Timothy Sowinski, 57, was found unresponsive at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday morning and he died after lifesaving measures failed to revive him, according to a news release from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Sowinski was sent to the high-security prison on Sept. 29 for a supervised release violation.

The cause of death is unknown. The FBI was notified of the in-custody death, the news release stated.

Sowinski needed treatment for multiple psychiatric and medical conditions, including schizoaffective disorder, drug and alcohol abuse, ADHD and neck, back and foot pain, according to a judgment document filed in January in federal court.

Sowinski to bank robbery and attempted bank robbery in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The most recent sentence was for violating his probation conditions.

The last inmate to die at the Florence penitentiary was a 43-year-old Maryland man who also was found unresponsive. That .

The two-page order said Hoover’s sentence was considered served “with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions,” and directed the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to release him “immediately,” according to a copy of the document provided by Hoover’s legal team.

The controversial move — part of a slew of clemency actions announced by the White House this week — appeared to have already sparked Hoover’s transfer out of the supermax prison compound in Florence, Colorado, that he’d called home for the past two decades.

But Hoover isn’t going free — he’s still serving a 200-year sentence for his state court conviction for murder. Officials with the Illinois Department of Corrections have previously said they would push for Hoover to finish his state sentence in federal prison due to security concerns.

On Wednesday afternoon, Hoover was listed in online state prison records as an inmate at Dixon Correctional Center in western Illinois, though it was unclear if he’d already made it there. The records show a parole date of October 2062.

In a statement to the Tribune, Hoover’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, called Trump’s decision “a historic development” after years of fighting in federal court.

“The courts have demonstrated a complete unwillingness to consider Mr. Hoover’s rehabilitation,” Bonjean wrote. “Sometimes the courts do not do the right thing. But thanks to the work of so many advocates and supporters keeping Mr. Hoover’s voice alive and ultimately the president taking action to deliver justice, we are thrilled to see Mr. Hoover released. Now it¶¶Òőap time for the IDOC to do the right thing.”

An IDOC spokesperson could not immediately be reached.

Once one of the nation’s largest street gangs, the Gangster Disciples became a major criminal force under Hoover’s leadership, with operations that spread to dozens of U.S. cities and were as sophisticated as many legitimate corporations, including a strict code of conduct for members and a franchise-style system for drug sales.

“They had armies of lawyers and accountants. They had their own clothing line, music promotion company, political action committee. They had a structure that helped them insulate the leaders from the drugs and the guns,” Ron Safer, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Hoover in the 1990s, told the Tribune in 2012.

For years, Hoover has been housed in solitary confinement at the supermax prison in Colorado, 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.

The Illinois Prisoner Review Board last year heard arguments for Hoover’s release, but ultimately denied the request, records show. The review board won’t hear his case for another four years, records show.

Addressing board members last year, Hoover said he is a 73-year-old man who views the world much differently than when he went into prison, records show. A summary of his statements to the board said, “He regrets the wrong choices that he has made and the harm he has caused.”

“He argues that he is not a threat to the community, and that he will not do what he once did,” the summary of Hoover’s statement continued. “He would not make the same mistakes, and he admits today that he did make those choices in the past.”

Trump’s order was by the news site NOTUS.

Reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, Hoover’s sister, Diane Cooper, said, “I’m just happy. (Trump) did a very good thing.”

“They can say what they want,” Cooper, 70, said. “I’m behind him 100%. He needs to be home. Right is right and wrong is wrong.”

Cooper said she didn’t know “anything” about a state sentence that might keep her brother behind bars. Representatives of Gov. JB Pritzker’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Hoover’s son, Larry Hoover Jr., posted a photo to his Instagram account Wednesday afternoon of someone holding up Trump’s signed order with the words “Almost home!!” and two praying-hands emojis.

Federal prosecutors have vehemently opposed any breaks for Hoover, now 74, 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.

At a hearing last year, U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey asked Hoover’s defense attorney point-blank: “How many other murders is he responsible for?”

“I don’t know what the methodology is for determining that,” attorney 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.

At that hearing, which Hoover attended via a live link from prison, he told the judge he’s “had a chance to reflect on my life and the trouble that my existence has caused in the community.”

“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,” Hoover said. “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.

Blakey had not yet ruled on Hoover’s motion.

Hoover was convicted in state court in 1973 of the murder of William Young, one of Hoover’s gang underlings who was shot to death that same year after he and others had stolen from gang stash houses. He was sentenced to 200 years in prison.

