
A convicted felon who became a Georgetown law professor - blegh
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who-became-a-georgetown-law-professor/
======
brendanw
Somewhat orthogonal:

In SF, the jail will only accept bail from registered bail bondsmen. They will
not accept bail money from the arrestee, friends of the arrestee, or family.
The average rate for a bail bondsman is 10%. A common practice that a
vindictive police force will use is tacking on charges that they know will not
stick in order to push the bail higher (eg Felony Conspiracy to Commit a Crime
can be tacked on to any crime involving more than one person regardless of its
nature and will set bail at $18k minimum). My neighbor is a criminal defense
attorney and I asked her about this; she said that it is common knowledge that
the SF DA, police, and bondsmen are all scratching each others' backs.

An initial court date can take a few days to a week of waiting in jail, which
means missing work. An innocent person -- or a person guilty of a victim-less
crime -- of little means will likely lose their job as the result of one
arrest if they cannot afford bail.

The other practice that is commonplace in SF and California is confiscating a
phone as evidence even if there is no reason to believe the phone will have
evidence. Even if a person is wrongfully arrested and the charges are
dismissed, property return is only done if the District Attorney elects to
cooperate. If the DA does not voluntarily request the police return your
property, then you need to file a motion to obtain a hearing. The going rate
is $500+ to have an attorney do this. Most people simply do not get their
phones back because the time and monetary cost are too high. If you are living
in an expensive city on a tight budget, this is a significant loss.

~~~
ux-app
why are these people acting like such pricks? What do they have to gain?

~~~
bryanrasmussen
It sounds like money, as well as probably being able to screw someone over
they don't like.

~~~
ux-app
is such widespread, systemic corruption an issue in the US? As a far away
observer (AUS), the US system does not seem so pervasively corrupt.

~~~
lovich
There's very little to no overtime bribing, it's rare enough to make the news.
Kickbacks though, or simply fucking over someone you don't like, runs rampant.

~~~
hnzix
Confiscation of property and cash seems to be a big problem.

~~~
lovich
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-
took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/)

Worse than our actual thieves. I am on the paranoid side and most Americans
don't think this way as far as I know, but I feel safer walking through a bad
neighborhood with a pile of cash than going by a cop. I'll most likely get
mugged in the bad neighborhood but the cops will take the money and put me in
jail

------
WalterBright
What a great story! Once a person has paid their debt to society, society
should be forgiving and allow the person to have a second chance.

~~~
Qantourisc
debt? sounds like you want retribution. As long as your mindset is on
punishment, rather then to fix (if possible) what drove the person to such
undesired behaviour, it's going to be hard to forgive. You want to lock up
people because you have to, either as a WORKING deterrent, or to keep people
outside jail safe.

And in some cases the debt is not repayable.

~~~
WalterBright
No, I don't want retribution. I've slowly come to the belief that prison
should be to keep people who cannot function in society separated from society
until they can function in society. It's punishment enough for such
separation, I don't agree with "hard" time.

------
ralmidani
Question for lawyers: is there credibility in arguing that lifetime denial of
employment and voting rights amounts to "Cruel and unusual punishment"?

~~~
cortesoft
The voting rights is one issue, but the 'lifetime denial of employment' would
be hard to argue for; it isn't the court that is doing that.

How would you avoid it? You would need something like the EU's 'right to be
forgotten', which has serious first amendment issues here in the US.

~~~
yasth
As to other ways to avoid lifetime employment denial, a lot of places are
forcing at least public sector places and many private sector employers to
"Ban The Box" [1] that is to say remove the initial questions about criminal
history. They are still allowed to ask at a later date, but the idea is that
the people just won't be completely culled without care (which is technically
against US employment law anyways).

