Some community and elected leaders on Chicago's South Side are calling on Gov. JB Pritzker to offer clemency to former Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover one day after his federal sentences were commuted by President Donald Trump.
Hoover was convicted of running his gang operation in the nineties while behind bars for a 1973 murder in Illinois.
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WATCH HEREHis supporters on the South Side want the Illinois Prisoner Review Board and the governor to act on his case, claiming he’s a redeemed man and he transformed behind bars.
“I think there’s a mass pressure here for JB to show that he believes in redemption,” said Ja’Mal Green, Hoovers’ family friend and community activist. “If we’re going by what he claims he believes and the policies that he has signed on with his pen then Larry Hoover represents that. This is merely politics if JB Pritzker does not use a stroke of his pen.”
74-year-old Hoover was serving six life sentences in a supermax federal prison in Colorado when Trump commuted him.
The former kingpin is now waiting to be transferred back to Illinois to continue to serve up to 200 years for the 1973 murder of William Young.
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“My response is very sensitive to any victim of any act of crime, but I have to go back to 50 years of penal system, which was designed for rehabilitation and at one point do we give a second chance,” asked Alderman Stephanie Coleman of Chicago’s 16th Ward.
NBC 5 Investigates found Hoover was denied parole in 2022. The Illinois Prisoner Review Board read letters from the victim’s family written in 2008 protesting his release. The board also weighed his patterns of reported crime in their vote and decision.
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SIGN UP “I think if the Prisoner Review Board looks at the totality of this situation, I think that they will make a recommendation for the governor to provide a clemency to Mr. Hoover,” said state Senator Willie Preston, Illinois’ 16th District.
Senator Preston grew up in Englewood and penned a letter to his constituents Wednesday saying the focus now should be on the man Hoover has become.
“I understand folks on both sides some who quite frankly felt a lot of pain, but also those who can believe in the power of redemption,” Preston said.
NBC Chicago reached out to Governor JB Pritzker’s office for a comment. We are told Hoover would have to petition the Prisoner Review Board before clemency could be considered.
