Hot Pursuit, Deliberate Speed: God and Law Man

Shon Hopwood, author of Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption, has a testimony essay at Christianity Today: "God's Hot Pursuit of an Armed Bank Robber." 

The essay opens: "It didn't take a moment of genius introspection to realize that doing life my way had led to nothing but disaster and destruction. It was the summer of 2009, and I had just completed an almost 11-year sentence in federal prison for my role in five bank robberies I had committed as a foolish young man."

The story that follows is so improbable that it would make for lousy fiction if it were not true. But it makes for spirit-affirming real-life testimony. 

The essay concludes: "Through it all, from the amazing to the mundane, God loved us. Through it all, God has given us a purpose. For me that purpose revolves around repentance, loving my wife and children, sharing the grace I've been given, and using my legal knowledge to assist those who cannot afford a decent attorney. Looking back over the course of my life, I can see that although I rarely returned the favor, God hotly pursued me."

Mr. Hopwood's choice of legal metaphor is apt. The doctrine of hot pursuit in criminal law authorizes the police to chase someone into an area where there would otherwise be a reasonable expectation of privacy, in order to apprehend him, if the police have probable cause to believe that he committed a serious crime.

Mr. Hopwood's testimony is about a God who keeps up the chase, who never relents. It brings to mind another famous legal phrase, "deliberate speed." The source for this phrase, deliberately ambiguous as used in Brown II, may have been Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven," in which it means something entirely different from what it was taken to mean in implementing Brown. (Interestingly, the phrase "with all deliberate speed" appears to have been put in Brown II at Felix Frankfurter's urging, although he credited Holmes with the phrase. Holmes, in turn, said he derived it from English chancery practice. But Frankfurter could not find any such source.)

(HT: Fulton Sheen--"The two great dramas of life are the soul in pursuit of God and God in pursuit of the soul." Whenever I think of The Hound of Heaven, I can hear Archbishop Sheen's voice reciting it. If anyone knows of a link to an online version of Sheen reciting verses from the poem, I would be most grateful to learn of it. For now, here's RIchard Burton's recitation.)