In the early 1990s, before Hoover was charged in federal court, former Chicago Mayor Eugene Sawyer lobbied the IDOC parole board on his behalf, arguing that Hoover could help stem Chicago’s street violence if he were allowed to return home, the Tribune reported at the time.

Hoover 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 then-U.S. District Judge Harry 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%.”

Before last year’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 at the time. “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.”

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.

But Hoover’s lawyers argued it¶¶Òőap 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 activists 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.”

Bonjean argued in the September hearing that 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¶¶Òőap “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.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

ckubzansky@chicagotribune.com

scharles@chicagotribune.com

Robert Hanssen, the former FBI agent caught selling damaging secrets to the Russians during and after the Cold War, died of natural causes last month inside Colorado’s notorious Supermax prison, the El Paso County coroner found.

An autopsy conducted by the coroner ruled Hanssen, 79, died of metastatic colon adenocarcinoma — or colon cancer.

He was found dead in his cell June 5 at the U.S. Penitentiary ADMAX in Florence.

Hanssen has been called the . The FBI agent, throughout the 1980s and ’90s, provided highly classified national security information to the Russians in exchange for more than $1.4 million in cash, bank funds and diamonds.

He was arrested in 2001 and . The following year, a federal judge  him to life without parole, sparing him the death penalty.

Since 2002, Hanssen has been housed at the notorious Florence prison known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” home to some of the country’s highest-risk inmates.

Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who sold secrets to the Soviet Union in exchange for cash and diamonds, died Monday morning in the Supermax prison in southern Colorado. He was 79.

Prison staff at the United States Penitentiary Florence ADMAX in Florence found Hanssen unresponsive around 6:55 a.m., the Bureau of Prisons said in a news release. They attempted life-saving measures before pronouncing him dead, the release stated.

No staff or other inmates were injured, prison officials said.

Hanssen has been called the .

Using the alias “Ramon Garcia” with his Russian handlers, Hanssen provided highly classified national security information to the Russians in exchange for more than $1.4 million in cash, bank funds and diamonds.

His intel compromised dozens of Soviet personnel who were working for the United States — some of whom were executed.

Investigators say he gave the Soviets plans for how the U.S. would react to a nuclear attack and shared secret American operations for eavesdropping, surveillance and interception of communications.

Beginning in 1985, Hanssen used “encrypted communications, ‘dead drops,’ and other clandestine methods to provide information to the KGB and its successor agency, the SVR,” according to the . Overall, the FBI agent gave the Russians more than 6,000 pages of documentary material.

With FBI training as a counterintelligence agent, Hanssen went undetected for years.

In a letter to the Russians, Hanssen said he was inspired as a teen by the memoirs of Kim Philby, a British double agent.

“I decided on this course when I was 14 years old,” Hanssen allegedly wrote in the letter, cited in the FBI’s 2001 .

A former FBI agent who knew Hanssen in 2001 that Hanssen’s goal was “to play the spy game better than anybody’s ever played it before. He wants to be the best spy ever.”

The FBI and CIA realized in the 1990s that they had a mole within the intelligence community. It began with the 1994 arrest of , a CIA case officer who was passing secrets to the Russians with the help of his wife.

In 2000, the agencies made a breakthrough. They had original Russian documentation of an American spy who appeared to be Hanssen. With the agent set to retire, the intelligence apparatus wanted to catch him in the act.

On Feb. 18, 2001, FBI agents followed Hanssen to a park in Vienna, Virginia. The 56-year-old double agent was clandestinely placing a package under a wooden footbridge — a pre-arranged “dead drop” site for pickup by his Russian handlers, investigators said.

Hanssen was arrested and .

“This kind of criminal conduct represents the most traitorous action imaginable against a country governed by the rule of law,” FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said at the time.

Hanssen pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy. In May 2002, a federal judge , sparing him the death penalty.

“I apologize for my behavior,” a gaunt Hanssen told the court. “I am shamed by it. Beyond its illegality, I have torn the trust of so many. Worse, I have opened the door for calumny against my totally innocent wife and our children. I hurt them deeply. I have hurt so many deeply.”

Since July 2002, the former FBI agent spent his days inside the notorious Florence prison known as “Alcatraz of the Rockies.” The nation’s highest security prison holds some of the country’s highest-profile offenders, including El Chapo, the Mexican drug kingpin; Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. Unabomber Ted Kaczynski also was previously housed at the Colorado facility.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

At about 12:05 a.m. Thursday, staff at the , Florence, found 47-year-old Frederick James Ashley in an “unresponsive” state, according to a news release.

