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Less than a month afterward his release from the John C. Burke Correctional Center, Marlin Dixon pauses at the Milwaukee lakefront to look out over Lake Michigan. He had served 18 years for the killing of Charlie Young Jr. in 2002, which happened when he was xiv years old. "This is what freedom feels similar," he said.

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At 11:32 a.m., on a sunny, 47-degree Tuesday, Marlin Dixon walked out from behind the barbed wire gate at the John C. Shush Correctional Middle in Waupun and into the arms of his mother.

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"I told you to stay potent and yous would one day be free," said Doris Williams, sobbing on his shoulder.

It was Sept. 22, 2020.

Shouts, adulation and laughter enveloped Dixon similar a second layer of vesture over his yellow and black Nike tracksuit. A dozen people took turns giving him hugs, then stepping back to tape the scene.

Dixon'due south daughter, Kamariya, watched hesitantly. Five months sometime when he was arrested, 7 years sometime when her female parent finally let her visit him in prison, she had never known her father as a free man. Now, she was 18 and he was 32.

Dixon stretched his arms out and said, "Come hither, I missed you." He wrapped her in a long hug, the kind that prison rules never permitted.

Marlin Dixon, left, embraces his girl, Kamariya, at his release from the John C. Burke Correctional Center in Waupun. She was a babe when her father was sentenced.

"I missed you also, Daddy," Kamariya said.

"You're most every bit tall as me," Dixon responded, smiling broadly.

The grouping made its fashion to a cluster of vehicles, Dixon pulling a rolling cart with his boxed-up prison property. He turned back briefly to acknowledge calls from inmates on the other side, "guys who I built bonds with for years." Then the group loaded up and headed dorsum to Milwaukee.

At his blood brother Alex's house, nieces and nephews he knew but by name surrounded him. Even his brother was a virtual stranger; Alex Dixon had been incarcerated, too, and coupled with probation restrictions, the two didn't know each other equally adults.

"Yous were wearing Ability Rangers drawers the last time I saw y'all," Marlin told his younger brother.

Another blood brother, Darryl, was 11 when Marlin headed to prison. Having his older blood brother habitation, he said, was similar getting his father back.

As the commemoration continued, Kamariya sat on the couch, taking in the scene as she scrolled through her phone. Occasionally, she looked upward and smiled.

Marlin was 14 when she was born; her mother was 15.

"I'm just happy that he's out so we can first building on our relationship," Kamariya said.

Doris Williams, 65, correct, is overcome with emotion when her son Marlin Dixon, left, is released from the John C. Shush Correctional Center. About a dozen people were in Waupun for Dixon's release after 18 years of incarceration.

A killing unlike whatever other

The beating of Charlie Young Jr., on Sept. 29, 2002, stunned Milwaukee and the nation, both for its viciousness and the ages of those involved.

A group of friends from a due north side Milwaukee neighborhood were hanging out on a street corner that Sunday evening, teasing one some other. Young, far older at 36, joined in. Tension between Young and some of the youths had been brewing.

To adults, Immature was a neighborhood handyman. To youths, he was a bully and an antagonist, the kind of guy who would approach kids playing with a football game, catch a laissez passer, and then throw the ball in the wrong direction and walk away laughing.

Charlie Young Jr. in an undated family photo.

This time, the joking got personal and a 13-yr-old boy threw an egg at Young, hitting him in the shoulder. Young pushed the male child down. Dixon jumped in to help his smaller friend, and the two scuffled, with Young pulling a blade on Dixon then backing abroad.

Later that night, Young headed back onto the streets. He had been drinking. He approached the boys and blindsided Dixon with a punch to the rima oris, knocking out one of the teen'south bottom teeth.

Enraged, Dixon and his friends — including a brother, Don Dixon, who was 13 —grabbed sticks, rocks, rakes and shovels. They chased Young to a home near Due north 21st Lane and W Brownish Street. A man there said Young was inside, and the boys stormed in, finding him in a back hallway. They dragged him onto the porch and assaulted him mercilessly.

At ane point, Young escaped dorsum into the house, only to be hauled out and browbeaten some more. His right ear was partially ripped off; his skull cracked open; his blood splattered upward the porch wall and onto the nine-human foot-high ceiling.

When Young lost consciousness, the mob slowly dispersed. Marlin Dixon went back, beating his defenseless victim some more.

