On the March 4 broadcast of 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft interviews Shon Hopwood, the newest criminal law professor at the prestigious Georgetown Law School. But what’s most interesting about Hopwood is his past. The 42-year-old originally from the small farming community of David City, Nebraska served a 12-year sentence for armed robbery at the federal correctional institution in Pekin, Illinois. After graduating from high school Hopwood went to Midland University on a basketball scholarship but according to 60 Minutes “partied his way out of it in one semester” and “drank himself through a two-year hitch in the Navy.” It didn’t get better when he returned to David City, where he lived in his parents’ basement, and made a meager living shoveling cow manure. One night, the 19-year-old Hopwood and a friend planned to rob a string of small local banks.
When Kroft asks Hopwood if he was any good at robbing banks, Hopwood says; “No. I did 11 years in federal prison for stealing $150,000. I don’t think that’s good.” The silver lining in the story is that in jail Hopwood discovered he had a head for law. In addition to his work at Georgetown, Hopwood is the co-founder of Prison Professors. Kroft helps Hopwood tell his tale of redemption on 60 Minutes which airs Sundays at 7pm on CBS.
