Count Troy Hopkins among the minority who empathize with pit bulls and Michael Vick.

As someone who spent a decade behind bars for a crime he did not commit, Hopkins bristles at a public rushing at linebacker speed to judgment about the quarterback's guilt.

"I've personally been a victim of the judi cial system," he said. "And I've suffered at the hands of people who falsely accused me."

Hopkins, 40, owns a Vick jersey. But he's also a fan of pit bulls, including his own pet, Mufasa. So Vick will get no sympathy from him if he was involved in the hanging, drowning, shooting or electrocution of poor-performing pit bulls.

"If Michael Vick is guilty in any way of dogfighting . . . I feel he should be punished to the greatest strength of the law."

Hopkins is uncomfortable at how this issue is playing out in some quarters -- particularly in a black community he says can be insensitive to the horrors of dogfighting.

"I think that the general consensus to a certain extent is, 'They're just dogs,' and more focus is being put on, 'Is this going to affect Michael Vick's football career?' And I don't think that's right. But I also don't think it's right that the media and merchandisers have basically crucified Vick and nailed him to the cross."

Hopkins was convicted in December 1991 of murder in the July 1990 slaying of Curtis Kearney and was sentenced to 28 years in prison. After he was tried, several witnesses said Hopkins had not killed Kearney, and in 1992 another man confessed to the slaying.

In 1994, an appeals court threw out Hopkins' conviction and ordered a new trial. But that ruling was subsequently reversed and Hopkins remained in prison until he was paroled in 2001.

In 2005, Gov. Mark R. Warner pardoned Hopkins, who lives in Chesterfield County with his wife, Kathy, and has a car-detailing business.

Mufasa is his second pit bull. For him, the fascination with pit bulls is "the power and the strength associated with them. And I think that stems from me growing up as the underdog."

"I come from very, very humble beginnings," said Hopkins, whose roots in South Richmond's Blackwell community are likely similar to Vick's in Newport News public housing. "We were poor. And I witnessed a lot of forms of making money, the hustle. I've learned not to knock a person's hustle."

But dogfighting? "I think that's one of the most cowardly forms of hustling," he said. "To truly mistreat animals to that extent for financial gain, that's despicable. There's too many other ways to earn a living."

He does not come by this distaste by accident. He witnessed a dogfight in 1990 in a Richmond backyard.

"I made'em break it up," he said. "They had to use a two-by-four and jam it between the dogs' mouths, almost breaking their teeth, to get them to release each other.

"To witness it is almost like watching two men fight with teeth," he said, noting that the dogs fight mostly on their hind legs. "You can hear the sounds of bones crushing. It was gruesome."

He trained Mufasa not to fight, and describes the 4-year-old as so gentle that he wouldn't harm an intruder. And he sees irony in the shifting perceptions about a lionized athlete and a disparaged breed of dog.

"It seemed like pit bulls were the worst species on Earth," Hopkins said. "And now everyone is coming to the aid and rescue of pit bulls."
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.