Lawyers for Gangster Disciples founder Larry Hoover want the judge to resign after ‘intimidating’ comments

Attorneys representing Gangster Disciples founder Larry Hoover filed a motion Friday asking the judge overseeing Hoover’s request for release from a life sentence to recuse himself because of his “intimidating” and “completely inappropriate” comments during a hearing previous week.

The request focuses on the unusual way U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey questioned defense counsel about “other murders” Hoover may have committed, as well as an unusual moment when the judge shut down an argument from lead attorney Jennifer Bonjean, saying that it sounded like she was ‘picking up’.

The 13-page motion accused Blakey of showing “actual prejudice” against Hoover by siding with the prosecution’s argument that Hoover is responsible for far more violence than his conviction crimes suggest, even though he spent decades incarcerated served in a supermax prison.

“This court should recuse itself and grant Mr. Hoover a proceeding before a judge who is not only factually impartial, but also a judge who is not compromised by the appearance of impartiality,” said the motion signed by Bonjean and Texas-based attorney Justin Moore. . “Mr. Hoover deserves that, his family and friends deserve that, as does the community at large which, quite frankly, would welcome Mr. Hoover home.”

The recusal request comes as Blakey, a former Cook County and federal prosecutor who was appointed to the federal bench in 2014, oversees another high-profile case: the successful racketeering trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, which starts next week.

It also marks a new twist in Hoover’s yearslong quest for parole under the First Step Act law passed in 2018 and which has already led to reduced sentences for several of his co-defendants.

Federal prosecutors have strongly opposed such a break for Hoover, arguing that he has caused untold damage to Chicago communities during his rule on the streets. They argued that he continued to control the gang’s hierarchy during his captivity, even promoting a subordinate with whom he had secretly communicated through coded messages hidden in a dictionary.

Hoover’s lawyers, meanwhile, have argued that decades behind bars have left him a changed man and that prosecutors have wrongly portrayed him as a puppet master in an effort to keep him locked up.

Blakey took over Hoover’s case after the death of U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber in June. Before Thursday’s hearing, Hoover, now 73, appeared on a flat-screen monitor in a room at the supermax prison complex in Florence, Colorado, that he has called home for the past two decades.

The first moment highlighted in the motion to rescind came when Bonjean began quoting Chicago-born rapper G Herbo, who said in a 2017 interview that the gang landscape was so fragmented that there were “no chiefs” on the streets anymore and that older gangsters like Hoover won’t “come onto my block” and start giving orders.

Blakey interrupted her. “With all due respect, rap lyrics are not persuasive, so move on to your next argument,” the judge said.

When Bonjean said they weren’t lyrics, but a rapper’s public statement included in a defense expert’s report, Blakey said, “Okay, it sounded like you started rapping there.” I’m sorry.”

According to the defense motion, Blakey’s tone was mocking.

“The undersigned attorney has been a lawyer for 25 years; she is a member of the bar in three states,” the motion said. “She’s not a rapper.”

Near the end of the hour-long hearing, Blakey dug into the prosecutor’s argument that Hoover had “decimated and destroyed tens of thousands of lives with violence, addiction and murder.”

Then Blakey asked Bonjean point blank, “How many other murders is he responsible for?”

“I don’t know what the methodology is for determining that,” Bonjean replied, somewhat surprised by the unusually blunt question.

“So many we can’t count?” Blakey shot back. “I have to assess it, so I ask you… What is your assessment, as an officer of the court?”

After Bonjean said she “couldn’t put a number on it,” Blakey “continued in a vaguely intimidating tone” and begged her to answer the question, Bonjean said in the motion.

“So I ask, this is the last time I ask, and you can either answer the question or you can avoid it,” Blakey said. ‘But I’m going to ask you a question for the third time. According to your assessment, as an officer of the court, how many murders is he responsible for?

Blakey then went one step further and asked if Hoover himself would like to participate.

“He’s probably the most knowledgeable of them all,” the judge said.

As Hoover sat silently on the video screen, Bonjean said she didn’t want to bring up her client, especially since she couldn’t consult with him privately first. The judge concluded by saying that he did not intend to appear “disrespectful,” and that if Bonjean wanted to submit a written response, he should do so by October 7.

In her motion, Bonjean said that by repeating the phrase “officer of the court,” Blakey wanted to convey that she had “a duty to the court to make a truthful assessment of the number of unindicted murders for which her client is ‘responsible.’ was’, in a public hearing. without the protection of Miranda warnings.

Hoover was already serving a 200-year prison sentence for the murder of a rival when he was indicted in federal court in 1995 on charges that he continued to oversee the murderous drug gang’s reign of terror from prison.

He was convicted of forty crimes in 1997 and Leinenweber sentenced him to the mandatory life sentence.

In her plea Thursday, Bonjean requested an evidentiary hearing on the government’s allegations that Hoover remains 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 encrypted dictionary was never produced by prosecutors.

Bonjean said Hoover should be seen as a human being, not a monster. He went to prison illiterate and has since earned his GED and taken classes on robotics, art history and the life of Abraham Lincoln, she said. Hoover, a voracious reader, “would have been promoted by now if that kind of programming was available to him,” Bonjean said.

She also said it is “nonsense” to think Hoover is still in command of gang members, some of whom were not even born when he entered prison. “If Mr. Hoover is held responsible for every criminal act by those who identify themselves as a GD, then I think he’s toast,” she said.

However, the judge seemed skeptical that Hoover could actually run everything from prison in Colorado. He told Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz that at one point it seemed like a “tough question” 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 is still trying.

“He still has this rank as chairman and he still has this power.” Schwartz said. She says fellow GDs have testified in recent gang trials “across the board” about the current structure of the GDs “with Larry Hoover at the top.”

Schwartz also said Hoover’s life sentence was appropriate, given his place as one of the most dangerous criminals ever prosecuted in Chicago federal court.

Blakey has not said when he plans to rule on Hoover’s request for relief.

Even if Blakey allowed it, he wouldn’t walk free. But he would likely be transferred out of the federal prison system to continue his state sentencing from a prison cell much closer to his home.

Meanwhile, when the judge asked Hoover Thursday if he wanted to say something on his own behalf, Hoover leaned into a microphone and said in a thin voice that he is a “completely different person” than the man who was committed to gang life decades ago. .

“I’ve had a chance to reflect on my life and the problems my existence in the community has caused,” he said. “Here in (the supermax) you are locked up for at least 21 hours a day. You go into your cell and think about every aspect of your life, and you see things differently. You see things you’re proud of and you see things you might not be so proud of, and you realize that life is too short.

If released, Hoover said, he would advise others on how to avoid and not join gangs.

“I’m just saying that I would pose a credible risk if you allowed me to go back into the world,” Hoover said.

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