Posted on by TheLaw.net Corporation in Constitutional Law, Video | Comments Off on From Bank Robber To Jailhouse Lawyer To Victor In The Supreme Court, Shon Hopwood’s Memoir “Law Man” Is A Must Read In Post Constitutional America
SEATTLE ~ Prison is a great place to practice law. Everyone has legal problems.
On October 28, 1998, Shon Hopwood pled guilty to several counts of robbing Nebraskan banks and the judge gave him a 10 year timeout. But, as Hopwood explains in his memoir “Law Man” he’s been winning ever since.
The citizenry would be far worse off but for motivated losers like Hopwood.
Take Clarence Gideon who famously scrawled a letter — in pencil — from his Florida prison cell to the Supreme Court of the United States, complaining that he had not been afforded counsel to represent him. Thanks to Gideon, today felony defendants in all state prosecutions are provided counsel.
The untold story of Gideon is that the resulting opinion was a no-brainer for anyone even vaguely familiar with high school civics. And, yet the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, sat on the books for nearly a century before Gideon – a motivated loser – came along in 1965.
During that century the members of various bar associations sat, either silently watching, or paying no attention whatsoever, as millions of their fellow citizens were unconstitutionally tried and convicted under state systems like the one Gideon successfully defeated.
Today every citizen of the United States is subjected to a system whereby our representatives in the national legislature have empowered presidents to kill their fellow citizens with missiles, and otherwise perpetually detain them in military prisons anywhere in the world.
With few exceptions, the real lawyers are not lifting a finger to save you or themselves.
In interviews, Shon Hopwood explains that before entering Federal prison he did not know even one of his civil rights. Had he known, I suspect that on the plains of Nebraska, he might have known how to better leverage those rights on his own behalf, as opposed to robbing the occasional bank at the tender age of 21.
It wasn’t long after Hopwood was delivered to the Oklahoma prison that would be his decade-long home, that he discovered the law library. The one thing that reliably lives and breathes in prison is the law. Every week brings with it a fresh collection of judicial opinions. Read enough of them and you learn to read between the lines.
Better than any film or novel, these opinions chronicle the ups and downs of the American Experiment. They detail the stories of motivated losers; motivation being the critical characteristic that causes one to run the gauntlet that is Federal appellate process.
My “reward” for having my term of Federal imprisonment declared unconstitutional, representing myself, and earning a separate order for immediate release, was that at resentencing I could have been given even more time. That’s not what happened, but it could have. It’s happened to many others. It’s completely legal. Judges and prosecutors can be vindictive in the face of public embarrassment and the law provides cover. These factors give one pause for thought when considering an appeal, especially when the maximum – as in my case – was 225 years and all you can think about is getting home and, for starters, getting your wife and two young sons off welfare.
Hopwood did not scrawl a letter to the Supreme Court. He waived his rights when he pled guilty. Nonetheless, he mastered Federal criminal procedure, turned himself into a competent Federal appellate litigator and in exchange for commissary, started helping his fellow prisoners.
Most prisoners can’t read. Accordingly, they serve their time unaware that their case is riddled with errors. More than one prisoner was fortunate to have his files reviewed by Shon Hopwood; not the least of whom was Bill Fellers.
Hopwood not only drafted the brief accepted by the Supreme Court in Fellers v. United States, which nudged the needle in the direction of the citizenry, but upon release he won the girl of his dreams and admission to law school at the University of Washington.
The downside of Hopwood’s nominal fame is that he has been subjected to much public ridicule at the hands of anonymous Seattle residents who believe he should not have been admitted to law school. These people believe that someone who has not seen what Hopwood has seen are, by definition, more worthy of admission. They believe Gates should dole his money out only to those individuals who have never been convicted of a felony.
That’s Zero Tolerance America. That’s Mandatory Minimum America. That’s the America that has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners caged in recidivist factories. It’s the America that stands mute and unaware as the United States Senate votes 93-7 to empower presidents to perpetually detain citizens without a judge and jury. It’s the America that believes chains, locks and bombs are the ticket to freedom, even as our fearless leaders obtain tacit permission from the International Criminal Court to commit their war crimes.
Shon Hopwood knows a higher truth. He knows that free people live the First Amendment and prisoners live the entire Bill Of Rights. He knows that if you need the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments, you are probably in custody. He knows that regardless of who you are when you enter Federal prison, if you’re paying attention at all, you come out a civil libertarian. He knows that the dark side of the Bill of Rights is that it functions as a User Manual for officialdom when it elects to take your property, your liberty, or your life. He knows the pages of that manual — long neglected by the people — are tattered and torn.
