A criminal justice reformer who advocated for criminal defendants “is facing murder charges after cops found a dismembered body inside a Bronx apartment — with the accused killer caught on surveillance video disguised in a blond wig at the scene of the crime,” reports the New York Post. He had previously served time in prison for a series of robberies:
Sheldon Johnson, a 48-year-old staffer for the public law firm Queens Defenders, was led out of the 44th Precinct stationhouse in handcuffs Thursday after police made the grisly discovery — a human torso in a blue bin and a head stashed in a freezer in the sixth-floor apartment, police said.
He was held without bail at his arraignment Thursday night. Johnson, an ex-con, was featured in Joe Rogan’s podcast and rubbed elbows with VIPs like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg…The victim in this week’s slaying, identified as 44-year-old Collin Small, may have had a beef with Johnson while both were doing time at Sing Sing prison in Westchester County.
Neighbors told cops the victim was heard desperately pleading with his killer shortly before two shots rang out in the apartment…
“Please don’t,” the doomed man was heard saying. “I have a family!”….
Johnson started working as a client advocate at the public defender’s office in Queens sometime after being released from prison in 2019 after serving 20 years for a series of armed robberies in 1999.
Since the death of George Floyd, there has been an explosion in the number of “criminal justice reform” groups, many of which support abolishing prisons and the police. Taxpayers and big foundations support many of these groups.
As Swann Marcus observes, “There are state funded police abolitionist nonprofits with sex criminals and convicted murderers on the board and unsurprisingly they often go on to offend again. There’s an NGO called Freedom Project in Seattle that had a convicted murderer staff member commit another murder.” “When I say “staff member” I mean he was hired for an executive position like 8 months after getting out of prison for homicide. Their current Operations Director, Aretha Sconiers, “went to prison in 2001 for kicking her 3 year old daughter to death.”
A criminal justice reformer who helped pass legislation to release inmates early was later arrested for “beating his wife on numerous occasions and inflicting injuries that required treatment at a hospital,” reported the National Law Journal. Shon Hopwood was the “poster child” for early releases of inmates, having gone from being an imprisoned bank robber, to later becoming a prominent law professor. “He played a role in the passage of the landmark criminal justice reform bill known as the First Step Act.” Hopwood allegedly broke his wife’s finger and tooth. “I received bruises all over my body,” his wife said in an affidavit.
Some press reports have suggested that Shon Hopwood overcame economic disadvantages and humble origins, by becoming a law professor. But in reality, Hopwood was not disadvantaged, was not of humble origin, and did not turn to a life of crime because of any disadvantages. Jill Cockson notes this, in claiming at the National Jurist that Hopwood is a sociopath:
Shon’s sociopathic tendencies have been visible since high school. His story has been well-curated to sell the beloved ‘come back kid’ narrative. The problem with his come back story is that there was nothing to come back from. He came from privilege. He had supportive parents. He had a full- ride, athletic scholarship to college that he wasted. He squandered opportunity with the U.S. Navy.
He was cruel to his siblings. He was cruel to friends and schoolmates. He was cruel to animals. He got off on seeing others afraid. I witnessed his reckless behavior endanger the lives of others on multiple occasions, all while he laughed, maniacally. I wasn’t a bit surprised to learn of the bank robberies; Shon seemed to derive sheer joy from seeing others truly terrified. It’s sad that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t work to find a more deserving candidate to send to law school – perhaps someone who never got a first chance, as opposed to someone who pissed away several.
Hopwood committed his additional alleged violence at age 48, and after being incarcerated for 11 years and then released. This suggests that offenders reoffend even after substantial periods of incarceration, and even after youth passes.
Criminal justice “reform” groups have mistakenly claimed that keeping people in prison who were sent there “a decade ago” does “very little, if anything, to maintain safety.” But even after ten years of incarceration, criminals often commit still more crimes after they are finally released. 57.5% of federal prisoners incarcerated for at least ten years for violence were rearrested after being released, according to a 2022 report from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Crime rates do fall with age, but not that rapidly. The U.S. Sentencing Commission found that even among inmates over age 60, 25.1% of violent offenders were rearrested for new offenses after their release.
Rearrest rates are even higher for inmates who got off with a short sentence. Inmates in state prisons tend to serve much shorter sentences than inmates in federal prisons convicted of a similar offense. And inmates released from state prisons have even higher recidivism rates than those release from federal prisons.
Nationally, 81.9% of all state prisoners released in 2008 were subsequently arrested within a decade, including 74.5% of those 40 or older at the time of their release — although that data was not specific to Virginia, which historically had a recidivism rate below the national average. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners in 24 States Released in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018), pg. 4, Table 4).
As the Daily Mail points out, Shon Hopwood “was profiled by Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes as a stellar example of how some criminals deserve a second chance.” But even this supposedly “stellar” example of a reformed inmate appears to pose a danger to those around him.
Offenders often commit more crimes after being released. Last year, a transgender murderer was arrested for killing again at age 83 after two prior murder convictions. 76-year-old Albert Flick killed a woman, stabbing her at least 11 times while her twin children watched. He had been incarcerated for 25 years for killing his wife by stabbing her 14 times in front of her daughter.
19-year-old Kenneth McDuff shot and killed two boys while on parole, then killed a girl after raping her and torturing her with burns and a broomstick. After being paroled years later at the age of 43, he killed additional women — perhaps as many as 15 of them.
