often actually "does wrong". I'm sure the show's not very
realistic, but it's fun, it paints almost no one in good light, and exposes
the double-dealing and back-stabbing up and down the stack.

~~~
iamatworknow
Yeah, I'm not buying the whole "crime dramas portray cops as infallible"
argument. Every cop show I've ever watched shows the police regularly bending
the rules or otherwise being shitty at their jobs. If there wasn't controversy
in the plot it wouldn't be entertaining. Saying crime dramas cause failures in
our legal system is like saying violent video games cause mass shootings.

~~~
edoo
That is called manufacturing consent. How often do police get in trouble for
bending or outright breaking the rules... that behavior is normalized in
media, which normalizes it in reality.

------
M_Bakhtiari
Seems like an awfully inefficient system. They should replace the trials with
talent shows, and convict whoever has the least interesting entry.

