A truly incredible story has culminated over the past few days. In 1998, Shon Hopwood was sentenced to 147 months in federal prison for bank robbery. He became a jailhouse lawyer, and in 2002, he filed his first petition for certiorari with the United States Supreme Court. Former Solicitor General Seth Waxman described it in the New York Times as one of the best petitions he had ever read, and the Court agreed to hear the case, ruling unanimously for Hopwood’s “client.” In 2005, it granted certiorari in another of Hopwood’s cases, and Hopwood also won several lower court cases. When Hopwood got out of prison, Waxman and others encouraged him to go to law school. He’s now a rising 3L at the University of Washington, and Legal Times reports here that he has just accepted a clerkship with Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the prestigious D.C. Circuit. A Supreme Court clerkship seems like a real possibility for the following year. Meanwhile, United States District Judge Richard Kopf, who sent Hopwood to prison, got wind of the story. The judge happens to be a blogger, and he wrote here about three things he takes from the story: (1) “Hopwood deserves all the credit in the world”; (2) “Janice Rogers Brown is a hero”; and (3) “Hopwood proves that my sentencing instincts suck. When I sent him to prison, I would have bet the farm and all the animals that Hopwood would fail miserably as a productive citizen when he finally got [...]
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