When an Illinois judge sentenced Larry Hoover to up to 200 years in prison for murder in the 1970s, it was the sort of punishment that seemed destined to end his career as a Chicago gang leader.
But in the decades that followed, prosecutors said, Mr. Hoover’s power only grew as he directed one of Chicago’s most powerful gangs, the Gangster Disciples, from behind prison walls.
Young members would pledge allegiance to Mr. Hoover, whom they called their “king,” and those who broke Gangster Disciple rules, prosecutors said, would face bloody retribution “up to and including murder.” His influence continued to grow into the 1990s, when he was convicted of more crimes in federal court and shipped off to a supermax prison with a life sentence.
On Wednesday, after years of lobbying from Mr. Hoover’s supporters, including celebrities, President Trump fully commuted the federal sentence of Mr. Hoover, according to a White House official familiar with the matter.
The commutation was not likely to bring Mr. Hoover, who is now 74 and largely a memory in his hometown, back to Chicago’s streets. His state prison sentence remains in effect, with a projected parole date of 2062, when Mr. Hoover would be 111. But the president’s decision showed his willingness to extend leniency to some prisoners, despite his frequent rhetoric about the danger of violent criminal gangs.
Jennifer Bonjean, a lawyer for Mr. Hoover, said that the process to commute Mr. Hoover’s sentence had been years in the making. The entertainer Ye, who was formerly known as Kanye West, lobbied Mr. Trump during his first term in office, she said, and others have joined the effort since then.
“There has been a lot of support from advocates who have been preaching ‘Free Larry Hoover’ for a long time,” Ms. Bonjean said.
The process of lobbying Mr. Trump intensified this year, after Alice Johnson, who was sentenced to life in prison in a drug conspiracy case and whose sentence was later commuted by Mr. Trump, was appointed a “pardon czar” in the White House to advise the president on clemency, said Justin Moore, a lawyer for Mr. Hoover.
The phone conversations between Mr. Moore and Ms. Johnson became more frequent in the last four to five weeks, Mr. Moore said, adding that Ms. Johnson had relayed that the president was “very keen on releasing Larry.” White House officials declined to comment on the record.
Mr. Hoover’s legal team received word on Monday that the commutation was going to happen.
“This is an older gentleman who has a lot of health concerns and who has aged out of criminality,” Mr. Moore said.
The specifics of what would happen to Mr. Hoover were unclear on Wednesday evening. Mr. Hoover remained in the federal Bureau of Prisons online directory, and two representatives for the Illinois Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to questions about the case. Mr. Moore said he was hopeful that Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat who is a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, would decide to commute Mr. Hoover’s state sentence. Mr. Pritzker declined through a spokesman to comment.
In Chicago, Mr. Hoover built a highly regimented gang that prosecutors said sold drugs, laundered money and ruled over large geographic territories where nonmembers would have to pay a “street tax” in order to sell drugs, according to a 1995 indictment of Mr. Hoover and other gang members.
“This is in a very real sense an outlaw form of government,” Ronald Safer, the lead prosecutor, told jurors during Mr. Hoover’s federal trial in 1997.
The gang also expanded beyond the drug trade, starting businesses, leading voter registration drives and holding political rallies calling for education reform.
“They registered voters, which is a wonderful thing,” Mr. Safer said during Mr. Hoover’s federal trial. “The problem is, it was funded by drug money and supported by gang muscle.”
In recent years, as Mr. Hoover has sought release from his federal sentence at the restrictive supermax prison in Colorado, his supporters have argued that he has been rehabilitated in prison, that he no longer wishes to lead the Gangster Disciples and that he still faces a long prison term in Illinois.
“He spends 23 hours a day in a concrete cell no larger than a parking space,” his lawyers wrote in a court filing in 2022. “For over two decades, he has had virtually no contact with the outside world. He is, quite literally, buried alive.”
As recently as last fall, prosecutors had taken a dim view of Mr. Hoover’s pleas. They claimed in September that Mr. Hoover “remains the heralded leader of the GDs, despite the intensive monitoring to which he is subject,” and that he was “one of the most notorious criminals in Illinois history.”
And though Mr. Hoover’s state prison sentence in Illinois remains in effect, federal prosecutors said, he could be paroled by a state board in the coming years.
Mr. Safer, who prosecuted Mr. Hoover in federal court and is now in private practice, said in an interview on Wednesday that he had not foreseen that the sentence would be commuted and was struggling to understand the thinking behind it.
Mr. Hoover, he said, “was the undisputed leader of perhaps the largest monolithic criminal organization that this country has ever known,” which had more than 30,000 members in 28 states and was responsible for the sale of over $100 million worth of drugs a year in Illinois alone. Mr. Safer said that he was hopeful that it would be arranged for Mr. Hoover to serve the rest of his state sentence in federal custody.
“I believe in mercy, I believe in redemption, and I believe in rehabilitation,” Mr. Safer said. “But there are some crimes that are so heinous, so reprehensible, that they are not deserving of mercy.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
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