Larry Hoover took a big step toward freedom Wednesday.
But he’s not a free man.
That’s even after President Donald Trump commuted the life prison sentence of the 74-year-old co-founder of the Gangster Disciples, who’s been held for decades in the so-called supermax prison in Colorado.
Hoover still has a state-court murder sentence to serve. It’s not even clear if Hoover will leave federal prison. But Trump ordered him to be released “immediately.”
Only eight months ago, a judge seemingly dashed a mercy bid by asking Hoover’s attorneys “how many murders is he responsible for?” Now Hoover’s supporters are celebrating, and his attorneys are pressing for Gov. JB Pritzker to follow Trump’s lead and commute Hoover’s life sentence for murder in Illinois.
“The federal government has done its part,” Hoover attorney Justin Moore told the Chicago Sun-Times in a text message. “Now it’s time for the State of Illinois to finish the job.”
Others seemed to be left grappling for an explanation. Former federal prosecutor Ron Safer, who led the Gangster Disciples prosecution, told the Sun-Times that he did not “understand why Hoover, among all of the people in federal custody, is worthy of this result.”
“In a state that spawned Al Capone, I do not believe that there’s a more notorious or prolific criminal than Larry Hoover,” Safer said.
It’s unclear whether an October 2018 meeting between Chicago rapper Kanye West and Trump in the Oval Office influenced the president’s decision. But with Moore in the room, West encouraged the president to commute Hoover’s sentence.
Trump didn’t seem to know who Hoover was.
“What did he do? Larry? What happened?” Trump asked.
“Larry Hoover is a living statue,” West told the president, explaining that Hoover is “an example of a man that was turning his life around.”
“Larry Hoover spent nearly three decades in solitary confinement under the harshest conditions this country has to offer,” Moore said in his text Wednesday. “And yet, he emerged with clarity, humility, and a commitment to peace and transformation.”
Hoover’s son, Larry Hoover Jr., posted on Instagram Wednesday: “Almost home!! Too short to hold a long conversation.”
Hoover and David Barksdale created the Gangster Disciples in the late 1960s by merging two street gangs. They ruled as “King Larry” and “King David” until Barksdale was killed in 1974.
Meanwhile, Hoover ordered the execution of William “Pooky” Young, whom Hoover suspected of stealing from Hoover’s drug stash houses. Another gang member shot Young in the head six times and dumped his body in an alley on Feb. 26, 1973.
Hoover was convicted of the murder after a trial in December 1973, and a judge sentenced him to 150 to 200 years in state prison. That didn’t stop Hoover from running the gang, though. At its height in the early 1990s, prosecutors say the Gangster Disciples brought in about $100 million a year in drug sales under Hoover’s leadership.
Hoover was careful not to talk business during his jailhouse phone calls. So in 1993, authorities got a judge’s permission to monitor conversations by placing transmitters in visitor badges given to gang leaders who would go see Hoover in person.
Eventually, Hoover was charged with 40 crimes, including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, and a federal jury found him guilty of all charges on May 9, 1997.
U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, who died last year, handed Hoover the life prison sentence in 1998, telling Hoover that he’d misused a “gift” from God.
The former gang leader then wound up in the supermax. He remained there Wednesday, according to prison records.
Others who have served life sentences there include Ted Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber”; Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombing accomplice; and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, the Sinaloa drug cartel kingpin.
Hoover has been challenging his federal sentence for years under the First Step Act, a law Trump signed during his first term. Leinenweber handled some of those proceedings before his death, and he asked whether the state prison system could “handle Hoover?”
State prison officials responded by calling Hoover a “unique security challenge” while speculating on the possible end of his prison sentence.
“Out of an abundance of caution and for the purpose of ensuring Mr. Hoover’s personal safety, if released to the [Illinois Department of Corrections] he will be housed outside of Illinois,” they told the judge. “In fact, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has already agreed to house Mr. Hoover for the remainder of his state sentence if necessary.”
That was in 2020. An IDOC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a Chicago Sun-Times inquiry on Wednesday.
To seek clemency in Illinois, Hoover will have to petition the Prisoner Review Board, according to the governor’s office.
Hoover’s legacy here is complicated. Though tied to violence and murder, some say Hoover also had a positive impact through political organizing, food and school-supply drives and generally bringing structure to people’s lives.
He renounced the Gangster Disciples in 2022.
Wallace “Gator” Bradley, a former Gangster Disciples enforcer and longtime advocate for Hoover’s release, said he prays that Pritzker follows Trump’s lead and commutes Hoover’s murder sentence.
“I think it should have happened under Biden,” Bradley said. “They should have done it under Barack Obama. I commend Trump for doing it.”
Bradley said he last spoke to Hoover in 2014, when Bradley was in Mississippi on a tour for his book, “Murder to Excellence: Growth & Development for the Millennial Generation.”
“His wife had him on a speaker phone and he was telling people to stop the violence,” Bradley said.
Robert Angone said he once was a Chicago police tactical sergeant on the South Side and knew Hoover before he was locked up for murder in the early 1970s.
“We had several encounters with him. He was always respectful,” Angone said. “But we all knew how dangerous he was. He had a bigger army than any gang leader in Chicago history. He ruled with an iron gun. He had dope, policy and gun runners by the hundreds.”
Safer called Trump’s clemency for Hoover an “injustice.” He said Hoover’s gang was responsible for “countless murders,” and his criminal organization was “broader and deeper than any the state has known.”
“I believe in mercy,” Safer said. “I believe in redemption. I believe in rehabilitation. … I also believe that there are some crimes that are so notorious, so heinous, so pervasive that they are not capable of mercy.
“And there are few of those, thankfully. But Larry Hoover’s crimes fit that description.”