Staff “initiated life-saving measures” and Ashley was taken by emergency medical services to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Ashley was sentenced in Oregon to a 22-year term at Supermax for armed bank robbery, the release stated. He has been in custody since July 14, 2017.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been notified of his death.

The lawsuit also alleges the U.S. falsely claimed Marco Paredes-Machado was a member of the ISIS terrorist group in order to justify moving him to the maximum-security prison in Florence.

“The United States Constitution prohibits the use of torture to coerce an individual to talk. Yet this is exactly what the government did to Marco Paredes-Machado,” attorneys wrote in the 45-page complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Denver.

The lawsuit, which seeks a jury trial, alleges Paredes-Machado was tortured in January of 2011 by Mexican authorities — in Mexico at a “black site” — on behalf of the U.S. government, including being beaten and waterboarded.

Paredes-Machado is described in the lawsuit as a “plaza boss,” akin to a regional distribution manager, or middle management, for the cartel.

“Plaza bosses do, however, have access to organizational information,” according to the lawsuit, filed by the Frank Law Office LLC of Denver. “The acquisition of information from the middle echelons of a cartel’s hierarchy is a significant part of intelligence gathering for U.S. drug investigations.”

On Nov. 9, 2005, the United States charged Paredes-Machado with conspiracy to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms (2,204 pounds) of marijuana. The charge was made to extradite Paredes-Machado to the United States and “extract intelligence,” make him talk, about the Sinaloa Cartel, according to the lawsuit.

It took about six years for him to be brought into custody in Mexico, where he was held until Sept. 9, 2015, when he was extradited to the United States to face the drug conspiracy charge.

On Sept. 30, 2019, Paredes-Machado pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute more than 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of cocaine and 1,000 kilograms of marijuana for importation. He was sentenced, on Feb. 5, 2020, to 22 years in prison.

Prior to the plea, Paredes-Machado was held at a low-security prison in the United States. After entering the plea, Craig Wininger, an assistant U.S. attorney, emailed Paredes-Machado inquiring whether he would talk to the government about cartel “violence occurring on or near the border.”

Paredes-Machado agreed to meet Wininger and Seth Gilmore, with the Justice Department’s narcotics and dangerous drugs section, on the condition that they’d meet in Detroit, where he was being held, according to the complaint. Paredes-Machado was scheduled to be transferred to a Bureau of Prisons facility near Tucson, and he feared that if the meeting was in Arizona, cartel members would find out “and would violently retaliate against him and his family.”

Through an attorney, Paredes-Machado agreed to speak only about another cartel, La Linea, and not the Sinaloa Cartel to which he belonged.

The meeting didn’t take place and instead Wininger and Gilmore, who are named as defendants in the lawsuit, “created, coordinated and executed a plan” to have Paredes-Machado transferred to the Administrative Maximum U.S. Penitentiary, or ADX, in Florence, also known as Supermax.

Completed in 1994, Supermax — known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies — is the nation’s highest security prison, where most of its 400-plus inmates are alone for 23 hours a day in 7-by-12-foot reinforced concrete cells. Prisoners eat all meals in their cells, and most cells have a shower and a toilet, minimizing the need for inmates to leave.

“The goal of this plan was to establish maximum leverage for the government before the meeting to coerce Mr. Paredes-Machado into revealing information in exchange for a chance at release from the torture that is confinement at ADX,” the complaint said.

The Bureau of Prisons is also named a respondent in the lawsuit.

The complaint alleges the government at first falsely identified Paredes-Machado as a member of the ISIS terrorist organization to justify moving him to Supermax. The lawsuit claims a hearing officer then instead amended a report with “false allegations” identifying Paredes-Machado as a “notorious” cartel member, “second only to Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman,” the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel who is imprisoned at Supermax.

At the time of his drug conviction sentencing, Paredes-Machado had no prior criminal history, he was classified as a low-security prisoner, and he was not written up for any disciplinary sanctions while in custody in the United States or Mexico, according to the lawsuit.

The Bureau of Prisons transferred Parades-Machado to ADX on or about March 15, 2021.

On June 3, 2021, Paredes-Machado agreed to talk with the U.S. government after he was imprisoned “in the country’s most restrictive facility,” the complaint said.

