Lawyers representing Gangster Disciples founder Larry Hoover filed a motion Friday asking the judge overseeing Hoover’s request for release from a life sentence to recuse himself due to his “intimidating” and “entirely inappropriate” comments at a hearing last week.
The request focuses on U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey’s unusual line of questioning of defense counsel about “other murders” Hoover may have committed, as well as an off-beat moment where the judge cut off an argument by lead attorney Jennifer Bonjean, saying it sounded like she was “rapping.”
The 13-page motion accused Blakey of showing “actual bias” toward Hoover by siding with a prosecution argument that Hoover is responsible for far more violence than his crimes of conviction suggest, even though he’s been locked away in a supermax prison for decades.
“This court should recuse itself and permit Mr. Hoover a proceeding before a judge who is not only actually unbiased, but a judge who is not compromised by the appearance of impartiality,” the motion signed by Bonjean and Texas-based attorney Justin Moore read. “Mr. Hoover deserves that, his family and friends deserve that, as does the community at large who frankly would welcome Mr. Hoover home.”
The recusal request comes as Blakey, a former Cook County and federal prosecutor who was appointed to the federal bench in 2014, is overseeing another high-profile case: the blockbuster racketeering trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, which kicks off next week.
It also marks another twist in Hoover’s yearslong quest to win early release under the First Step Act law passed in 2018, which has already led to reduced sentences for several of his co-defendants.
Federal prosecutors have vehemently opposed such a break for Hoover, arguing he did untold damage to communities across Chicago during his reign on the streets. They argued he has continued to hold sway over the gang’s hierarchy while imprisoned, even promoting an underling he’d secretly communicated with through coded messages hidden in a dictionary.
Hoover’s attorneys, meanwhile, have claimed that decades behind bars have left him a changed man and that prosecutors have unfairly painted him as a puppet master to try to keep him locked up.
Blakey took over Hoover’s case after U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber’s death in June. For Thursday’s hearing, Hoover, now 73, appeared on a flat-screen monitor seated in a room within the supermax prison compound in Florence, Colorado, that he’s called home for the past two decades.
The first moment raised in the motion to recuse came when Bonjean began quoting Chicago-born rapper G Herbo, who said in a 2017 interview that the gang landscape had fragmented so much that there are “no chiefs” on streets anymore and that aging gangsters like Hoover won’t “finna come on my block” and start giving orders.
Blakey cut her off. “With all due respect, rap lyrics are not convincing, so move on to your next argument,” the judge said.
When Bonjean said they weren’t lyrics, but a rapper’s public statement that was incorporated into a defense expert’s report, Blakey said, “OK, sounded like you started rapping there. I’m sorry.”
The defense motion said Blakey’s tone was mocking.
“Undersigned counsel has been a lawyer for 25 years; she is a member of the bar in three states,” the motion said. “She is not a rapper.”
Near the end of the hourlong hearing, Blakey delved into the prosecution’s argument that Hoover “decimated and destroyed tens of thousands of lives with violence, addiction and murder.”
That’s when Blakey asked Bonjean point-blank: “How many other murders is he responsible for?”
“I don’t know what the methodology is for determining that,” Bonjean replied, somewhat taken aback by the unusually blunt query.
“So many we can’t count?” Blakey shot back. “I have to assess it, so I’m asking you…As an officer of the court, what’s your estimate?”
After Bonjean said she couldn’t “put a number on it,” Blakey “continued in a vaguely intimidating tone” to implore her to answer the question, Bonjean said in the motion.
“So I’m asking — this is the last time I’ll ask, and you can answer the question or you can avoid it,” Blakey said. “But I’m going to ask you a question the third time. In your review, as an officer of the court, how many murders is he responsible for?”
Blakey then went a step further and asked if Hoover himself would like to weigh in.
“He probably has the most knowledge of all,” the judge said.
As Hoover sat silently on the video screen, Bonjean said she didn’t want to put her client on the spot, particularly since she couldn’t confer with him in private first. The judge ended by saying he did not mean to come across as “disrespectful,” and that if Bonjean wanted to file an answer in writing, to do so before Oct. 7.
In her motion, Bonjean said that by repeating the phrase “officer of the court,” Blakey intended to convey she “had a duty to the court to truthfully estimate the number of uncharged murders her client was ‘responsible’ for,” in open court without the protection of Miranda warnings.
Hoover was already serving a 200-year state sentence for the murder of a rival when he 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 Leinenweber sentenced him to the mandatory term of life.
In her argument Thursday, Bonjean requested an evidentiary hearing over the government’s allegations that Hoover continues to be a shot-caller, saying his “blueprint” comment was an innocent question about a document that isn’t about gangs at all, and that the so-called coded dictionary has never been produced by prosecutors.
Bonjean said Hoover should be looked at as a human being, not a monster. He entered prison illiterate and has since earned his GED and taken classes on robotics, art history and the life of Abraham Lincoln, she said. A voracious reader, Hoover “would have a PhD by now if that type of programming was available to him,” according to Bonjean.
She also said it’s “rubbish” to think Hoover is still commanding gang members, some of whom weren’t even born when he entered prison. “If Mr. Hoover is held responsible for every criminal act by those who self-identify as a GD, well then I guess he’s toast,” she said.
The judge did appear skeptical that Hoover could really be running anything from the Colorado prison, however. He told Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz at one point it seemed like a “hard ask” for him given the ultra-tight security.
Schwartz acknowledged that the Bureau of Prisons has been “extremely successful in thwarting his ability” to run the gang, but that he’s still trying.
“He continues to have this rank as chairman and he continues to have this power.” Schwartz said. She says in recent gang trials, fellow GDs have testified “across the board” about the current structure of the GDs “with Larry Hoover at the top.”
Schwartz also said that Hoover’s life sentence was appropriate, given his place as one of the most dangerous criminals ever prosecuted in Chicago’s federal court.
Blakey has not said when he intends to rule on Hoover’s request for relief.
Even if Blakey were to grant it, he would not walk free. But he would likely be transferred out of the federal prison system to continue fighting his state conviction from a jail cell much closer to his home.
Meanwhile, when the judge asked Hoover on Thursday if he wanted to say anything on his own behalf, Hoover hunched forward into a microphone and said in a thin voice that he is a “completely different person” than the man devoted to gang life decades ago.
“I have had a chance to reflect on my life and the trouble that my existence has caused in the community,” he said. “Here in (the supermax) you’re locked up at least 21 hours a day. You go in your cell and reflect on every aspect of your life, and you see things differently. You see things you’re proud of and you see things that maybe you’re not so proud of, and you realize that life is too short.”
If he were released, Hoover said, he would counsel others how to avoid gangs, not join them.
“I just want to say that I would be a credible risk if you were to allow me to go back to the world,” Hoover said.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
