>> shon hopwood: it is. idea was t up very small banks in tiny towns like gresham, where there was no police presence and little risk of armed confrontation. >> shon hopwood: we wanted to get in and out of the bank as quickly as possible, not hurt anyone, grab as much money as we could, and run. and that's basically what we did in all five bank robberies. >> kroft: were you any good at it? >> shon hopwood: no. i did 11 years in federal prison i don't 000. k put out a composite sketch and began closing in. in july 1998, he was apprehended in this omaha hotel, ten months after his first robbery. shon 00,000 in cashaceable to the bank i had just robbed, and multiple guns, and a scanner, and binoculars. >> kroft: they had you?hon hopwt tentiary iil was it dangerous? >> shon hopwd: loto do.ot a >> kft: he doesn't talk abou the things that he witnessed and experienced f prison. he dsn know, and he sees noalue i reliving them-- except for the job he landed in the safety of the legal library, which every federal pri

one of those was written by shon hopwood. >> shon hopwood: and one morning, a friend of mine came running" and what he had was a copy of the "usa today." and i read the article and it said the court had granted john fellers' case. >> kroft: what went through your mind? >> shon hopwood: i was shocked. i was shocked that the court had granted the case, and that i had done something that, you know, lawyers wait their whole lives to do, and done it the first time. >> seth waxman: it's not that unusual for prisoners to file their own petitions. what is freakishly unusual is for one of those petitions to be granted. >> kroft: seth waxman, a prominent appellate lawyer and the former solicitor general of the united states, is not easily impressed. but when he was asked to argue the fellers case before the supreme court, he said he would do it only if shon hopwood would work from prison as part of the team. >> waxman: i wanted him to be involved, because i was really curious. it seemed, actually, almost inconceivable that somebody with his level of education and his level of exposure to the life o