When police arrived after a telephone call from a neighbour, they initially thought he had been shot upward, so devastating were his wounds. Many law enforcement officials considered information technology the worst beating death in Milwaukee history.

Later, doctors at what was then Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital establish no brain activity. Young died October. 1, after his family had him taken off life support.

Milwaukee constabulary rounded up 16 people. Twelve were charged, including seven teenagers — Dixon amidst them — charged every bit adults with first-degree reckless homicide.

The beating of Charlie Young Jr. took place on Milwaukee's north side, near Fond du Lac Avenue.

All but 3 of the others in the mob ultimately received plea deals, ranging from xviii months to 10 years in prison house. Ii — ages 14 and 10 — were found incompetent to stand trial. One, age fifteen, was acquitted. Don Dixon received two years at Ethan Allen Schoolhouse, a detention centre for boys in Wales.

Marlin Dixon'south fate differed.

Milwaukee County Excursion Estimate John Franke found him guilty after a three-day bench trial in adult courtroom. While Franke noted Dixon was punched in the rima oris past Young earlier in the twenty-four hour period, he said Dixon's response — especially his final blows after Young was helpless — outweighed the provocation.

"At this betoken, Mr. Dixon was interim on his ain," Franke said. "The mob mentality may accept remained, simply the mob was gone and he beat Mr. Young severely once more on his ain."

Marlin Dixon is led into Milwaukee County Children's Court by a sheriff'southward deputy on October. three, 2002, where he was charged as an developed in the murder of Charlie Immature Jr.

On June 27, 2003, Dixon entered court for sentencing. Past and so he was fifteen years erstwhile, tall for his age at 5-foot-x, and lanky as a coatrack. His feet were shackled. Franke considered Dixon more culpable for Immature'due south death than the other participants, and handed him the harshest sentence: 18 years incarceration and 22 years of extended supervision.

Dixon remained outwardly stoic. He later said he heard the words only missed the pregnant of a divided sentence. All he kept thinking was: 40 years, that's a long fourth dimension.

"I just couldn't think of annihilation but that," he said later.

A life infused with violence

Before heading to prison, before the Charlie Immature Jr. beating, before fathering a child at xiv, Marlin Dixon's journeying had already been grim.

His father, Anthony Dixon, met Doris Williams when he was 10 and she was 9. The two grew up well-nigh North 10th and East Locust streets. Doris graduated from North Division High School in 1974; Anthony dropped out in 10th grade. Doris had her first child, a daughter, at 22, by another human.

Marlin was the couple's starting time child together, followed by a second son, Don. Iii more sons and ii daughters followed.

Marlin Dixon at 8 years old.

Anthony and Doris never married. Anthony worked as a meat cutter while trying to manage a heroin habit. Doris worked equally a housekeeper, then a nurse'due south aide, struggling to provide for the children.

In school, Marlin could barely read, although teachers constantly passed him to the next grade. He felt they didn't desire to carp with him.

When his father was around, he verbally and sometimes physically abused Doris, besides as her first-born girl and Marlin.

"My father was a very unbalanced man in every manner possible. He was strung out on drugs and he used heroin and crack cocaine," Dixon said.

Marlin said his father treated his younger brothers and sisters more than like a father should.

"When information technology came to me, my large sister, and my female parent … he was abusive," Dixon said. "I never knew why he denied me every bit his son although I looked simply like him. I never understood why he held so much resentment toward me."

The abuse came against a backdrop of poverty. The kitchen lacked food. The dwelling house needed repairs. The neighborhood teemed with violence. Gunshots and constabulary sirens echoed through the nights.

The last time his parents were together at home ended in yet some other argument.

"She put him out of the house and so all of a sudden our windows got smashed out," Dixon said. "Mom thought my Pops did it, but he said he didn't, and it turned into a bigger fight."

On March 23, 2001, his begetter ran into Edward Barnes outside a northside Milwaukee methadone clinic. For whatsoever reason, he believed it was Barnes who had knocked out the windows. The two men argued and Dixon knocked him to the pavement. Barnes pulled a knife and plunged it into his accuser'south chest, twice.

Marlin was at a friend'south house when he got a telephone call from his sister Tezra.

