Wrongfully Convicted Man Thanks Georgetown Students Who Helped Free Him

A wrongfully convicted man whom three Georgetown students helped free comes to Georgetown.

Georgetown welcomed the recently exonerated Valentino Dixon of Buffalo, New York, to share his story on a panel yesterday with three students who successfully challenged his wrongful murder conviction.

Dixon, who was imprisoned for 27 years and released this past September, was joined on stage last night in the university’s Gaston Hall with those students, Julie Fragonas, Isobella Goonetillake (C’18) and Naoya Johnson, along with Marty Tankleff, Georgetown adjunct professor and exoneree, and Max Adler, the editorial director of Golf Digest who publicized Dixon’s plight.

The panel, moderated by Prisons and Justice Initiative director Marc Howard, also showcased the art Dixon created in prison and included phone conversations with men still incarcerated and whose cases students will continue to work on.

LEADING THE WAY

“When [Tankleff] explained to me that the Georgetown students were on board,” Dixon said, “it just changed our lives immediately. We just said, ‘This is going to happen now.’ ”

The students were in a Prison Reform Project course taught by Howard and Tankleff, Howard’s childhood friend who was wrongfully imprisoned for almost 18 years and whom Howard helped free.

Howard named a number of other Georgetown initiatives that work with currently or previously incarcerated individuals and their families, including a mentoring program for children of incarcerated parents.

“I think it’s safe to say there’s not a single university in the world that is as actively involved in the effort to reduce mass incarceration and to humanize and support people while they’re incarcerated,” Howard said at the event. “ … we’re really leading the way nationally.”

‘ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE’

In prison, Dixon worked 10 to 12 hours every day, creating numerous elaborate and colorful drawings mostly of golf courses and their surrounding landscapes. He now intends to help other wrongfully convicted prisoners and pursue life as an artist. His website, valentinodixon.com, now offers his artwork for sale.

Dixon was exonerated Sept. 19 in the early 1990s murder of Torriano Jackson and released after serving more than 26 of his 38.5 years-to-life sentence, mostly at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility.

“The Georgetown students made me a believer that anything is possible – and that justice can be done,” Dixon said after learning about his release.

A group of 16 undergraduates in Howard and Tankleff’s course last semester conducted investigations into four murder cases, including Dixon’s, that were thought to be wrongful convictions.

SAVING A LIFE

Fragonas, Goonetillake and Johnson worked on Dixon’s case, interviewing witnesses and experts as well as Dixon’s original prosecutor and public defender.

Following their investigations, the then-undergraduates created a website, a social media campaign and a documentary detailing the case.

“I am so proud of our students,” said Howard, also a Georgetown professor of government, in September. “They understood that this wasn’t just a class activity or school project, but a real attempt to save a wrongfully convicted man’s life. As someone who has been through it before with my friend Marty, I know that there is no greater joy or satisfaction than to walk someone from prison into freedom.”

Marc Howard, Max Adler, Valentino Dixon, Isobella Goonetillake, Julie Fragonas and Naoya Johnson sitting onstage in Gaston Hall

Marc Howard, Julie Fragonas, Valentino Dixon, Isobella Goonetillake and Marty Tankleff standing in front of courthouse

Marc Howard holds up Georgetown T-shirt as Valentino Dixon raises hands

Colored pencils drawing of trees and golf course

Julie Fragonas and Isobella Goonetillake sit at a desk across from Valentine Dixon

Valentino Dixon and family and Georgetown students hold hands and pray around table with Valentino Dixon's artwork

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From left to right: Marc Howard, Max Adler, Valentino Dixon, Isobella Goonetillake, Julie Fragonas and Naoya Johnson talk about how Dixon came to be exonerated in Gaston Hall.

Georgetown professor Marc Howard, student Julie Fragonas, wrongfully convicted former prisoner Valentino Dixon, Isobella Goonetillake (C’18) and Georgetown professor Marty Tankleff standing in front of the Erie County, New York, courthouse after Dixon was released.

Marc Howard, director of the university’s Prisons and Justice Initiative, presents a Georgetown Golf T-shirt to Valentino Dixon, whose wrongful conviction Howard and Georgetown students helped overturn. From left to right: Max Adler, the editorial director of Golf Digest who publicized Dixon’s plight; Howard; Dixon and Isobella Goonetillake (C’18), one of the students who helped free Dixon.

Valentino Dixon’s colored pencil drawing of trees and part of a golf course is called Touches of Autumn

Julie Fragonas (left) and Isobella Goonetillake (C’18) speak with Valentino Dixon last semester at Attica Correctional Facility in New York, where he spent most of the 26 years of his 38.5-to-life sentence after being wrongfully convicted of murder. Dixon was released from the Erie County Courthouse in Buffalo on Sept. 19, 2018, in part thanks to the work of Fragonas and Goonetillake as students in Georgetown’s Prison Reform Project course.

Valentino Dixon prays with family members and the Georgetown Prison Reform Project students who worked on his case while still in prison last semester. On the table are paintings he created to help pass the time during his incarceration.

‘Life-Changing Experience’

The students’ work dovetailed with Dixon’s preexisting legal motions. They coordinated with Dixon’s main appellate attorney, who filed a motion last spring that drew upon the students’ findings and ultimately proved successful.

According to Howard, the students also uncovered that the original prosecutors had never revealed to Dixon’s defense attorney that a gunpowder test on Dixon’s clotheshad come back negative, a major violation in the original trial.

Howard says this evidence, compounded by the fact that another man, LaMarr Scott, confessed to the murder several times, helped convince current Erie County District Attorney John Flynn to reconsider Dixon’s case.

“Working on the Prison Reform Project has been a life-changing experience,” said Goonetillake of London. “Speaking to Valentino on a weekly basis, establishing a relationship with his familyand being able to interview the prosecutors and defense team for this case has opened my eyes to the impact that students passionate about prison reform can have on the life of a wrongly convicted man.”

Strong Island Films documented the course for a six-episode series called Making An Exoneree.

‘Incredible Opportunity’

“For the rest of my life it will always be a highlight that I helped an innocent person get exonerated and leave prison,” said Fragonas, an exchange student from Bordeaux, France. “I am so grateful to Georgetown for giving a French exchange student this incredible opportunity.”

Dixon’s family expressed gratitude for the students’ work.

“If the opportunity comes that you can be a light to someone else, take it,” said his daughter, Tina. “You never know just how much of an impact you can make, and these Georgetown students have made a profound and lasting impact for my father and our family.”

At a public event at Georgetown on April 30, students from Howard and Tankleff’s course unveiled a series of powerful short documentaries telling the stories of four wrongfully convicted men, including Dixon.

Family members, including Tina Dixon, were in the audience as well as close supporters of all four men. Each of the imprisoned spoke to the audience by phone.

Hope in Darkness

“It means everything in the world to me and my family for you to come in out of nowhere and help a total stranger. It’s a very special thing, and I’m so grateful and thankful,” Dixon said in April.

Tankleff, an adjunct professor at both Georgetown and Touro Law Center in New York, was exonerated in the murder of his own parents.

He said he could relate to how Dixon suffered in jail and praised the students’ diligence.

“I’ve been in Valentino’s shoes myself,” he said, “and I know that what gives you hope in the darkest moments is knowing that people are fighting for you, to expose the truth and to finally bring about justice. The Georgetown students did phenomenal work, and their bond with Valentino will never be broken.”