Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/19/valentino-dixon.html
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That’s really tragic, 27 years wasted behind bars for what? I am glad that he was able to pour himself into art and through his abilities inadvertently set himself, figuratively and literally, free. But what is the judicial and correctional system going to do to make it up to him?
Anyway his art looks amazing and i hope he is able to make the best of his newly found freedom. He deserves to enjoy a quiet beautiful day outside playing golf, that’s for fucking sure.
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here here! He will get a job designing holes, for sure!
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Wait—the sport of golf helped RECTIFY an act of racist discrimination?? That’s a refreshing change I guess.
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To be a black man accused of a crime in America, the only hope for justice is to have powerful friends, such as… checks notes… Golf Digest.
America, 2018! (Punchline in a similar vein to “The Aristocrats!”)
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In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by three separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders, and the hobby press which retroactively has to do the work for the previous two groups. These are their stories.
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Taste thees freedom, quench ye thirst for vengeance good fellow.
Author Unknown
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- Hey, now I’ve read an article in Golf Digest. Won’t have to update the bucket list for that one.
- How many? How many more? (*) Lives stolen and discarded like trash. Utterly infuriating.
(*) Rhetorical. I know the answer is “far, far too many”.
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Can you imagine if they gave him a free golf weekend and he found it super boring?
I’m guessing he wouldn’t tell anyone though.
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And the fourth group: The Godamn Batman. /rimshot
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As with so many awful news stories, the real story here is that there are no effective checks to keep this from happening again. As with #45, as with Botham Jean, as with global warming… we can get outraged over the specific instance, and get nowhere, or we can ask, “what would it take to keep this from happening again?”
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Well done, Golf Digest! You’re a noble publication!
Although Dixon has never hit a ball or even stepped foot on a course
“STEPPED FOOT”?!?! Fuck you, Golf Digest! You’re a piece of shit rag!
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This whole story sucks but if there’s icing on the freedom cake, I hope it’s that he has no problem selling his work for $$$
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I will never think of Golf Digest as useless again.
I don’t mean that as a joke either. Even if I consider golf the most useless boring sport in the world and I do and Golf Digest the most boring possible thing in the universe and the fact that I am atheist god bless Golf Digest for helping this man and saving him from prison even if it is for such a stupid reason that it got someone’s attention
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not to worry. when the board of directors found out, they made sure the editor responsible was sacked.
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““It’s embarrassing for the legal system that for a long time the best presentation of the investigation was from a golf magazine.””
Amen!
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Scott admitted responsibility the night of the shooting and has for decades since (including to Golf Digest), with the exception of a brief window of time when [Prosecutor Chris] Belling pressured him to say otherwise.
This happens so often it’s diabolical. The prosecutor sets its sights on Person A. And, once they do, they refuse to consider any evidence that might exonerate A. (Which from their POV makes some sense, since they’re terrified of the defendant’s lawyer being able to tell the jury that the state has more than one suspect besides A.) It’s just disgusting how the system sets up its incentives such that the prosecution’s goal is “a successful prosecution” and not “a successful prosecution of the guilty party.” Obviously, it gets even more ugly when you throw in racial or social prejudice, such that the prosecution is predisposed to (dis)favor one suspect over another. Cf. Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line and the [first] prosecution in Making a Murderer.
Frank Sedita III, the longtime Erie County district attorney who’s said that society ought to be more concerned with “wrongful acquittals,” is out.
The guy who put him behind bars has moved on and is now a NY state Supreme Court judge. Oh joy.
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If only there was a special Court of 10 judges picked by special means to be exemplary good people even among other judges and their sole purpose was to judge judges around the country for character and fitness to be a judge.
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