He co-founded Prison Professors, a blog about the criminal justice system, and he wrote a memoir called “Law Man.” When he was younger, he robbed five banks in rural Nebraska. He then served ten years in federal prison, where he discovered that he loved the law after helping out other prisoners. He became an astonishingly successful jailhouse lawyer: two of his cert petitions, including Fellers v. United States, were granted by the Supreme Court. He’s now an accomplished appellate practitioner.