June 2, 2025
Larry Hoover’s family is seeking state clemency to help the Gangster Disciples co-founder secure his freedom for the first time in over 50 years.
After receiving federal clemency from Donald Trump, Larry Hoover’s family has turned to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to seek a state commutation for the Gangsters Disciples co-founder.
The Hoover family visited Gov. Pritzker’s office May 31 to advocate for the release of Hoover, 74, after more than five decades behind bars, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Hoover’s wife, Winndye Jenkins-Hoover; their son, Larry Hoover Jr.; and nearly a dozen family members left Pritzker’s office feeling hopeful that the former drug kingpin and reformed gang leader may soon gain the governor’s support and reclaim his freedom.
“I think we have a great chance right now,” Jenkins-Hoover said.
State Sen. Willie Preston, D-Chicago, showed his support for Hoover’s family by joining them for the visit and calling the review process into Hoover’s clemency process on the state side “imperfect.”
Preston agrees that a case as sensitive as Hoover’s is “best handled directly by the governor through a swift and decisive action.”
“If we believe that no one is beyond redemption, then we have to look at the totality of this individual’s life, and I think, if we take all that into context, whether you’re Black, Hispanic, white, you will say that we need to allow this elderly man to come home and have some sense of humanity given back to him,” Preston said.
The office visit came days after Trump commuted Hoover’s federal life sentence, issued in 1998, for running the Gangster Disciples’ $100 million-a-year drug operation from behind bars while already serving up to 200 years for ordering a rival gang member’s murder in 1973.
Hoover remains incarcerated under his state sentence unless Pritzker commutes it or the Illinois Prisoner Review Board grants clemency.
“My father is not the notorious Gangster Disciples leader Larry Hoover…He’s not a murderer. He hasn’t murdered anyone,” Larry Hoover Jr. said. “He deserves a chance.”
“We just want him to come home so he can have his final days with the love and compassion and respect that we all have for each other, within our family,” Jenkins-Hoover said.
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