A day after Donald Trump’s stunning decision to commute the federal life sentence of Larry Hoover, lawyers for the Chicago-born Gangster Disciples founder were singing the president’s praises while Chicago’s new FBI boss told the Tribune he “deserves to be in prison.”
Trump abruptly ended Hoover’s long quest to win early release under the First Step Act by granting a full commutation of his sentence Wednesday afternoon, directing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to release him “immediately,” according to a copy of the document provided by Hoover’s legal team.
But Hoover is still serving a 200-year sentence for his state court conviction for murder, making him likely to stay behind bars.
“The President of the United States has the authority to pardon whoever he wishes,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Douglas DePodesta said during an interview on unrelated topics. “I think Larry Hoover caused a lot of damage in this city and he deserves to be in prison and he will continue to be imprisoned in the state system.”
As of Thursday, Hoover was still stationed at the supermax prison compound in Florence, Colorado, that he’s called home for the past two decades, and his release date in online prison records had changed to “UNKNOWN.”
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the plan for his release.
On Thursday afternoon, one of Hoover’s lead attorneys, Justin Moore, told the Tribune he was stationed nearby the prison in Colorado hoping to hear any word. “We’re in limbo,” he said.
Moore also said he’d spoken with an elated Hoover earlier in the day — describing his typically even-keeled client as “jubilant.”
“He’s always been not too much up or down,” Moore said. “This was the first time I’ve seen him genuinely happy, and he expressed great optimism for the future. It’s a day that we’ve constantly talked about since the first First Step briefings and hearings eight or nine years ago.”
Moore praised Trump for making the move, which he said Biden had also considered but rejected.
“The president showed a great deal of courage in making the decision he did,” Moore said.
Others, meanwhile, were not so jubilant that Hoover may be coming back to Illinois one step closer to freedom.
DePodesta, who took over the Chicago Field Office in August, told the Tribune on Thursday his agents will be on the lookout for any increased gang activity.
DePodesta, who spent years as an FBI special agent in Chicago tasked to cartels and gang investigations, said that when Hoover was in the supermax setting, it was “very hard to communicate out of there.”
“With any gang, we always will continue to work our confidential human sources, our technical sources to determine if there is a spike in gang activity…this will be no different,” he said.
Trump’s intervention in Hoover’s case is the latest in a small parade of notable Chicago-area defendants the president has granted clemency to, most notably the commutation of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s 14-year prison sentence for corruption in February 2020, which he followed five years later with a full pardon.
Near the end of his first term, Trump also granted a full pardon to Casey Urlacher after a personal pitch from his brother, former Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, on charges related to an illegal sports gambling ring in 2021, and commuted the 20-year sentence of Chicago-area nursing home mogul Philip Esformes, who was convicted of cycling elderly, destitute and drug-addicted patients through his network of facilities and billing millions of dollars to government programs.
While Trump has not commented directly on his decision on Hoover, the effort to get the president’s attention goes back years and involved several celebrity pitches, including a bizarre, highly publicized meeting with Chicago rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, in the White House.
At the meeting, West, a vocal Trump supporter, urged Trump to free Hoover, describing him as a man who was turning his life around when law enforcement went after him and calling him a “living statue” to African Americans. The meeting was also attended by Moore.
Following the news of Hoover’s commutation Wednesday, West posted to social media, “WORDS CAN’T EXPRESS MY GRATITUDE FOR OUR DEVOTED ENDURING PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP FOR FREEING LARRY HOOVER.”
Hoover’s case also has a connection to Alice Marie Johnson, a criminal justice reform advocate and Trump’s new “pardon czar” who was granted clemency for drug trafficking charges by Trump in his first term. Johnson’s clemency petition was pushed heavily by Kim Kardashian, Kanye West’s then-wife, who used her husband’s connections to get face-time with Trump at the White House.
Moore said Thursday that even though Trump took no action on Hoover’s case in his first term, Hoover’s legal team “stuck with it” and circled back a few weeks ago with a new clemency petition that laid out how Hoover “without question is rehabilitated, he’s reformed and his risk of recidivism is nearly zero.”
He said comments like those by DePodesta were “postering” of law enforcement without an understanding of the science behind rehabilitation.
One of the nation’s largest street gangs, the Gangster Disciples became a major criminal force under Hoover’s leadership, with operations that spread to dozens of U.S. cities and were as sophisticated as many legitimate corporations, including a strict code of conduct for members and a franchise-style system for drug sales.
But they were also notoriously brutal, using violence and murder as a way to keep rivals at bay and even punish members who went astray.
Hoover was convicted in state court in 1973 of the murder of William Young, one of Hoover’s gang underlings who was shot to death that same year after he and others had stolen from gang stash houses. He was sentenced to 200 years in prison.
In the early 1990s, before Hoover was charged in federal court, former Chicago Mayor Eugene Sawyer lobbied the IDOC parole board on his behalf, arguing that Hoover could help stem Chicago’s street violence if he were allowed to return home, the Tribune reported at the time.
Hoover was indicted in federal court in 1995 on charges he continued to oversee the murderous drug gang’s reign of terror from prison. He was convicted on 40 criminal counts in 1997, and then-U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber sentenced him to the mandatory term of life.
For years, Hoover has been housed in solitary confinement at the supermax prison in Colorado, which counts a number of high-profile and notorious detainees, including Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Sept. 11 terrorist attack plotter Zacarias Moussaoui, and Jeff Fort, the Chicago gang leader who founded the El Rukns.
Meanwhile, Hoover was still listed Thursday in online state prison records for Dixon Correctional Center in western Illinois — the same prison where he continued to run the Gangster Disciples before being convicted on federal charges in the 1990s — with a parole date of October 2062.
The Illinois Prisoner Review Board last year heard arguments for Hoover’s release, but ultimately denied the request, records show. The review board won’t hear his case for another four years, records show.
Hoover could also petition Gov. JB Pritzker for clemency — a move that would also come with a recommendation to the governor from the Prisoner Review Board.
In one of his social media posts after Hoover’s commutation Wednesday, Moore said the effort to end his federal sentence was “all faith, legal precision, and relentless determination.”
“6 life sentences. Beneath the Rocky Mountains. Gone. Just like that,” he said. “Chicago, it’s your turn. Illinois must send him home for good.”
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