1: [http://www.nelp.org/publication/ban-the-box-fair-chance-
hiri...](http://www.nelp.org/publication/ban-the-box-fair-chance-hiring-state-
and-local-guide/)

~~~
lovich
Ban the box legislature seems to do very little, it exists in Mass but it's
paired with the CORI system where the court system simply gives you the court
history over to employers. I have seen a business rescind an offer from an
engineer <5 days from when he was supposed to start and after he had ended
employment with his previous company, over a misdemeanor on his CORI.

The first amendment concerns with the EU's right to be forgotten aren't
answered yet in my book, but as long as everyone's life is tracked and passed
around effortlessly via the internet it will be difficult to impossible for
former criminals to maintain employment at good jobs.

Like many things that worked out in the past, such as cops being able to look
up any individuals license plate, but are now incredibly cheap and easy to do
because of technology, background checks are becoming onerous because they are
done for _everyone_ instead of being done only when necessary

Edit: I want to add that businesses rescinding offers like this means the
employee I quit can not access unemployment because they have quit their
oldjob but not been "fired" from their new job. The obvious response is to no
longer give two weeks notice to your old employer but then people talk and you
get a reputation as a mercenary while companies look for some level of
loyalty. The end result is you get fucked either way

------
j2kun
Another example is James Kilgore, a convicted (second degree)
murderer/kidnapper/activist who was on the lam and is now a professor at UIUC:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kilgore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kilgore)

------
ttoinou
A podcast with him : [https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-
thoughts/lessons-b...](https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-
thoughts/lessons-bank-robbing-law-professor)

------
mschuster91
Makes me wonder how much potential for society is wasted in prisons every
second.

Hell, even in Germany we literally send people to jail for weeks to months for
being unable to pay for public transport.

------
omegant
This article is very interesting:

[https://harpers.org/archive/1929/06/whats-wrong-with-the-
rig...](https://harpers.org/archive/1929/06/whats-wrong-with-the-right-
people/)

I think it has been posted before.

As an European the "though on crime" spirit in the USA is just the oposite to
what we actually have here.

Here there are very forgiving laws, short prison sentences, very soft and
polite police attitude against criminals (compared with what you experience in
the USA). Prissons are well equiped and there it's relatively easy to
transition to more open sentences where you only go to sleep to the prison. A
lot of money is spent in reabilitation, economic help, free university and
courses in the prison, etc...

In a way, if you are a law obeying citizen you feel that you are the fish and
the criminals have it their way. Very unjust, even dangerous as they are able
to roam openly and prey in the innocent. We really wish for harsher laws,
policing and prissons.

But the reality is that now a days is difficult to find a place in a Spanish
city where you can be mugged with a knife or any other weapon. There is almost
no perception of danger in the streets. Last week I was in a dinner with a
district chief in the police. He says there are some property thieves, mostly
youth, but they rarely have to draw the gun, criminals may run or shout to
cops, but they usually don't fight them. They know they probably are going out
of the jail faster than the cop finish filling the papers, so why bother being
violent?.

Most criminals are not hardened psicopaths, and with this method the system
removes hate and tension from the violence spiral(I don't know if this makes
sense).

Of course is far from perfect, at the end of the day some very violent killers
and rapists get through this very lax system creating victims and social
alarm, but the overall results are very very positive for everybody. Felons
get a new oportunity, tax payers save money, citicens get to enjoy a safer
city.

Talking about the gun problem in the USA (somebody was blaming guns for th
violence in other comment), it seems to me that the people that is trying to
ban guns are just doing the oposite of what they are trying to do, they draw
more attention to guns, so more people buy them. This people surely would have
ignored them if nobody recalled them the topic.

For example in Spain we have a very vigorous antibullfighting movement. But I
remember perfectly how in the 80s and early 90s all the bull fighting business
men were worried on how the people had stoped going to the corridas. My
grandfather loved them (I dont) and he watched all of them in the tv. The
plazas were half empty most of the times, and the business was dying (they
even were worried about the loss of the race of toros bravos that only gets
rised for corridas)

Then the antibullfighting movement gained strength and all the people that had
been ignoring the corridas, started paying attention and taking a stance, some
pro, some against. But the net result was a very healthy increase in the
expectator figures of all thing related to bullfighting.

In a way I think it is the same reason Trump got to president, way too much
free propaganda and attention from everybody even if it was negative.

------
acjohnson55
As other people have mentioned, this is only strange because of our bizarre
popular notions of crime and punishment in America.

First of all, we love partitioning people into good and evil sets. If we can
only root out and imprison the evil people (and, btw, give all the good guys
guns), there would be negligible crime.

Secondly, we believe punishment fulfills justice. Despite well documented
issues in applying the death penalty equitably, or even solely to guilty
people, we maintain that heinous crimes must be met with human sacrifice.

And to be honest, I think human sacrifice is literally what we believe in.
When something goes wrong, we require someone to feel pain. The more permanent
that pain, the better. This goes beyond crime. Look how sports players are
immortalized for their blunders. Look at the mob justice of the Internet. Look
at how we crack down on the vulnerable when the middle class struggles.