"She said he was hurt bad, but I didn't know how serious. It was a bittersweet moment for me because I felt similar he couldn't hurt us anymore, but I felt sorrow at the same time," Dixon said.

Later, doctors called the family to come up say their concluding goodbyes.

"When I laid my optics on him, he didn't wait like my dad because he had lost so much blood," Dixon said.

Emotion wracked his mother and siblings. Dixon felt numb.

"They were all crying, but I wasn't," Dixon said. "I was abused by him, sometimes over the smallest of things. I recollect ane time he came in the house and I was already in the bed, and he woke me up out of my sleep, yelling at me considering I ate up the ice cream. But we didn't have anything else in the firm to eat."

His father died later that night. He was 46.

At the funeral, mourners lined up and shared stories of how hard he worked and how he loved his family. Marlin listened, amazed they were talking about his male parent.

Then a woman Marlin had never seen before approached him.

"She told me that I looked just similar my father. And and then she told me that Anthony Dixon was her male parent, also," he said. "I had a whole sis out there that I never knew about. I felt bad considering information technology seems like she had a better human relationship with him than I did."

Relatives told Dixon he had new responsibilities.

"I was 13 and people were telling me that I was the man of the house," he said. "I failed miserably. I didn't know how to get coin and bring money into the house. I couldn't go a job. And I judge that pressure pushed me to offset indulging into drugs and hanging out more than. I was just angry and I didn't know why."

Barnes, the man who killed Dixon's father, served seven months in the House of Correction for second-caste reckless homicide.

He was already out of incarceration when Dixon headed in.

A 'vigorous prosecution' model

Dixon'due south sentencing came when tough-on-crime court strategies were the norm.

A little more than a decade earlier, in 1991, Milwaukee hit what was and then an all-time peak for homicides, with 163. Past 1994, homicides committed by youths nationally peaked, according to the U.South. Department of Justice. Judges started handing down harsher sentences in an endeavour to regain control of neighborhoods and communities, said Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, who joined the DA's part that yr.

A "vigorous prosecution" model was in vogue, Chisholm said. From 1993 to 1999, the number of adults held in detention rose 18%, and the number of youths under age xviii held in adult jails more than doubled nationwide.

By the time Dixon was sentenced, Wisconsin had enacted a truth-in-sentencing police, eliminating parole. With credit for time already served, he would spend the total xviii years behind bars.

Fredrick Gordon was the alderman in the district when the Young homicide occurred.

"It didn't take long for the national media to jump all over this story," he said.

Gordon received a call from Bill O'Reilly, the conservative political commentator with a evidence on Play tricks News called "The O'Reilly Factor." O'Reilly wanted to prepare an interview.

"All I remember is having him screaming in my ear maxim all of these kids should become the maximum sentence and that they were a menace to lodge," Gordon said. "I hung up on him because he didn't desire to talk most all of the problems that caused this to happen in the first identify."

Elsewhere on cable TV, a nonscientific survey conducted by CNN asked: Should the youths charged with a Milwaukee man'southward chirapsia death be tried every bit adults? Ninety-one per centum of responders said yep.

Not all were enthused.

John O. Norquist was Milwaukee's mayor at the time of Dixon'due south sentencing. "That'south a lot of time for a kid whose brain isn't fully developed, especially when you consider all of the youths involved," Norquist said recently.

In the 1990s and early on 2000s, at that place was no talk well-nigh childhood trauma, and little awareness of tools similar the ACE exam, a at present universal measurement of adverse childhood experiences that can predict concrete and mental problems in machismo.

"20 years agone, we were non talking about trauma the style we talk about it today. Judges didn't desire to hear about mental illness because to them that was like giving a person an excuse to take bad behavior," said Brenda Wesley, a member of the Milwaukee County Mental Health Board and former city outreach coordinator for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Most all those involved in the Young chirapsia grew up in poverty, witnessed violence and had been victimized, said Robin Shellow, an chaser who represented several of the defendants — though not Dixon. Many of them suffered mail-traumatic stress disorder.

Shellow used an "urban psychosis" defence, suggesting that inner-city youths are numbed past the rampant violence in their neighborhoods and homes.

"When I tried to bring up trauma, I was laughed at," Shellow said in an interview shortly earlier her death last year. "No 1 really wanted to hear this in 2002, but today everyone is talking most how trauma tin can impact a kid's encephalon and beliefs. The science has defenseless up."