Hopwood was given plenty of time to reinvent himself and as a result, this motivated loser, is committed to helping others who may not be so motivated. That’s why Bill Gates is paying his tuition.
I suspect today Hopwood can tell you that the First Amendment is forty-two words. I suspect he can tell you — in order — the five injunctions we the people imposed on the Government when we wrote the First Amendment. I suspect he may be able to recite the First Amendment by heart.
Can you?
Next time you hear a fellow citizen whine about those “endless appeals,” remind them that we the people – today more than ever — depend on the occasional unelected Federal judge to overrule the legislative and executive branches. Ask them if they seriously want to live in a nation where 100% of the accused are convicted and the non-accused are droned. Remind them of citizens like Clarence Gideon, Shon Hopwood, Michael Santos, myselfand others, who, notwithstanding their twenty-something peccadilloes, somehow managed to find a path that allowed them to provide for themselves, their families and society, even as that some society forever marginalizes us as felons.
Then read your Bill Of Rights, appreciate how little it takes to be looking at 10 years in Federal priso — see, Suspect Returned Used Enemas to Florida CVS — and be thankful that you’re living only the First Amendment.
————————- NOTE: I did not write a book about my experiences with the Federal criminal justice system. However, I wrote and toured a show for five seasons, then turned it into a professionally produced film, which streams here for free. You will need popcorn.
“It is a sad reality that in the ten years since the first detainees were brought to Guantanamo Bay not a single one has been fully tried or convicted of any crime. Despite this, the Government has fought to deny detainees the ability to challenge their indefinite detentions through habeas proceedings.” ~U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth
168 Muslims sit behind bars in Cuba. The courts have cleared more than 50% for immediate release. Yet, there they sit.
Every day for the past 11 years — over repeated objections of two presidents and their attendant party faithful — Muslim prisoners have been knocking on the Federal courthouse door, thereby indirectly laboring to ensure that your Bill of Rights remains intact.
They call them “detainees” because “prisoners” have rights. We call that “good lawyering.”
On September 18, 2001, President Bush signed a law authorizing the individual who happens to be president to kill citizens of the United States with Hellfire Missiles. The law does this by placing no limits on what a president can do once he yells: “Terrorist!”
Given the unlimited authority Congress handed presidents, it should come as no surprise that today the President actually kills citizens with Hellfire Missiles, and that he reserves the right — under the same law — to do the same on U.S. soil.
It should come as no surprise that one of these presidential missiles incinerated a 16 year old boy from Denver. It should come as no surprise that no speaker at either convention mentioned the name: Abdulrahman Awlaki. It should come as no surprise that when a reporter cornered the President in Ohio on Thursday and was like: “WTF with assassinating citizens?!” (paraphrasing) — the President lied.
It doesn’t get anymore transparent than that.
The President doesn’t want you to know that:
he can kill you
he can fit you with an ankle bracelet
he doesn’t want you to know — Gun Nut Alert — that he can take your guns
he can order the Secretary of the Treasury to freeze your assets
his defense lawyer is in Federal court in New York likening you — an innocent citizen — to a Nazi.
But, this is the President we’re going to have until January 2017, so I’m going to be writing about for the benefit of the nation’s two or three remaining civil libertarians.
Politicians like their citizens stupid. They like you like Todd Akin likes his women — helpless. They want you reciting the Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance; not the First Amendment. They don’t want you to know that a subset of the 1,000 or so Federal judges scattered across America, actually await the opportunity to push the Reset Button.
The Homeland Battlefield Provision is what you get when you look to politicians for the love you never had from your father. But, when you’re that needy — that co-dependent — it should come as no surprise when Daddy no longer guarantees you a grand jury or an indictment or a lawyer or Miranda or a judge or a trial or discovery or cross-examination or privacy or property rights.
That’s how is was in the United Stats from 1776-1791. No Bill of Rights. Those were fifteen bad years. And, that’s exactly where we are today. The President can apply the Bill of Rights, or not. In other words, no rule of law.
“Judge Lambert is completely right in his insistence that the administration respect the rule of law.”
I am so moved.
It would have been nice for the Times to mention Abdulrahman Awlaki in the 7,000 word brochure it published advertising the President’s Assassination Program. See, Secret Kill List Tests Obama’s Principles.
It’s about shaping your relationship with war, so that you never question the fact that war — in this case, the final war — is on you. If this is not the tipping point to awaken the citizenry — and it doesn’t seem to be — grab the SPAM, head for the hills and put a fork in the so-called “American Experiment.”
Against the foregoing absurd backdrop Chris Hedges is fighting back.
