The saying ‘once a criminal, always a criminal’ is absurd and sweeping. There are umpteen cases where criminals have turned out to do good work for the society and have become successful individuals in their areas of work. Today’s article just goes out to showcase that the saying is outrageous.
Shon Robert Hopwood (born June 11, 1975) is an American appellate lawyer and professor of law at Georgetown University Law Centre. It’s heart-warming to note that Hopwood became well-known as a jailhouse lawyer who served time in prison for bank robbery. While in prison, he started spending time in the law library, and became an accomplished United States Supreme Court practitioner by the time he left in 2009.
Shon Hopwood excelled on standardized tests. He was a high school basketball champion and earned himself a scholarship at Midland University. After few days Shon Hopwood felt that that he was mediocre talent in basketball, he became disappointed and did not go to classes. Shon Hopwood later joined the United States Navy. Like we see many young lads going in depression for small, small things and then getting into drugs consumption Shon Hopwood also lost his path for two years. One night his best friend turned to him in a bar and suggested that they should rob a bank.
In August 1997, Shon Hopwood walked into a bank, scared, baffled, sweating, and his heart racing. He dropped a metal toolbox to the floor with a bang and pulled a rifle from his coveralls. When the customers and staff in the bank got terrified and tellers were locked into a vault, Hopwood zoomed away with $50,000 of other people’s money. His friend, who knew every bit and was one of the members in the bank loot, told Hopwood that their act was horribly wrong. His friend suggested of sending the money back, with a note. Instead, Shon Hopwood went on to rob four more banks. He was nabbed by the police and at his sentencing, 30 family members stood behind him, most of them crying. He was then just 23 years old. Judge Richard Kopf thought he was a punk.
Shon Hopwood served his prison sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Pekin. While at Pekin, he spent five weeks in Solitary Confinement, and criticized the practice once he got out. He prepared his first petition for certiorari (which means to be informed of or to be certain in Latin) in other words an appeal for a fellow inmate on a prison typewriter in 2002. Since Hopwood was not a lawyer, the only name on the brief was that of the other prisoner, John Fellers. Once the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, he worked with former United States Solicitor General Seth Waxman in preparing the case. Waxman stated that the petition for writ of certiorari was probably one of the best he had ever seen. The court agreed to hear the case, Fellers vs United States. The court, in a 9-0 decision, found that police had acted unconstitutionally in questioning Fellers, who had been convicted of a drug conspiracy. Fellers’s sentence was eventually reduced by four years.
In 2005, the Supreme Court granted a second certiorari petition prepared by Hopwood, vacating a lower court decision and sending the case back for a fresh look. Shon Hopwood started helping inmates from Indiana, Michigan and Nebraska get sentence reductions of 3 to 10 years from lower courts. He also won honourable mention in the PEN American Centre 2008 Prison Writing contest. PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. Hopwood was released from the custody of the Bureau of Prisons on April 9, 2009. In 2010, he was working at Cockle Printing in Omaha, Nebraska, a leading printer of Supreme Court briefs.
Shon Hopwood holds a Bachelor of Science from Bellevue University and a Juris Doctor (Juris Doctor is the undergraduate law degree in the United States of America) from the University of Washington School Of Law where he was a Gates Public Law Scholar. He accepted an offer to spend a year working as a law clerk for Judge Janice Rogers Brown of United States. The Supreme Court of Washington approved the recommendation made by the Charter and Fitness Committee of the Washington State Bar Association permitting Hopwood to take the Washington bar association examination and to become an attorney if he passed. His ability to become of a member of the Washington State Bar Association was named one of the 14 memorable National Law Journal Supreme Court of the United States. In 2015, Hopwood became a licensed lawyer in the state of Washington. In 2015, Hopwood accepted a position as a graduate teaching fellow in Georgetown University Law Centre’s Appellate Litigation Clinic, where he was pursuing a Master of Law degree. In 2017, Hopwood became a professor of law at Georgetown.
I really like one famous statement of Shon Hopwood “I committed a violent crime, but I am not a violent criminal,” he said. “Even when people make mistakes, character is not static. People can change. And the law and this community need to recognize that.”
People change with experience of life, as their environment changes, educational qualifications changes and they see few ups and downs of life their outlook changes. But, they retain the same personality and attitude as they had from their childhood.
