Case sheds light on juvenile justice system

Molly Ball

Sunday, Nov. 27, 2005 | 7:12 a.m.

One of Marcus Dixon's hardest days in prison was when he heard about a roller coaster about to open atop the Stratosphere.

"Man, I wanted to be out of here so bad," he said, a toothy smile breaking open his delicate, heart-shaped face.

When he gets out, he says, the first thing he wants to do is ride a roller coaster.

Dixon, 22, believes with all his heart, against all odds, that he will one day have that chance. He has been incarcerated since he was 14, and he will not be eligible for parole until he is 54.

As a teenaged murder defendant, he was offered a plea bargain that would have put him away for only 10 years, according to his attorney, Kristina Wildeveld.

But he refused the deal, against Wildeveld's advice. Convicted by a jury of murder with the use of a deadly weapon, he was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 40 years.

Can a 14-year-old understand the difference between life in prison and 10 years behind bars?

At the time, Dixon says, he couldn't comprehend it.

"How is a 14-year-old supposed to say, 'OK, I'm going to do 10 years in prison?' " he said. "I thought it was the rest of my life. I just wanted to go home."

In addition, he said, other jail inmates told him he could confuse a jury and beat the rap. With a teenager's sense of invincibility, he believed them.

Dixon's case, advocates say, illustrates many of the problems with the way the criminal justice system handles juvenile criminals.

Brain-scan research shows that youths fundamentally lack the capacity to weigh actions against consequences and reasonably assess risks, said Steven Drizin, a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law who is an expert on juvenile criminal justice issues.

"When you ask a 14-year-old to weigh spending the next 10 to 25 years in prison against the chance, however slim, of being acquitted at trial, he can't fathom it," Drizin said.

"Had Marcus been 17 or 18, with more life experience behind him, he would have taken that deal. But he was stuck, in the way teenagers get stuck on a bad idea and can't be moved off it."

Drizin and other advocates say cases like Dixon's deserve a second look. But despite an exemplary life in prison -- motivated by the unlikely prospect of a future on the outside -- Dixon has few options.

With his appeals exhausted and no parole hearing possible until 2038, Dixon's last shot is to ask the state's Board of Pardons for a commutation, or lessening, of his sentence.

Earlier this month, Dixon's first application for a hearing before the Pardons Board was denied, for unspecified reasons, in a brief form letter.

It was hard news to take, but, with a struggle, he kept a lid on his emotions, knowing that giving up is a prisoner's greatest temptation and biggest enemy.

"The only thing on my mind, man, is I don't want to spend the rest of my life here," he said.

Marcus Dixon never knew his father. He was born in Louisiana but moved with his family -- his mother and her other children by various men -- to Las Vegas at a young age.

From the age of 11, Dixon was left to his own devices.

"My mom let me roam around by myself" is how he describes it; an observer would have called it near-total child neglect. "Didn't nobody know where I was," Dixon said.

A well-behaved, athletic elementary schooler, Dixon found his world shattered one day when he was 12 and his mother told him, in front of his siblings, that he was "a mistake."

"So that's how I decided to live my life," Dixon said. From that day on, he spent little time at home, becoming increasingly involved with a small-time, drug-dealing gang called White Street in his eastern Las Vegas neighborhood.

At his 1999 trial, Dixon tried to convince a jury he didn't shoot 16-year-old Daryl Crittenden. Today, he doesn't deny it. He has been over every second of May 6, 1998, over and over again.

Marcus Dixon and his cousin, Calvin, 16, were hanging out in front of a supermarket when Calvin gave Marcus his gun.

A car came by with two youths in it. According to Marcus, they were "talking crazy," insulting the boys and their gang. Impulsively, Marcus says, he raised the gun and shot, killing Crittenden and wounding the other boy, Steven Austin.

Marcus and Calvin Dixon ran away, but they were quickly caught by the police. Both denied having pulled the trigger, and both turned down prosecutor Frank Coumou's offer of 10 to 25 years.

In Nevada, juveniles charged with murder are automatically tried as adults. At separate trials, both boys got the same sentence, 40 years to life.

"I guess you could say he made his bed, now he's got to lie in it," Coumou said recently. "We all lament the fact that somebody his age could and would destroy a human life, but that's the fact. He was given a very favorable negotiation and he chose not to take it."

The legal system already recognizes that juveniles have less capability to make responsible decisions than adults do, noted Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Fourteen-year-olds are not adults intellectually and emotionally and are not capable of making the same kinds of mature adult decisions that we expect grown-ups to make," Peck said. "That's why we don't permit 14-year-olds to drink alcohol, to vote, to drive cars."

