Larry Hoover, founder of a notorious Chicago street gang who has spent the past three decades in solitary confinement in federal prison, was granted clemency by President Donald Trump on Wednesday — but his legal troubles are far from over.
Hoover’s six life-term federal sentences have been commuted to time served, but he will serve the remainder of a 200-year sentence in state prison for the 1973 murder of 19-year-old William “Pooky” Young, a neighborhood drug dealer.
Trump granted a round of clemency applications that included Hoover, founder of the Gangster Disciples.
Hoover, 75, has been incarcerated in a maximum security federal prison in Florence, Colorado, since 1997 and will be transferred back to an Illinois state prison. His attorneys with the Bonjean Law Group said in a statement to ABC News that they are “thrilled” that Trump answered Hoover’s clemency request.
His federal sentence for conspiracy, extortion, and money laundering charges stemmed from his leadership of the Gangster Disciples since the late 1960s. Hoover operated a free lunch program for children in low-income neighborhoods throughout Chicago, and his influence trickled down across generations, especially into hip-hop culture.
Lance Williams, professor of Urban Community Studies at Northeastern Illinois University, acknowledges that while the wiping out of Hoover’s federal charges would hold significant symbolic weight in Chicago, the impact on young people at the street level would be minimal.
“It’s important to understand that the Gangster Disciples, like all other historical Chicago Black street organizations like the Stones, Vice Lords and others of today, bear little resemblance to the hierarchical organization that existed prior to Mr. Hoover’s fed[eral] conviction,” Williams told Capital B.
“The traditional gang structure has radically fractured into decentralized, horizontally organized cliques with no central leadership, often functioning more as factions than as structured street organizations.”
The contemporary conditions of the Chicago street scene were thrust into the limelight in the early 2010s, when then-teenager Chief Keef popularized the subgenre of drill rap, which captured the raw violence and chaotic turf wars of a more disjointed gang landscape.
Beyond the symbolic significance, Williams said a commutation of Hoover’s federal sentence could still carry tangible value.
“Mr. Hoover’s potential release could offer an opportunity for restorative justice and public reflection on the deeper structural force, such as concentrated poverty, housing displacement, and failed public policies — that have contributed to Chicago’s violence problem far more than any single individual,” he said.
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But as another pardon recipient from Gary knows all too well, a presidential commutation does not always mean complete freedom.
“It took 52 years for them to allow Larry Hoover to get a second chance,” said Charles “Duke” Tanner, a former professional boxer from Gary who also received a pardon from President Trump this week.
Tanner, who was released from prison in 2020 after Trump commuted his life sentence for possessing and conspiring to distribute cocaine, received a full pardon this week. The full pardon means he will no longer have to report to a parole officer.
The push for Hoover’s freedom initially reached presidential heights through hip-hop in 2018 when rapper Kanye West visited the Oval Office and appealed directly to Trump for him to commute Hoover’s sentence. Later, in 2021, West and rapper Drake set aside a long-standing beef to perform together and host a “Free Larry Hoover” benefit concert at the L.A. Coliseum, which was streamed live on Amazon Prime.
Trump also issued 16 pardons and five other commutations this week. Since taking office for a second term in January, he has granted clemency to nearly 2,000 people.