Over the past 20 years, the criminal justice system has undergone a body of water of alter, especially when it comes to sentencing juveniles, Chisholm said.

"Now we know and then much more virtually trauma and the affect information technology tin can have on people living in disadvantaged minority communities, and the touch it has on youth," Chisholm said.

Marlin Dixon was 14 and living in a home in the 1900 cake of North 20th Street when he and other teens beat out an adult, Charlie Young Jr., less than i mile away. Twelve people were charged. Dixon spent 18 years in prison, the longest judgement handed downward in the chirapsia, which occurred in 2002.

While it's impossible to know how Young's murder would have been handled today, Chisholm suggested Dixon's sentence would take been less harsh.

"I believe it would have been 10 or 12 years. He would have been punished because he did go back on the porch, simply it would not have been eighteen years," Chisholm said.

Data shows that people who commit violent crimes need non be locked away for decades for the sake of public condom.

"People convicted of violent and sexual offenses are actually among the least likely to be rearrested," ended a recent report from the Prison house Policy Initiative.

The main reason for the lower backsliding among people bedevilled of violent offenses is age, Chisholm said.

The Prison Policy Initiative written report concurred, saying the gamble for violence peaks in adolescence and early adulthood, and declines with age, and yet nosotros incarcerate people long later on their risk has declined.

Asking for assistance

In and so many means, Dixon was a male child in a homo's prison house.

I inmate convinced him that he could get his case reviewed for $500. Dixon persuaded his mother to send the inmate money only to find it was ane of many scams that veteran inmates pull on newcomers.

Afterward his sentencing, he had wanted to transport a letter to his girl'southward mother just could not spell the street she lived on.

"I didn't know how to spell Addicted du Lac," he admitted later. "Some of the guys I was in prison house with were in the aforementioned gunkhole and at first we just joked about it."

When a prison instructor chastised Dixon and the others for joking effectually in the dorsum of his grade, Dixon said things inverse for him.

"He told us that we tin joke and laugh, just the joke was on the states considering he knew how to read and there was cypher funny about our status," Dixon said.

Dixon afterwards went upwards to the instructor, apologized, and asked for help.

"He gave me books — intermediate, get-go, second and 3rd class, and he did the same matter with math — first, 2d and 3rd," Dixon said.

Dixon participated in religious services, and in acrimony management classes, which offered disharmonize resolution skills. He joined a restorative justice grouping and, afterward, a program where he talked to troubled youths to steer them in a positive management.

He spent about of his free time playing basketball, handball and — no longer illiterate — reading books. "I honey reading, especially books on social and political issues," Dixon said. "Whatsoever book that challenges me in my mind and heart are the best." He devoured the works of political activist Cornel West, civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander and religious author Todd D. Bennett.

Dixon said he never had a fight with prison house staff or other inmates.

"That'southward saying a lot, because a lot of people walk around looking for trouble," Dixon said.

He also saw people from his home neighborhood cycle through. "Some even came through at least twice," Dixon said.

By the time his release arrived, he had completed his GED, acquired his commuter's license, earned a certificate in blistering and another in cosmetology.

"I can cook, broil and requite y'all a peachy haircut," Dixon said, laughing.

Support from a surprising source

The virtually surprising relationship Dixon developed in prison was with Vicki Conte, who had been in court for all the Young proceedings. She served as the victim's advocate for Fannie Young, Charlie's mother.

Conte's first memory of Dixon was seeing him led into a court in Oct 2002. She noticed a teenager belongings a babe sitting in the front row. The teen was Dixon's girlfriend; the infant was Kamariya.

Fannie Immature, mother of Charlie Young Jr. Fannie Young died in May 2005 of colon cancer.

"He looked like a scared little boy and he had a child," she said. "He was but a child himself."

For Fannie Young, the cases connected to her son's death were all-consuming, though she kept her emotions in check.

"Fannie understood the court system and never kidded herself. She knew her son had problems with the law, too. The stress of the case took its toll on her, existence in that location every solar day," she said.

Fannie died in May 2005 of colon cancer. She was 63.

"She was a faith-filled adult female who had faith in God that practiced would come from all of this," Conte said.

Conte constitute herself sympathizing with Dixon because of the way his public defender portrayed him in court.