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people could not be sentenced to death for crimes they committed before the age of 18. The decision forced Nevada to change its law and release one inmate from death row.

Because juveniles are immature and irresponsible, have trouble resisting negative influences and have not yet cemented character traits, the Supreme Court stated, putting them to death would be unconstitutionally cruel.

The same reasoning should apply to long sentences for juveniles, Northwestern's Drizin said. "All we're asking in Marcus' case is that he be eligible for parole earlier -- that somebody take a look at his case," he said.

"Maybe he won't get paroled his first time up or his second time up. But you can't write him off and say, 'We're not even going to revisit your case for 40 years.' "

In Dixon's case, a lack of mature judgment is obvious both in the crime and its adjudication, Peck said. "What you have is a circumstance where somebody made a very poor judgment, and then probably made a second poor decision by not accepting the plea offer," he said.

But if a 10- to 25-year sentence was acceptable justice then, he asked, why isn't it now?

"It seems that the system is bent on punishing this person a second time for a second poor decision," Peck said. "If prosecutors felt that 10 years was appropriate and offered that, it's hard to understand what purpose is being served by keeping him incarcerated longer."

Wildeveld, Dixon's lawyer, said Dixon's crime was that of a careless teenager.

There was "absolutely no reason" for the shooting, she said. "There was no thought of consequences, ramifications, any of that," she said.

Dixon should have been tried in the juvenile system, Wildeveld said. Failing that, he should not have been allowed to turn down the plea. He should have had a court-appointed guardian making decisions for him, even against his will, she said.

At the time, Wildeveld said, she "begged, pleaded and cried" to get Dixon to accept the deal, but to no avail.

"He was a child," she said. "The 22-year-old he is now is not the 14-year-old kid he was then."

Nobody disputes that Dixon has personified the words "model inmate."

He did not start out that way. He was a junior tough guy, ready to prove his machismo among his fellow inmates.

But one day, sitting on his bunk, he found he could not stop the tears -- a child's helpless tears, forcing him to admit he was no big, bad man but a scared boy.

It was the mirror image of the moment his mother told him he was nothing. Suddenly, "I wanted to change," he said. And he did.

It is difficult to overstate how challenging it is to be in prison without becoming assimilated to prison's unique society. But Marcus has done it, officials say. He has risen above the race cliques, the petty rivalries and the dark mutterings. He keeps to himself, studying, working, lifting weights, avoiding disciplinary write-ups.

"Marcus has displayed very positive behavior since being incarcerated at Southern Desert Correctional Center," said his caseworker, Hava Killingsworth.

Dixon earned his high school degree and a certificate in computer drafting in prison. Math was always his favorite subject, and when he gets out, he wants a career in architectural design.

Currently, he is taking college classes. He is the sergeant at arms of the prison's Toastmasters Club and chair of its youth committee of the NAACP.

A prison tattoo on his left hand says "The Prophet," the letters surrounded by inky flames. But older inmates who now look out for him call him by a less intimidating nickname: "Youngster."

He has written a letter of apology to the nearest relative of the boy he killed -- Winnie Crittenden, the grandmother of Daryl Crittenden. The letter took years to write because a mere letter could not express what he felt.

There has been no reply to the letter, but in 2001, Winnie Crittenden told a reporter for The New York Times that she had forgiven Dixon and his cousin.

His lawyer says Dixon's great strides ought to be rewarded. "He has done so well, yet he doesn't go before a parole board for another 32 years," Wildeveld said.

With his appeals exhausted, Dixon's last hope is the Board of Pardons, which can shorten or change criminal sentences. But the nine-member board, made up of the governor, the attorney general and the justices of the Nevada Supreme Court, hears very few such cases in its twice-annual meetings, said David Smith, the board's executive secretary.

Smith and the director of corrections review all applications to the board and choose those they feel deserve a hearing. Out of 530 inmate applications for next month's meeting, only four were chosen. In addition, board members personally requested a hearing for six more cases.

Smith said there are "no specific criteria" for choosing which pardon applications deserve a hearing, and specific reasons for denying hearing are not given.

"(Dixon's) case at this time did not merit consideration," Smith said.

Dixon, receiving the news, said he could not let it get him down -- and could not allow himself to become resigned to three more decades behind bars.

"A lot of times I sit and think to myself, 'What is enough time? What is enough punishment?' " Dixon said. "How much time is the right amount of time to pay for my crime?

"I don't know. But one thing I will not do when I get out of prison is let myself down or the people who have helped me. I love myself too much."

Molly Ball can be reached at 259-8814 or at molly@lasvegassun.com