Shon Hopwood

Shon R. Hopwood is a former Nebraska bank robber and author, who was sentenced to over 12 years in prison for five robberies. While in prison, he started spending time in the law library, and became an accomplished Supreme Court practitioner by the time he left in 2008.^[1]

His first U.S. Supreme Court petition for certiorari was in the case of Fellers v. United States, in which he worked with Seth Waxman, a former U.S. Solicitor General, in preparing the case. Waxman stated that the petition for writ of certiorari was probably one of the best he had ever seen.^[1]

He also won honorable mention in the PEN American Center 2008 Prison Writing contest.^[2][3]

Hopwood's memoir, Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption,^[4] co-written with Dennis Burke, was published in August 2012. In the memoir, Hopwood details both his life as a jailhouse lawyer and his romance with his wife, Ann Marie Hopwood, who Hopwood wrote during eight years of his imprisonment. LAW MAN received critical acclaim from a number of book reviewers.^[5][6][7]

Hopwood is a criminal justice advocate, and he has written about the need for federal sentencing and prison reform.^[8][9]

Hopwood holds a B.S. from Bellevue University in Nebraska and is currently a law school student and Gates Public Service Law Scholar at the University of Washington School of Law.^[10] He has accepted an offer to spend a year working as a law clerk for Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after he graduates from law school.^[11]

References

Persondata
Name	Hopwood, Shon
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Short description	American bank robber
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