"He wasn't offered a plea bargain like the other boys, and his lawyer argued he was too stupid to commit this offense, and he besides talked about Marlin having an extremely low IQ. Information technology was hurtful for me to hear and for Marlin to hear as well," Conte said.

More: Most of Charlie Young's family won't discuss his beating. 'It's withal fresh,' his sister says.

Conte didn't believe the mob beating had annihilation to practise with kids of low intelligence. She believed it was a mob set on that got completely out of hand, with the kids feeding off each other's emotions.

A year earlier, her son had been involved in a telling incident.

"My teen son got into a fight at centre schoolhouse involving a disabled child and other boys. The disabled kid got crush up and I kept asking my son why he was involved, and he kept maxim he didn't know, until finally he said he did it because everyone else was doing information technology," Conte said.

No one died, but Conte pointed out a stark departure between her son and Dixon.

"My son is a suburban white kid and got off scot-free considering we could afford to pay for a good lawyer. That was not the instance with Marlin," she said.

Although she was in that location for Immature's mother, Conte remembered beingness stunned by Dixon'due south sentence.

"I still believe he got the near time because all of the other defendants kept saying that the only reason they went later on Mr. Young was because he knocked Marlin's molar out," said Conte, now 66.

She left the DA's office presently after the trial because she felt that she had "as well much of a heart for the defendants" and the circumstances of their lives.

Over the years, she kept wondering how Dixon was doing. Then in 2017, she did some research, found Dixon's location, and wrote him a letter.

Vicki Conte showtime saw Marlin Dixon when he was led into court for the killing of Charlie Immature Jr. She was there as a victim's advocate to support Young's female parent, Fannie. Years later, she contacted Dixon in prison and the ii adult a friendship. She visited him while he was all the same in prison, then came to Milwaukee to meet him after his release.

Dearest Marlin,

My name is Vicki Conte. I am a 62-yr-old grandmother at present living in Denver, CO. I used to work for the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office. My job was "victim advocate." I had to bulldoze Charlie Immature's mother to courtroom and sit with her through the many appearances that you and all the other boys had. It was all very sad. I know you all killed Charlie. I know yous were all boys. And you especially, with the longest sentence, take paid a toll for that.

I have thought near you then many times in the last 14 or fifteen years. I have wondered how a boy of 14 can grow upward in prison. I have worried nearly you. I accept worried about your concrete and mental wellness. I wonder if you get visitors … I wonder about your little daughter. She was just a baby at the trial.

She finished the letter by proverb she could send him books or a few things that he might need if he liked.

"I didn't know how he would respond, or if he would answer at all," she said.

Dixon sent her a ii-folio handwritten letter.

Dear Vicki,

You are far besides kind, that was i of the nigh heart warming messages I've ever received during my incarceration, and I thank you for the benign gesture of taking fourth dimension out of your solar day to write me and I appreciate your thoughts and concerns yous had for me over the 14½ years I've been gone away. That was very soft, gentle, and sugariness of you to practise that.

Dixon told her that he was 29 and growing upwards in prison house "has not been easy for me in the to the lowest degree."

"I suffered a lot of depression and anxiety and I suffered from PTSD but I didn't allow it to destroy me and I just kept breathing and eventually things go meliorate and I used all that I went through to shape me into a better human being ...

"I am now in minimum custody with iii½ years to go in prison and right now I am working in the kitchen equally a baker and will be going to work on the farm soon. … I would dearest your help in assisting me to integrate back into society because Yahweh knows I really need it. Everything volition be new to me when I become released."

The letters launched regular correspondence, and that led to visits. Conte fabricated three side trips to Waupun to see Dixon while she was visiting family dorsum in Wisconsin. A month after he was released, she visited him for the beginning time as a costless human.

"I value her opinion a lot. She helped get me through a lot of tough times, merely she keeps treating me like I'one thousand that same xiv-year-old boy that she saw in courtroom that fourth dimension," Dixon said, teasing her during a recent lunch. "I'm a grown man now."

Friends, so something more

A few days out of prison, Dixon'southward family took him out for pizza. One of his sisters, Ebony, brought a friend, Tyanna Cates. Ebony told Cates that her brother had just been released from prison. "I was a picayune rusty at trying to talk to women, but I just told her who I was, and we started talking," Dixon said.