~~~
throwaway613834
> And to be honest, I think human sacrifice is literally what we believe in.
> When something goes wrong, we require someone to feel pain. The more
> permanent that pain, the better. This goes beyond crime.

I don't think it's about human sacrifice. Rather, I think it's about imposing
enough of a punishment to deter other people from committing the crime.
Presumably people committed the crime knowingly, being aware of the fact that
the punishment may go in such a direction.

~~~
smnrchrds
There was this well-publicized case in Canada. A man was beheaded and
partially cannibalized in a Greyhound bus [1]. The killer was determined to be
not criminally responsible. It was proven that he was suffering from severe
mental health issues and did not understand what he was doing. He was sent to
a high security mental health facility. There was no death penalty in Canada,
so everyone was content for as long as he was _behind bars_ in the facility.
But when he was deemed treated in 2015 and scheduled for discharge, people on
the internet lost it. They didn't care that he did not knowingly do anything
wrong. They said he brutally killed someone and for that he should be
punished. Some said they wouldn't mind if "an accident happened to him."
Others wanted him behind bars for the rest of his life. Everyone blamed the
government and the justice system for bring too soft and naive. It was sad to
read the discussions. After seeing that, I have to agree with the commenter
you are replying to rather than you. People want an eye for an eye.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean)

~~~
Mz
Well, I would interpret that as "With something so horrible, people want to
make sure it _never, ever_ happens again and they don't really believe that
someone who would do something like that can ever be trusted."

Compassion is one thing. Giving people a second shot at doing something
heinous is another.

We don't really know how to cure more prosaic mental health issues, like
depression or social anxiety. If they are wrong about him having been
successfully treated, we will likely find that out the hard way: When we
discover he has done it again. Only, possibly, multiple times and covered it
up successfully for some time, what with being older and savvier.

------
sundvor
Fantastic story. I noticed that he won a scholarship from the Gates
Foundation; that's quite some journey, and great to see the difference a
chance at redemption may offer.

------
bradleyjg
Maybe this is a little churlish, but while I agree that we should say that a
person that finishes out his prison sentence should be considered to have paid
his debt and from then forward be on an equal footing, I think that should be
equal footing. We shouldn't let our cultural love affairs with redemption
narratives sway our judgments to the point where we are treating someone
better for having gone to prison.

It is really really hard to become a law professor. Not only are there a huge
group of lawyers that would love to become law professors, but because of the
difficulty in getting social science appointments and because law
professorships pay significantly better than social science appointments,
there's now a huge group of Phds also vying for these spots.

