New York inmate-artist freed after 27 years
Wrongly convicted Dixon rekindled his childhood passion for drawing while behind bars
ANew York prison artist who never played golf but became known for drawings of lush courses he could only imagine was set free Wednesday after authorities agreed that another man committed the murder that put him behind bars for nearly three decades.
Valentino Dixon walked out of Erie County Court into bright sunshine and hugs from his mother, daughter and a crowd of other relatives and friends, ready for a meal at Red Lobster and vowing to fight on behalf of others who are wrongly convicted.
“I love y’all,” Dixon shouted after trading the green prison uniform in court for jeans and a T-shirt. “It feels great.”
Earlier Wednesday, a judge agreed to set aside Dixon’s conviction in the 1991 shooting death of 17-year-old Torriano Jackson on a Buffalo street corner and accepted a guilty plea from another man who had confessed to the killing two days later. “There was a fight. Shots were fired. I grabbed the gun from under the bench, switched it to automatic, all the bullets shot out. Unfortunately, Torriano ended up dying,” Lamarr Scott, who has been in prison for 25 years for an unrelated attempted murder, told the court. “I dropped the gun and ran.”
Scott said he had gotten the gun, a Tec-9 semi-automatic, from Dixon and the two men had driven together to the crowded corner where the fighting broke out. Scott was given a sentence of 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison, concurrent with his current term.
Judge Susan Eagan let stand a count of criminal possession of a weapon against Dixon, and its 5to 15-year sentence, which she said he had satisfied.
While behind bars, Dixon rekindled his childhood passion for drawing, often spending 10 hours a day creating vivid coloured pencil landscapes, including of golf courses, while imagining freedom. Articles in Golf Digest and elsewhere have drawn public attention to Dixon’s case, as well as a documentary produced by Georgetown University students as part of a prison reform course last spring.