Earlier this year, Hedges filed a lawsuit against the United States, for the purpose of nullifying the Homeland Battlefield Provision of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which specifically authorizes presidents to perpetually detain citizens of the United States — without trial — just like we do the Muslims in Guantanamo.
GTMO is nothing but a beta-site for U.S. citizens, and that’s all it’s ever been.
In Hedges, Benjamin Torrance, the President’s defense lawyer, has gone out of his way to ensure the court that while citizens may well be detained not “indefinitely,” but “perpetually,” under military authority, they are guaranteed access to habeas review.
Not “indefinite,” but “perpetual.” Isn’t that clever? Mr. and Mrs. Torrance must be so proud.
What the President’s lawyer never reveals, is that it his client who decides the terms and conditions under which you have access to legal advice, thereby reducing to zero the chance that any habeas review will be meaningful, even under the kangaroo rules governing military tribunals.
Now you know why they don’t have cameras in Federal courts. (What they really need are showers.)
Quick backstory: In 1995, I was released from Federal prison — no — not for stabbing an anonymous commenter.
When I was 28 — 25 years ago — I gave the bank a couple of tax returns that were not what they appeared to be and the judge gave me a three year timeout. I can’t say for sure whether I am the first citizen to serve time when his payments were current. All I can say is that I’ve been reading law for 25 years and it is possible.
Today I actually own my very own copy of the law, which I rent to the lawyers. God bless them, every one!
As a broke, bankrupt, high school graduate with a young family on welfare — representing myself— instead of doing 1,600 days as the Government proposed at sentencing, I won a couple of appeals and ended up serving 700 days on the installment plan; 15 months in, two years out pending further litigation (because, “yes” my original sentence was that unconstitutional) and then six months back in to serve what I like to call “the balance due.”
In all, I did time in five Federal prisons, including maximum security, due to a clerical error by the people in shipping and receiving.
Instead of working out in the gym, I worked out in the law library. Upon release, I had the opportunity to collaborate with F. Lee Bailey in a bank fraud case involving a functionally, illiterate defrocked bank president with an eighth grade education.
You need a license to cut hair. Turns out, any asshole can be a bank president.
The probation officer predictably forbid me to work on Federal criminal cases, even under the supervision of real attorneys and I filed suit. The judge did not issue the injunction as requested. However, from the bench, he told the United States to leave me alone and that was that.
Even with the protection of the Bill of Rights, it is a lifestyle choice to not plead guilty and do battle with the DOJ; largest law firm in the world. U.S. citizens amount to 5% of the world’s population. But, when aggregated, the 50 states and the Feds house 25% of the world’s prisoners. That’s still not lopsided enough for the Risk Management Industrial Complex.
The United States has unfortunately chosen to close ranks on the citizenry. If there is a less conspiratorial language to describe the situation, I am all ears. It is a fact, that three days after 9-11 your representatives permanently collapsed the legislative branch into the executive branch. Three days after 9-11 the vote was 518-1 to authorize presidents to kill you with a missile or whatever.
On New Year’s Eve, President Obama signed a law that says he can throw you in jail for up to — and including — forever without trial. The vote in the senate was 93-7, and in a total absence of any pretense, they called it “The Homeland Battlefield Provision.”
Doesn’t get anymore transparent than that.
The occasional willing judge is the only thing that stands between the citizenry and the strong executive presidents to become. On Thursday, Judge Lambert ripped into the President, noting that your First Amendment right to “access the courts means nothing without access to counsel.”
Duh.
Chris Hedges also found a willing judge, by the name of Katherine Forrest (an Obama appointee), who in May issued a preliminary injunction against the President, barring enforcement of the Homeland Battlefield Provision. The President’s response to the preliminary injunction is that he can lock you up anyway, under the 9.18 law he uses to kill citizens with missiles. His lawyer says the impact of the injunction on the actions of the President is “nil.”
And, he’s right — for now.
Every law is constitutional — no matter how unconstitutional — until a judge says otherwise. This is why every citizen and organization who directly relies on the First Amendment for their living — every preacher, every artist, every reporter, every author, every lawyer — needs to bury the Department of Justice with lawsuits of the sort Chris Hedges filed when he became the first citizen to attempt to end the Homeland Battlefield Provision, and of the sort I filed last year, when I became the first — and only — citizen to sue the United States for the purpose of ending our nation’s unconstitutional participation in the Libyan Civil War.
The only thing the politicians fear is a willing judge. Go find one. It’s change you can believe in.
SEATTLE ~ Prison is a great place to practice law. Everyone has legal problems.