And I'm doing everything I can to salvage some part of the second half of my life." "I'm not proud of my life," he told me when I visited him in a maximum security prison in Vacaville, Calif. "Hard to believe that someone inside prison would be, but he's a person I trust absolutely."ĭixon's goal, Stuart told me, was not just to get out of prison on parole. "I consider him my best friend," says Stuart. "I'm doing everything I can to salvage some part of the second half of my life," says Robert Dixon Jr., pictured here in the early 2000s in prison. "He'd tell me about a lot of incidents that would come up and he would avoid 'em." His son, he says, had learned to walk away. But about 12 years ago, he says, the narrative began to shift. says, for some years after Robert's incarceration, the stories he heard from his son were frequently about conflict with fellow inmates. For a time even after his son went to prison, he was still hard - the kind of man who might punch you in the face if you said something that he didn't like. says this transformation didn't happen quickly. "I mean, it's a poor wind that don't change."ĭixon Sr. "He got older and he kind of slowed down." "I've seen him change in the last 10 years - drastic change in him, especially with me," Dixon Sr. One of those true believers is Dixon's father, Robert Dixon Sr. They all believe deeply that the man they know is transformed and no longer a threat to anyone. His son, Robert Dixon Jr., was denied parole after a psychological evaluation deemed him a psychopath.īut friends and family say that since his incarceration, they've seen a radical change in Dixon. Robert Dixon Sr., outside his home in Stockton, Calif., on May 14. The crime was supposed to be quick - grab the wallet and go - but something went wrong. He positioned himself at a distance while Walker approached the man, pulled out a gun and asked for his belongings. The story of Dixon's incarceration begins 28 years ago, in the winter of 1983, when Dixon and his friend John Walker decided to rob a young man they saw walking down the street in their Oakland, Calif., neighborhood.ĭixon was the lookout. It was suddenly extremely unlikely that Dixon would be paroled.
Dixon obtained a total score on the PCL-R which placed him in the high range of the clinical construct of psychopathy," the psychologist wrote.īasically, she'd concluded that Dixon was a psychopath - the first time he'd ever received such a diagnosis. Several months later, the results came back. Then the psychologist thanked him, closed her computer and went away. Instead, she stared at the computer, methodically entering his answers, her face dimly lit by the screen. The woman, Dixon says, didn't look at him. (far right), his son's mentor Bob Stuart, and himself (far left).Īnd so Dixon found himself sitting across a table from a no-nonsense female psychologist, answering a series of questions about his family and troubled youth. holds a photograph of his son, Robert Dixon Jr. Many psychologists believe that psychopaths are so devoid of normal human emotion, so cold and remorseless and impulsive, that they are bound, almost by their very nature, to do harm and violence. It has even been used to help decide whether someone should be put to death. It's used to make decisions such as what kind of sentence a criminal gets and whether an inmate is released on parole. This test has incredible power in the American criminal justice system. To do that, the psychologist administers a test - the PCL-R, or Psychopathy Checklist-Revised - designed to measure whether that inmate is a psychopath. In California, before a "lifer" like Dixon appears before the parole board, a state psychologist must first evaluate whether he poses a risk of further violence if released. In November 2009, Robert Dixon took a test to determine whether he was a psychopath.Īfter 26 years in prison, he was due for a parole hearing.
Though friends and family swear he is a reformed man, Dixon is unlikely to win parole because a test has determined he is a psychopath. At left, a school portrait of Robert Dixon Jr., on the mantle of his father's home in Stockton, Calif.
0 kommentar(er)