When they were leaving, he asked Cates for her phone number. She handed him her phone, but he recorded the numbers wrong.

They would not talk again until Cates was tagged in a photograph with Dixon and he was able to send her a message on Facebook.

Cates told Dixon she was not interested in anything but friendship because she lived in Texas; she was but in Milwaukee visiting her female parent and other family members. But her weeklong stay turned into a month after her female parent was involved in a machine accident. That gave Dixon and Cates more fourth dimension. His vulnerability drew her in.

"We were e'er together," Cates said.

Tyanna Cates, left, Marlin Dixon's girlfriend, hugs him at his apartment in Menomonee Falls. The 2 met the second mean solar day of his release from John C. Burke Correctional Eye.

She went back home to Texas simply then flew back to visit.

By Oct 2020, Cates was pregnant. She was concerned that a kid would set him back — so worried that she informed him with a moving-picture show of the pregnancy examination and a sad-face emoji.

Dixon wasn't worried.

"I didn't see it as a trouble like that because I knew nosotros could handle it," Dixon said. "I was scared, but happy at the same time because I felt I had a second chance to do it correct this time."

On Christmas Eve 2020, Cates, 34, started to feel sick. A miscarriage followed.

At the time, Dixon was yet living in his female parent'due south iii-bedroom flat, where he had been since his release. His sis Leslie also lived there, and two brothers, Darius and Don, occupied the basement.

"The lifestyle they were living was not skillful for me and I didn't desire to jeopardize putting myself in a position that could take landed me dorsum in prison for some other xviii years," he said.

Dixon said his brothers thought he came across also preachy, while he felt they were non doing enough with their lives to get out of his mother'due south basement.

Dixon tried to find housing, but rent seemed beyond accomplish.

"I had money saved up from work release, but I was but looking at what they wanted for a ane- and ii-sleeping accommodation, and the prices were over $1,000 to $i,500 a month simply for something fairly decent and safe," Dixon said.

In August 2021, after months of looking, Dixon plant a two-bedroom apartment in Menomonee Falls he could afford.

"My daughter (Cates) helped me to become it and I really love it out hither. It's quiet and it's neat for my mental health," Dixon said.

Marlin Dixon stands in the doorway of his apartment in Menomonee Falls on the one-year anniversary of his release. Dixon said the neighborhood is quiet and good for his mental health.

He scoured Facebook Market to replenish the identify. A sectional for $150; two end tables for $100; a kitchen tabular array for $50; a figurer desk and chair for just a few dollars.

His bedroom includes a full shoe rack with dozens of sneakers. "I dearest basketball game and I guess yous tin can say shoes are my hobby," he said.

He got a TV from Walmart and an Xbox that he plays constantly. And he has a dog, a Shih Tzu named Snacks.

"I could not have done this without my girlfriend," he said. "She helped me with securing resources, and she's been my biggest support organization and without her I don't know where I would be."

Terminal Oct, Cates moved to Wisconsin to bring together him. "Even though our lives are then different, nosotros have open communication, and we talk nearly everything," she said.

Determin to break the cycle

Dixon also hoped to build a successful relationship with his daughter.

Information technology hasn't been smooth.

"I try to spend fourth dimension with her and become places, but she has her life," he said.

Kamariya Dixon, left, enjoys time with her begetter, Marlin Dixon, later on playing basketball at Milwaukee Academy of Science. The two essentially didn't know each other until Marlin was released from prison house, only they accept tried to build a human relationship. "I knew as long as I stayed alive this opportunity would happen, " he said.

An estimated v.1 1000000 kids accept had a parent in jail or prison house at some indicate in their babyhood, according to an Annie E. Casey Foundation report. Compared with their white peers, African American and Latino kids over 7 years old are twice as likely to have a parent behind bars, the written report found.

"Having a parent incarcerated is a stressful, traumatic experience of the same magnitude as abuse, domestic violence and divorce, with a potentially lasting negative affect on a child'due south well-being," the written report said.

The foundation of a good for you human relationship is rarely formed, it said.

Much of that held true for Dixon'south relationship with his daughter, although it had improved somewhat in his last years of incarceration. When Dixon was on piece of work release, he sent her coin from his job cleaning vats at a pizza company. He wrote letters of dear and encouragement.

