SPRINGFIELD — Larry Hoover’s family members took his case to Gov. JB Pritzker’s office on Saturday as they seek a state commutation for the long-imprisoned Gangster Disciples co-founder, who had his federal sentence cut short days ago by President Donald Trump.
Hoover’s wife, Winndye Jenkins-Hoover, their son, Larry Hoover Jr., and almost a dozen relatives left their meeting with Pritzker’s office saying they were optimistic that the 74-year-old ex-drug kingpin soon could win over the governor and walk out of prison for the first time in more than half a century.
“I think we have a great chance right now,” Jenkins-Hoover said.
Trump commuted the federal life sentence Hoover got in 1998 for running the Disciples’ $100 million-a-year drug trade from prison while serving a separate sentence of up to 200 years for ordering the execution of a rival Chicago gang member in 1973.
But the state sentence stands unless Pritzker commutes it or the Illinois Prisoner Review Board grants clemency.
State Sen. Willie Preston, D-Chicago, stood with Hoover’s family, calling the review process “imperfect” and saying that an exceptional case would be “best dealt with directly by the governor, a swift and immediate decision.”
“If we believe that no one is beyond redemption, then we have to look at the totality of this individual’s life, and I think, if we take all that into context, whether you’re Black, Hispanic, white, you will say that we need to allow this elderly man to come home and have some sense of humanity given back to him,” Preston said.
Supporters have long said Hoover, who renounced the Gangster Disciples in 2022, has had a positive impact through political organizing, food and school-supply drives.
“My father is not the notorious Gangster Disciples leader Larry Hoover. … He’s not a murderer. He hasn’t murdered anyone,” Larry Hoover Jr. said outside the governor’s office in the state Capitol. “He deserves a chance.”
“We just want him to come home so he can have his final days with the love and compassion and respect that we all have for each other, within our family,” Jenkins-Hoover said.
A spokesman for Pritzker said his staff discussed the review board’s clemency process but wouldn’t say whether he’s considering a commutation.
“Free this man,” said state Rep. Marcus Evans Jr., D-Chicago. “His family is doing things on the South Side, West Side, North Side and all over Chicago and this country, helping people, and it’s time now for their father to be unified.”
West Side state Sen. Lakesia Collins said Hoover “is not the same person he was at 22.”
“He is no threat to society,” Collins said. “We’re a state where we say that we’re not for excessive sentencing, We’re a state that believes in second chances. We’re a state that believes in restorative justice, so we have to do that in this case, too.”