Shon Hopewood went to the University of Washington law school. He may well
have been the only tenure track hire that graduated from that law school in
ten years. Not that its a bad school, but law and especially the law
professoriat is incredibly credentialist. Yes, he got a good Court of Appeals
clerkship, but I'd bet there's members of the Elect (those that had SCOTUS
clerkships) on the market that didn't get tenure track offers this year, much
less offers at Georgetown. Maybe you'd say, well he's going to be great in the
classroom -- students will get an entirely unique perspective. I'm sure that's
true, but law schools don't hire tenure track professors because they'll be
good in the classroom. At best that might be a partial factor in hiring
adjuncts (the primary factor being willingness to take the starvation wages
they pay adjuncts).

All of which I mention just to show that this really does look like putting a
finger on the scale. I grew up in this society, I'm not immune to the pull of
a redemption narrative. It does speak to me, but I think when we step back and
think about it we really shouldn't be favoring people that did things like
commit armed robbery over those that didn't. Even if they paid their debt.
Equal footing, sure, but not better.

~~~
ScottBurson
Without formal training, he wrote a petition for certoriari that was accepted
by the US Supreme Court. That's a hell of an accomplishment, and one that
bespeaks an unusual level of talent. I don't think we have to see this as a
finger on the scale at all.

~~~
rayiner
I think that’s a big part of it. Getting a cert petition accepted puts you in
a small pool of lawyers. Doing it from prison, more than once, without a
SCOTUS clerkship or a stint at the SG’s office to give you insight into the
unique dynamics of that process, shows some talent and also puts him in a
niche that could be valuable to a university like Georgetown.

------
feelin_googley
Even with a felony conviction for armed robbery, he was able to pass the
character and fitness requirements for bar admission. In Washington State.
Wonder how many other states would admit him.

~~~
lsiebert
He did attend a law school and graduate, and was admitted to the bar
afterwards.

"He spent three years with the Cockles in Omaha, completing the undergraduate
degree he'd begun in prison, and continuing to impress the lawyers he worked
with. With their help and against all odds the University of Washington law
school took a chance on him. He won a full scholarship from the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and upon graduation was admitted to the bar."

------
wolco
This shouldn't be shocking and should be more common.

~~~
joering2
I agree with that. We supposed to live in society where people can make
mistakes, learn from them and move on. If you stole a candy at age 14 from a
local store, it is surprise to label you "criminal" at age 35 no?

Just because someone did crime and did time, doesn't mean we should continue
treating them like criminal.

~~~
sushid
> If you stole a candy at age 14 from a local store, it is surprise to label
> you "criminal" at age 35 no?

Where is this point coming from? If you got caught stealing candy at age 14,
you're not going to become a convicted felon. NEVER. When you commit an armed
robbery, I think it's fair to label someone as a former criminal.

~~~
btilly
However if you are caught at 14 with a naked picture of a 13 year old
classmate on your phone, you'll become a convicted sex offender for life.

This is not at all hypothetical. I've seen estimates that 1/4 of all convicted
sex offenders were themselves minors at the time of conviction, and 14 is the
age at which you are most likely to become a registered sex offender. Which
will for the rest of your life affect where you live, what jobs you can take,
and force you to be registered on a database where your neighbors can see that
you're awful but get no useful information about your crime.

As a parent of pre-teens I'm far more concerned about them being caught up in
this life-destroying lottery than I am about, say, their being kidnapped if
they are so unwise as to talk to strangers.

~~~
Clubber
I believe a teen can be convicted of distributing child pornography for
sending a picture of themselves to someone. The legal system terrifies me.

------
kohito
How many "exceptions" have to come to our attention before we change the rule?

Google Dwayne Betts. He is a tour-de-force. He wants to dedicate his life to
helping others, but despite the life he has lived since serving his time in
prison, he was nearly prevented from practicing law in the state of
Connecticut.

"In conversations", he said "lawmakers will look at me and say 'you're an
exception.' Yeah, well, in 2005, I wasn't. And I want to fight for that guy."

You shouldn't have to be as exemplary as Dwayne or this law professor in order
to not be written-off from society.

