Infamous Gangster Disciples founder Larry Hoover’s first court appearance in decades may have been via video link from a prison more than a thousand miles from Chicago, but the judge’s question still hit like a bucket of cold water.
“How many other murders is he responsible for?” U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey asked Hoover’s defense attorney point-blank Thursday, near the end of an hourlong hearing over Hoover’s long-shot bid to reverse his life sentence.
“I don’t know what the methodology is for determining that,” attorney Jennifer Bonjean replied, somewhat taken aback by the unusually blunt query.
“So many we can’t count?” Blakey shot back.
After Bonjean said she couldn’t “put a number on it,” Blakey went a step further and asked if Hoover himself would like to weigh in.
“He probably has the most knowledge of all,” the judge said.
Bonjean said she didn’t want to put her client on the spot, particularly since she couldn’t confer with him in private first. The judge said if she wanted to file anything, to do so before Oct. 7.
The remarkable exchange — which Bonjean later told reporters she felt was “inappropriate” for the judge to instigate — capped a crucial step in Hoover’s yearslong quest to win early release under the First Step Act law passed in 2018, which has already led to reduced sentences for several of his co-defendants.
Federal prosecutors have vehemently opposed such a break for Hoover, arguing he did untold damage to communities across Chicago during his reign on the streets. They argued he has continued to hold sway over the gang’s hierarchy while imprisoned, even promoting an underling he’d secretly communicated with through coded messages hidden in a dictionary.
Hoover’s attorneys, meanwhile, have claimed that decades behind bars have left him a changed man and that prosecutors have unfairly painted him as a puppet master to try to keep him locked up.
Hoover, now 73, had initially been scheduled to appear in person at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, but Blakey later said he would be linked via videoconference, citing “logistical and safety concerns.”
With his family watching from the front row of Blakey’s courtroom gallery, Hoover appeared on a flat-screen monitor seated in a room within the supermax prison compound in Florence, Colorado, that he’s called home for the past two decades. The room appeared to have been dressed up as a faux courtroom with a judge’s bench, an American flag and rows of apparently phony law books behind him.
Sporting a graying beard, black glasses and tan prison garb, Hoover sat quietly and without expression for most of the hearing, his wrists cuffed in front of him. But when Blakey asked if he wanted to say anything on his own behalf, Hoover hunched forward into a microphone and said in a thin voice that he is a “completely different person” than the man devoted to gang life decades ago.
“I have had a chance to reflect on my life and the trouble that my existence has caused in the community,” he said. “Here in (the supermax) you’re locked up at least 21 hours a day. You go away in your cell and reflect on every aspect of your life, and you see things differently. You see things you’re proud of and you see things that maybe you’re not so proud of, and you realize that life is too short.”
If he were released, Hoover said, he would counsel others how to avoid gangs, not join them.
“I just want to say that I would be a credible risk if you were to allow me to go back to the world,” Hoover said.
Hoover’s motion has been pending for years, first before U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber and then Blakey, who inherited the case after Leinenweber died earlier this year. Blakey said Thursday he would entertain any supplemental filings in writing and then rule at a later date.
Hoover was already serving a 200-year state sentence for the murder of a rival when he was indicted in federal court in 1995 on charges he continued to oversee the murderous drug gang’s reign of terror from prison.
He was convicted on 40 criminal counts in 1997, and Leinenweber sentenced him to the mandatory term of life.
“I don’t always agree with the guidelines,” Leinenweber told Hoover during that hearing. “Sometimes I think they are too draconian. But in this case, I agree with them 100%.”
For years, Hoover has been housed in solitary confinement at the supermax prison, which counts a number of high-profile and notorious detainees, including Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Sept. 11 terrorist attack plotter Zacarias Moussaoui, and Jeff Fort, the Chicago gang leader who founded the El Rukns.
In a new motion just hours ahead of Thursday’s hearing, prosecutors alleged that during a prison visit with his common law wife in August, Hoover asked her if his lawyers wanted him to bring a copy of the “Blueprint” to Thursday’s hearing, which the U.S. Bureau of Prisons considers “a blueprint for how to organize a prison gang,” including governing principles, methods of discipline and a membership application.
