Man Admits to 1991 Rape in Jamaica Plain

[Editor's note: The following is a press release from Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley.]

An admitted serial rapist today pleaded guilty to three 1991 rapes, including one for which an innocent man was wrongly convicted, ending a case that revolutionized the ways eyewitness identifications are gathered in Suffolk County and DNA evidence is used in Massachusetts, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced.

Assistant District Attorney Leora Joseph recommended three consecutive state prison terms of 20 to 25 years for Jerry Dixon, 38, for the rapes of three different women in March, April, and July of 1991. Suffolk Superior Court Judge Carol Ball imposed three consecutive terms of 10 years each.

In total, Dickson admitted to 10 counts of aggravated rape: five for a March 20, 1991, attack on an 18-year-old girl in a wooded area off of Townsend Street in Roxbury; two for an April 24, 1991, attack on a 33-year-old woman near the Academy Homes housing development in Roxbury; and three for a July 13, 1991, attack on a 25-year-old woman near Amory Street in Jamaica Plain.

Anthony Powell, an innocent man, was wrongly convicted at a 1992 trial for the Townsend Street attack. DNA testing was not available at the time of his trial, and he spent 12 years in prison before Conley’s office affirmatively exonerated him based on subsequent advances in forensic science: the biological evidence from the underlying case had been maintained under laboratory conditions and DNA testing proved in 2004 that it did not match Powell’s unique genetic profile.

“After herculean efforts by prosecutors, police officers, victim advocates, and others, we’ve accomplished what was once impossible,” Conley said. “We’ve brought to justice a man who eluded identification and accountability for decades, and in the process we changed the way our cases are investigated, built, and prosecuted.”

Since early in his tenure as district attorney, Conley has routinely assented to post-conviction DNA testing. Conley’s office also led the way in groundbreaking efforts to modernize police and prosecutor practices with respect to eyewitness evidence procedures, a leading contributor to Powell’s and other erroneous convictions. In 2008, the Boston Bar Association recognized him with its Distinguished Public Servant Award for his work to address, correct, and prevent wrongful convictions, and Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project has said that his reforms “put Boston at the forefront of the country.”

Conley’s office submitted the biological evidence from the Townsend Street rape to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, which contains DNA samples from known offenders ordered to provide samples and unknown offenders whose DNA has been recovered from crime scenes. The sample did not match any known offenders, but it did match a sample recovered from the Amory Street attack.

Because both of those attacks were approaching the end of the 15-year statute of limitations allowing prosecutors to bring charges, Conley’s office sought and obtained indictments in 2006 identifying the suspect only as “John Doe” and by his unique genetic profile. The Supreme Judicial Court would later uphold the propriety of those indictments in a unanimous and precedent-setting 2010 decision.

In 2007, Dixon was convicted of motor vehicle offenses in the Boston Municipal Court. Because of a 1991 armed robbery case that Conley himself – then an assistant district attorney – prosecuted to a conviction, Dixon was ordered to provide a DNA sample. That sample resulted in a “hit” linking him to the Townsend Street and Amory Street rapes.

In investigating Dixon’s past, Boston Police and Suffolk prosecutors learned of the Academy Homes rape, in which the assailant gave the name “Gerry Dickerson” when Boston Police interrupted the attack and arrested him. The victim did not take part in the prosecution at the time and the case did not move forward, but fingerprints taken from the suspect were later found to match Dixon’s.

Investigators also learned that Dixon lived for approximately seven years in Nashua, New Hampshire, tolling the statute of limitations in all three rape cases. As a result, Conley’s office was able to obtain an indictment against him for the Academy Homes rape, as well. As a failsafe, they re-indicted the Townsend Street and Amory Street rapes again, this time under Dixon’s true name.

“This is the result when a prosecutor’s office commits itself to the truth rather than just convictions,” Conley said. “We can free the innocent, hold the guilty accountable, make our city safer, and make our justice system more just.”