Once in prison for bank robbery, ex-felon now in law school

SEATTLE - When classes started at the University of Washington last week, Shon Hopwood could have been mistaken for just another law-school student -- scouting out the location of his first class, shouldering a heavy backpack of legal texts.

But Hopwood is no ordinary law student.

The 37-year-old father of two served 10 years in federal prison for robbing five banks in the late 1990s. While in prison, he became such an adept jailhouse lawyer that two of his petitions were reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"People that knew me before prison -- they shake their heads," said Hopwood, now in his second year of law school. "They shake their heads over me writing."

That's another thing about Hopwood: This summer, his memoir, "Law Man," written with co-writer Dennis Burke, was published by Crown Publishing.

"There are so many things about him that are amazing and interesting," said Michele Storms, assistant dean for public-service law at the university. "He obviously had an incredible intellectual capacity, but through a series of bad choices -- very bad choices -- and a lack of motivation, went down the wrong path."

Storms is director of the Gates Public Service Law Program, which has awarded Hopwood a full-ride scholarship -- one of five awarded each year to incoming law students who commit to at least five years in a public-service law practice after graduating.

The $33 million program was created in 2005 to honor Bill Gates Sr., the lawyer and UW regent, by his son, Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, and his wife, Melinda.

Hopwood was chosen for the honor because "the thing we're really looking for with these scholars is a passion for justice," Storms said. And Hopwood "has experienced it; he's witnessed it."

A college dropout, Hopwood was working a menial job in his hometown of David City, Neb., when he hit upon the idea of robbing banks for excitement and money. When he was caught a year later, he pleaded guilty to the armed robberies and was sentenced to serve 12 years.

But in prison, the mild-mannered inmate met dozens of other men whose prison time seemed out of line with the scope of their crime. One, John Fellers, had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for trafficking in methamphetamines -- fingered by a group of drug dealers who were trying to reduce their own sentences by implicating others.

After studying the case day and night, Hopwood filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that Fellers should have been read his Miranda rights after he was told of the indictment.

Hopwood's petition was one of more than 7,000 the court received that year. The likelihood of the Supreme Court taking up any petition -- much less one written by a prison inmate -- was exceedingly low, Hopwood said; the court only took eight that year.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Fellers' favor, and a lower court reduced his sentence by four years.

Hopwood was released from prison two years early, in 2008, after being awarded time off for good behavior. While behind bars, he said, he helped a dozen other prisoners get sentence reductions of three to 10 years. A second petition of his was also accepted by the Supreme Court.

Hopwood married a woman from his hometown, Ann Marie Metzner, whom he'd courted while in prison. He finished his bachelor's degree from Bellevue University in Nebraska, and in 2010 began applying to law schools.

Why did the Washington law school take a chance on him?

One of the school's main goals is to foster leadership, said University of Washington law-school dean Kellye Testy, so the admissions team looks beyond test scores and grade-point averages, choosing candidates who have experienced hardships that might lead them to a greater understanding of the less fortunate.

"All the things we'd really like to see in someone who'd use law to achieve justice -- we saw it there with Shon," she said.

And it's worked out "better than anyone could have imagined," Testy said. "He's a really diligent student and his peers respect him. Our faculty respect him. He's really brought a spark to the law school."

Testy said -- and Hopwood acknowledged -- that as a felon, he may have difficultly being admitted to the bar to practice law.

But Hopwood, who became a devout Christian after he left prison, says he could still use his training in other legal work. And he believes he's been given an unusual series of lucky breaks he can use to shed light on inequities in the criminal-justice system.

A lot of people make bad choices in their 20s. "There's a compelling case to be made to give people a second chance," he said.