President Donald Trump on Wednesday commuted the life prison sentence of Larry Hoover, the notorious co-founder of the Gangster Disciples street gang, the White House confirmed.
The White House did not share details of the commutation, but Hoover attorney Justin Moore said Trump commuted Hoover’s sentence to time served. He still faces essentially life in prison on a state murder conviction.
“We did what so many said was impossible,” Moore told the Sun-Times by text message. “We got Larry Hoover out of federal prison.”
Moore also wrote that “the federal government has done its part. Now it’s time for the State of Illinois to finish the job.”
Hoover still has a state-court murder sentence to serve, and Illinois prison officials have previously said he’d likely serve it in the federal system. An Illinois Department of Corrections official could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.
For now, prison records show Hoover is still being held in the so-called supermax facility in Florence, Colorado.
The news comes eight months after U.S. District Judge John Blakey heard a mercy bid from Hoover. The judge challenged Hoover’s attorneys during that hearing, asking “how many murders is he responsible for?”
Hoover’s lawyers ultimately responded by asking the judge to disqualify himself from the case. Blakey hasn’t ruled in the months since.
Hoover and David Barksdale created the Gangster Disciples in the late 1960s, ruling as “King Larry” and “King David” until Barksdale was killed in 1974.
Hoover was convicted of 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.
Eventually, Hoover was charged in federal court with 40 crimes, including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, and a jury found him guilty on May 9, 1997.
The late U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber handed down Hoover’s life sentence in 1998, telling him he’d misused a “gift” from God.
Wallace “Gator” Bradley, a former Gangster Disciples enforcer and longtime advocate for Hoover’s release, said he prays that Gov. JB Pritzker follows suit to commute Hoover’s life sentence for murder in Illinois.
“I think it should have happened under Biden. They should have done it under Barack Obama,” Bradley says. “I commend Trump for doing it.”
Bradley says the last time he spoke to Hoover was 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 says.
This is a developing story.