About half dozen months afterward he was released, Dixon gave Kamariya something she never had experienced.

"I gave her her first birthday political party," he said. "She never had one in her whole life. Me and my girlfriend rented a hall and decorated it. We had a DJ, food and her friends."

Marlin Dixon poses with his daughter, Kamariya, at her 19th birthday party in 2021. Dixon threw her the surprise political party, the first birthday party she ever had.

For someone who observes more than she participates, it was a special moment. But overall, Kamariya remains guarded and tranquility. Her upbringing wasn't piece of cake. Dixon understands.

"Information technology's the same blazon of anger I had at my dad for not being there," he said. "Merely I'g working difficult to break that cycle."

'He'due south an excellent worker'

While still in prison, Dixon worked at Richelieu Foods Inc., a manufacturer of private-brand pizzas and sauces in Beaver Dam. He cleaned pizza vats, and although the work was messy, the pay was expert — $15 an hour. Office of the coin he earned went toward the $750 a month to stay at Waupun.

"A lot of people don't know this, simply when you work, yous have to pay for your stay in prison," he said.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, work release jobs shut down. However, his boss told him he could always come dorsum afterward his release.

Dixon took him upwardly on that offer. Higher pay made the two-hr round trip tolerable. But in just the kickoff four months, Dixon picked up tickets for speeding and a seat belt violation. Sheriff'due south deputies also gave him a alert when his motorcar went into a ditch during a snowstorm, and he got a passerby to pull it out.

The deputy "yelled at me, maxim that I could have caused an accident and I needed a professional person to get me out," Dixon said. "It was a major snowstorm. All the professionals were busy.

"My P.O. (probation officer) told me that she was worried nearly me making that drive and getting stopped so much, so she told me to find something closer to habitation. I didn't want to give it up, but it was the best conclusion."

Marlin Dixon has worked at Bimbo Bakeries in Oconomowoc since November. "He's been a great guy to piece of work with," said Laura Rose, a product supervisor. "He ever jumps in whenever we have any problems."

In Nov, Dixon landed a chore at Bimbo Bakeries in Oconomowoc every bit a machine operator. The job pays well, and business is so good he tin work six days a calendar week if he wants.

"He'south an excellent worker. He had a few hiccups his starting time week, but he'due south gotten better the whole time," said John Laabs, Dixon'southward supervisor.

Dixon's job includes taking 2,000 pounds of dough and calculation it to a dividing machine that cuts it into loaf-sized pieces.

"I would say he's every bit skilful a divider operator who's brand new we've ever seen," Laabs said.

Dixon'due south prison house tape never came up.

"He was a solid candidate at the interview. It was that cut and dry," said Rodney Bahr, a manager. "Y'all don't concur information technology confronting them, and honestly nosotros didn't even know."

Because of the potential for discrimination, many states and cities have pushed for "ban-the-box" legislation, which limits what an employer tin can ask candidates on a chore awarding or during the early stages of the screening process. Wisconsin has not adopted such legislation.

Dixon believes if he can practise the job, by mistakes shouldn't get in the style.

"They're good people to piece of work for and I'm thankful for the opportunity," he said.

Daunting odds as a free man

Dixon is now in the 2d of his 22 years of extended supervision. He has 21 rules he must bide past to avoid being sent dorsum to prison.

He can't be in a place that serves booze. He can't be around a felon. He can't own a gun or be effectually a person with a gun, fifty-fifty if they tin legally ain i.

When he asked his probation officer how is he supposed to know if the person is a felon or non, he said he was told to inquire.

"Am I supposed to ask every person who I come in contact with if they're a felon or non?" Dixon asked. "1 of my brothers has a license to conceal carry and my P.O. told me when I go to his house, I need to ask him to put his gun in his car."

The limitations add together fear and pressure.

"While I was locked upwardly I've seen plenty of men locked back upward because people said they saw them at a bar or their girlfriend got mad at them and said some things to get them revoked," he said. "And I have 20 more years of this."

He is facing daunting odds.

The Department of Justice's Agency of Justice Statistics has estimated that near three-quarters of all released prisoners will be rearrested inside five years of their release and about half-dozen in 10 volition be reconvicted — though not necessarily for the same level of offense.

Yet, Dixon thinks his odds without prison would have been even worse.