The motion also revealed that an email message was sent Aug. 26 by a known Gangster Disciples member to 123 fellow gang members in federal prison referring to Hoover as “Dad” and using “coded terminology, in the form of a basketball analogy, to instruct all incarcerated GDs to stay out of trouble and temporarily suspend gang activity” until Hoover gets a ruling in his case.
“IN SUPPORT OF THESE CHALLENGING TIMES, THERE WILL BE ZERO TOLERANCE FOR ANY INCIDENTS ON THE COURT,” the all-caps message read, according to the prosecution filing.
“This communication is deeply concerning,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz wrote. “It demonstrates the continued power high-ranking GD leaders, and specifically Larry Hoover, hold over the GDs (and) underscores the extremely high risk of recidivism and the danger to the community if Hoover is released.”
Bonjean, however, has said it’s the government that has proselytized the myth of Hoover as some arch-criminal who can still command the masses — because it suits their endgame of keeping him locked up.
“It is not in dispute that many people from all walks of life, including politicians, celebrities, community activities and people who self-identify as GDs, support Hoover,” Bonjean wrote in a 2022 court filing. “Indeed, the fact that Mr. Hoover is supported by individuals who are not gang members is what frightens the government the most. The government does not want to see a rehabilitated Hoover. It wants to hold on to its narrative of Hoover as the most notorious dangerous, and violent man on the planet.”
In her argument Thursday, Bonjean requested an evidentiary hearing over the government’s allegations that Hoover continues to be a shot-caller, saying his “blueprint” comment was an innocent question about a document that isn’t about gangs at all, and that the so-called coded dictionary has never been produced by prosecutors.
Bonjean said Hoover should be looked at as a human being, not a monster. He entered prison illiterate and has since earned his GED and taken classes on robotics, art history and the life of Abraham Lincoln, she said. A voracious reader, Hoover “would have a PhD by now if that type of programming was available to him,” according to Bonjean.
She also said it’s “rubbish” to think Hoover is still commanding gang members, some of whom weren’t even born when he entered prison. “If Mr. Hoover is held responsible for every criminal act by those who self-identify as a GD, well then I guess he’s toast,” she said.
During one offbeat moment in the hearing, Bonjean began quoting Chicago-born rapper G Herbo, who said in a 2017 interview that the gang landscape had fragmented so much that there “ain’t no chiefs” on the block “no mo’ ” for Hoover even to command.
Blakey cut her off. “Rap lyrics are not convincing, so move on to your next argument,” the judge said.
When Bonjean said they weren’t lyrics, but a rapper’s public statement, Blakey said, “OK, sounded like you started rapping there.”
The judge did appear skeptical that Hoover could really be running anything from the Colorado prison, however. He told Schwartz at one point it seemed like a “hard ask” for him given the ultra-tight security.
Schwartz acknowledged that the Bureau of Prisons has been “extremely successful in thwarting his ability” to run the gang, but that he’s still trying.
“He continues to have this rank as chairman and he continues to have this power.” Schwartz said. She says in recent gang trials, fellow GDs have testified “across the board” about the current structure of the GDs “with Larry Hoover at the top.”
She said the inmate who allegedly communicated with Hoover through the coded dictionary, Anthony Dobbins, was actually promoted to a higher rank by Hoover while in prison. Dobbins was later convicted in a racketeering conspiracy case out of East St. Louis and sentenced last year to 32 years in prison.
“So that is strong evidence that Mr. Hoover has rank,” Schwartz said. “Even on the inside he is at least trying to keep that contact with known GD members.”
Schwartz also said that Hoover’s life sentence was appropriate, given his place as one of the most dangerous criminals ever prosecuted in Chicago’s federal court.
Even if Blakey were to grant Hoover’s release request, he would not walk free. But he would likely be transferred out of the federal prison system to continue fighting his state conviction from a jail cell much closer to his home.
After the hearing, members of Hoover’s family stood with his lawyers and talked about the emotional experience of seeing him in court, even if just on a screen.
“I felt like he was nervous and I wish he could have said some more things but it was good to hear his voice,” Hoover’s son, Larry Hoover Jr. said.
Hoover’s sister, Diane Cooper, said he hadn’t seen her brother in 40 years.
“So when I heard him speak I broke down in tears, because the last time I spoke to him, his voice was much stronger,” Cooper said.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
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