Convict With A Life Sentence Starts Doodling Cartoons Of Golf Courses. Golf Digest Picks Them Up And Publishes Them. People Look Into His Case And Now He's Free.

GOLF DIGEST – After 27 years in prison, a man who loves golf walked free today. Not only that, he was given back his innocence. Of course, the state can regift innocence about as capably as it can 27 years.

Nevertheless, the Erie County District Court in Buffalo, N.Y., has vacated the murder conviction of Valentino Dixon, 48, who was serving a 39-years-to-life sentence—the bulk of it in the infamous Attica Correctional Facility—for the 1991 killing of Torriano Jackson.

Yo – this is wild. You know it’s extra wild if I start the blog with “Yo.”  That’s when you know you’re about to hear some shit.  I was reading about this all night.  Like big old articles with MLA citations and legal terms I had to rewatch Legally Blonde to figure out.   Fascinating.

So here’s the story.

Maybe you’ve heard of this guy Valentino Dixon, most likely you haven’t.  He’s never played golf in his life.  Never stepped on a course.  So why was he the subject of an extended profile in Golf Digest in 2012, a magazine that, some people forget, is about golf?  Well it’s because one day his warden walked into his 6×10 cell, showed him a picture of the 12th at Augusta.  Asked him to draw it to hang in his house.   Valentino was like, sure buddy, schedule is pretty open today.  He got some color pencil nubs, ordered pieces of paper through the mail, and drew the course freehand.  Warden loved it.  Another prisoner had a Golf Digest laying around so he gave it to Valentino, and he drew some more.  Soon he had a freaking collection like this:

…Although Dixon has never hit a ball or even stepped foot on a course, the game hooked him when a golfing warden brought in a photograph of Augusta National’s 12th hole for the inmate to render as a favor. In the din and darkness of his stone cell, the placid composition of grass, sky, water and trees spoke to Dixon. And the endless permutations of bunkers and contours gave him a subject he could play with.

“The guys can’t understand,” Dixon has said. “They always say I don’t need to be drawing this golf stuff. I know it makes no sense, but for some reason my spirit is attuned to this game.”

Okay so that’s pretty cool right.  Inmate and warden formed a bond, he discovered this amazing talent, was able to escape the depression of his cell through art.  Now he’s got this sweet collection.

Well that collection got the attention of golf fans, obviously. After about 100 of them Golf Digest started publishing them, and a few people who were interested in the background of this dude looked into what he was actually in prison for.   Turns out, the conviction was very suspicious, with very little evidence.

The case is complicated, but on the surface it involves shoddy police work, zero physical evidence linking Dixon, conflicting testimony of unreliable witnesses, the videotaped confession to the crime by another man, a public defender who didn’t call a witness at trial, and perjury charges against those who said Dixon didn’t do it. All together, a fairly clear instance of local officials hastily railroading a young black man with a prior criminal record into jail. Dixon’s past wasn’t spotless, he had sold some cocaine, but that didn’t make him a murderer.

There’s a full, thorough description of the case in the Golf Digest piece.   The people picking up on the apparent injustice from the conviction made more and more noise, until NBC, Golf Channel, Fox Sports started reporting on it, and the Georgetown Prison Reform Project got involved.  Those students did like, full documentaries, made websites, ran social media campaigns – they even physically interviewed witnesses who were there, people that the cops had never even talked to.  This whole snowball effect of the media was all you need to get a case re-opened, when it can’t be ignored anymore.

Two other things that helped out a little bit:

-A new DA took over, one who was instantly interested in studying and releasing a report from his own office based on the Georgetown work.

-…a guy walked in and admitted to the shooting.  He actually said he’s been admitting it for decades, but the prosecutor of the case (Chris Belling) told him to keep quiet.

So long story short: a falsely imprisoned man was released from his life sentence after 27 years and had his murder conviction overturned because a bunch of strangers saw his color pencil drawings of golf courses in a golf magazine.  And, the cherry on top – he ended up at Red Lobster.

Where’s Dixon heading after the courthouse? “I’m going to Red Lobster to celebrate with my family and my support team, then we’re going to go a park,” he said. The next day he’s going to visit his grandmother, and the day after that he’s going to buy a cellphone and register for a passport at the post office so he can visit his wife of 12 years, Louise, who lives in Australia. She has a golden heart, and the two met because she has spent her life seeking to help those she can.

I’ll add something that he should mix in:

“I’m heading to every golf course in a 10 state radius to play 18 and hopefully bump into one of these prosecutors or judges or jury members or cops who put me in jail for 3 decades and beating their face off with my 9 iron.”  

Forgiveness is overrated.

[via Golf Digest – read the full article]