~~~
msla
One of the worst aspects of "conversational racism", the kind of racism which
manifests itself in talking about attitudes and expression of opinions, is
"but they're one of the good ones": "Oh, I don't like members of group Y,
they're all crooks, but I like that person. They're one of the good ones."

It's so bad because it makes it impossible to refute blanket assertions by
pointing to specific examples. The usual understanding of "the exception that
proves the rule" (not any of the _sensical_ interpretations of that saying,
but _the usual understanding_ of it) is a broader example of this: I have a
blanket assertion, you disprove it by pointing to a contradictory example, and
my belief in that blanket assertion gets _stronger_ , as opposed to _weaker_ ,
due to that thought-terminating cliche.

------
briantakita
Somebody who never robbed a bank did not become a Georgetown law professor.

Was he the most "qualified" candidate for the job or was he the most
"interesting" candidate? Would "interesting" candidates enhance the
institution/world more than a less "interesting" but more "qualified"
candidate?

\---

Edit:

I'm not a domain expert on what makes a strong Georgetown Law Professor. It
seems like he has some publications to his credit.

[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Shon_Hopwood](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Shon_Hopwood)

~~~
mathperson
Did you read the article? It is pretty clear he is quite competent..

~~~
briantakita
I did read the article, & I read his wikipedia page, & I even read some of his
writings. While one needs to write well for the Supreme Court to accept a
case, one also needs an interesting case to write about.

Assuming he is competent for the position, the question is compared to the
competition, is he the strongest candidate? I'm curious over the selection
criteria for the position & what led to Georgetown hiring him, compared to the
other applicants. Was it swayed by his past experiences? Having a scholarship
from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation undoubtedly helps as well.

~~~
Retra
Are you trying find some injustice here? Or are you really trying to compare
what little you know of this person to the nothing you know of all the other
candidates?

I have the number 7 on a card. Is that higher or lower than all the other
numbers I have on cards? Seven is a pretty low number... There's gotta be a
higher number on my other cards, right? Let's reason that one out. I tell you
that seven is highest number amongst the cards I have. Now you'll call that
into question because... seven seems pretty low to you? What do you know that
I do not?

~~~
briantakita
> Are you trying find some injustice here?

I'm just asking questions/reasoning about the selection process.

> There's gotta be a higher number on my other cards, right?

Not implying anything. Since this is an interesting case, it warrants more
scrutiny. It's human nature to pay more attention to things that go against
the norm.

> I tell you that seven is highest number amongst the cards I have. Now you'll
> call that into question because... seven seems pretty low to you?

In this case, I'm asking to see your other cards, or at least get a general
sense over the calibur of other cards. Also, selecting a person/people is also
not as simple as selecting a number. Many factors at play. In the video, the
Georgetown staff gave Mr. Hopwood more credibility for being incarcerated as
"being on the inside". I certainly can understand that.

Of course there's a question of ethics. Perhaps Mr. Hopwood is in a position
to where the risk of him having some latent criminal impulse (or exceptionally
poor judgement) is minimized. I don't fully understand the impact of ethical
responsibilities of a Law Professor. There are certainly many unethical Law
professionals & I'm not implying that Mr. Hopwood is one. However, he does
have a past criminal history, which in his case he may have fully reconciled.
On average, previously convicted felons commit crimes more often than the
general public.

The devil is in the details. I'm sure these are all considerations in the
selection process. Maybe I have some initial reservations, which encourages me
to investigate more.

Having skepticism & looking more into things does not make me a bad person.
Having moral outrage to somebody who asks questions is morally questionable
(in this case) at best; not saying that you are an immoral person. I'll go out
on a limb & posit that Mr. Hopwood would agree with me.

~~~
Retra
My skepticism about the value of your inquiry and your assumptions for what
makes a qualified candidate are "moral outrage", while your skepticism about a
company hiring the optimal employee for its own purposes is just healthy
rationalism triggered by knowing they hired a convict?