"I'thou going to exist brutally honest with y'all. I know I made the worst mistake in my life when I did what I did on that night in September, and not a mean solar day goes by where I don't think about what I did to (Young)," he said. "However, if I would have stayed on the streets, I probably would have been killed."

'It's something I have to live with'

While Dixon cannot have any contact with members of the Young family, he said he would similar them to know he is sorry.

"Afterward it happened, I blacked out on some of the things I did. But when I recollect back on it, I catch myself maxim, I did do that," he said. "I was angry and hurt and I just wanted to hurt someone, just I never, ever meant for him to dice. Information technology'south something I have to live with the residue of my life."

On this vacant lot stood the house where a mob of young people beat Charlie Immature Jr. to decease in 2002.

Dixon best-selling he can't understand the hurting the Youngs have gone through, only as a parent, he can imagine how he would feel if someone did that to his daughter.

"For a mother to have to become through that, there are no amount of apologies that I can exercise," he said. "But I would beloved to redeem his claret in some way past mentoring and helping other kids and then that they never participate in such a affair."

No matter how tough of an environment that y'all live in, young people need to know they have choices, Dixon said.

His probation besides prohibits him from returning to the crime scene.

That function is easy. The home where the incident occurred has been torn down. It'southward 1 of many vacant lots in the neighborhood, which seems to have as much open space as housing, the result of aging, neglect and the city'south efforts to tear downward abandoned residences.

Children growing upwardly in the area face the same challenges that Dixon and his friends faced two decades ago. In Jan, less than a mile from where Charlie Young Jr. was beaten, half-dozen people were shot and killed execution-style.

When Dixon was growing up, he knew more than people who had been killed, shot or incarcerated than had graduated from college.

Doris Williams tried desperately to steer her son away from such a fate.

"She kept warning me that people who I thought were my friends were non actually my friends," Dixon said, "And that if I kept doing some of the things I was doing, I was going to become into trouble that she couldn't get me out of."

After his arrest, her warnings finally sunk in.

"You take to excuse my language, simply I realized that nobody in court gave a (curse) about me," Dixon said. "The but person who never gave up on me was my mom."

The thought of a future barely crossed his listen.

"I never thought I would live to come across 21, until I turned 21 and I had already been locked up seven years by so," Dixon said.

COLUMN: I never expected to know Marlin Dixon. Now I worry that without change, other youths volition follow his path.

Subsequently reaching that milestone, Dixon believed more was possible. "I was a man and I realized that I just couldn't stay mad anymore," he said.

The change was gradual, not sudden. Just he had fabricated a choice. He wanted to be different for his daughter and for his mother. Mostly, he wanted to be unlike for himself.

"All of the things that I've achieved since I've been released, I dreamed virtually. I wanted to have my own identify. I wanted to have a good job. I didn't desire to be around violence and all of the things associated with information technology."

The most obvious reminder of Dixon's past is visible whatever fourth dimension he looks in a mirror: a gap where one of his bottom left teeth should be.

"One of my friends suggested to me that I should get a gilt crown to marker a moment where that situation destroyed my life, merely it besides built my life," he said. "Gold has to become through burn as a test to testify you what information technology'due south made of, and for you to run across how much value it carries."

"I've been through the fire. At present people need to run into my value."

James E. Causey and Angela Peterson

This report is part of a series of stories focused on Milwaukee's youth, their needs and opportunities for their success. The work is supported past a foundation grant from Wellpoint Intendance Network, a Milwaukee nonprofit formerly known as SaintA's. Wellpoint'southward mission is to facilitate equity, learning, healing and wellness past restoring the connections that assistance children, youth and families thrive. Reporter James Due east. Causey began work on this story equally an O'Brien Boyfriend in Public Service Journalism at Marquette Academy during the 2019-20 academic yr. All piece of work on the project was done under the guidance of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editors. Neither Wellpoint nor Marquette were involved in decisions most the content or presentation of the work. To support the Periodical Sentinel's in-depth local reporting, please subscribe at jsonline.com/deal.

Twenty-four hour period 2: CULTIVATING LEADERSHIP | DAY three: Confronting ALL ODDS | RESOURCES

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Marlin Dixon, released from prison reflects on 2002 Milwaukee killing

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Source: https://news.yahoo.com/age-15-marlin-dixon-went-152744093.html

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