“In so doing, defendants violated Mr. Paredes-Machado’s First Amendment right not to be coerced into waiving his First Amendment right not to speak to the government about events that took place outside the prison walls,” according to the filing. “At ADX, Mr. Paredes-Machado ultimately agreed to hear out the government. Nevertheless, he remains incarcerated at ADX.”

No other cartel “plaza bosses” with drug convictions are serving sentences at ADX, according to the complaint.

Nearly a third of the 476 correctional officer positions at the Florence Correctional Complex near Cañon City are unfilled, according to the officers’ union, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1169.

The number of unfilled positions at the complex — which houses up to 2,369 inmates in four prisons — is likely to jump from 136 to more than 155 after Jan. 1 due to retirements and resignations, union president John Butkovich said.

The lack of correctional officers means teachers, cooks and maintenance workers are filling in on guard duty and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons is bringing in officers from other facilities across the country for weeks-long stints to fill gaps, Butkovich said.

The correctional officers have dealt with short staffing for years due to low pay and a long, bureaucratic hiring process, the union leader said. But the current situation is the worst he’s seen in his 12 years working at the facility, where two inmates were killed in homicides in the last three months.

“We can’t sustain a normal workforce,” Butkovich said. “You have the most secure prison system in the country and it is one of the least staffed.”

The Florence Correctional Complex encompasses four facilities: a minimum-security facility, a medium-security correctional institute, a high-security penitentiary and the nation’s only Supermax facility. The Supermax prison houses criminals like Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and Mexican cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera.

The Bureau of Prisons declined requests for interviews for this story and refused to provide specific data regarding the number of open correctional officer positions at the Florence complex. The bureau also declined to provide information about mandatory minimum staffing levels at the facility. In response to emailed questions, spokesman Ben O’Cone said the bureau is offering recruitment and retention bonuses in an effort to keep staffing at needed levels.

The correctional officers’ union gained the support of Colorado Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, who jointly penned a letter to the Bureau of Prisons asking for increased retention pay at the facility and local control over hiring.

“We have heard that the low pay, forced overtime and dangerous working conditions have led to low morale, attrition of current workers and an inability to recruit an adequate number of qualified staff to run the facility safely,” the senators wrote in their Dec. 8 letter. “We request your help in order to address these issues and ensure a safe environment for Bureau of Prisons staff and the prison inmates.”

Prisons have long struggled to keep staff because of low pay and the nature of the work, but the correctional officers at the Florence complex in recent months. Guards in have staged protests outside their facilities to draw attention to the issues, including .

Only 13,762 of the 20,446 full-time federal correctional officer positions across the country were filled in May, . The continued staffing shortages and several high-profile cases of officer misconduct led the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in November to .

The Bureau of Prisons spent millions on 148,000 hours of overtime at the Florence complex in fiscal year 2021 and 146,000 hours the previous fiscal year, O’Cone said in an email.

The staffing problem began four years ago when the Bureau of Prisons implemented a hiring freeze, Butkovich said, and the complex has never recovered. Starting pay for a correctional officer is $43,000, which is not enough to support a family in an expensive state like Colorado and is thousands less than the $50,892 starting pay for Colorado Department of Corrections officers, he said. The federal prisons’ hiring process also takes months, during which candidates too often find other jobs, Butkovich said.

As the shortage continues, guards are being forced to work more and more mandatory overtime, which causes more people to leave. Many correctional officers are forced to work multiple 8-hour overtime shifts a week.

“You see fatigue with every staff member there,” he said. “How long can a person work 12-to-15 hours a day five days a week?”

Weary guards mean more room for mistakes, he said, which can create a security risk for the prison staff and the people incarcerated there, Butkovich said. Although the non-correctional officer staff members being pulled into work guard shifts have been trained, they are not as familiar with the day-to-day routine or the men incarcerated in the prison, he said.

Two men imprisoned in the complex have been killed in homicides in the last three months. Jamarr Thompson, 33, died Dec. 6 after a fight between inmates in the high-security facility. Thirty-year-old after a fight in the same facility.

In 2021, the Bureau of Prisons also recorded eight serious assaults on inmates at the Florence complex and one serious assault on staff.

Butkovich said it’s hard to know whether the staffing shortage directly caused the violent incidents but said it was unusual to see so much violence in the facility.

“All of our concerns hit deaf ears,” he said of speaking with the complex’s managers.

Theodore Kaczynski, 79, was moved to the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s FMC Butner medical center in eastern North Carolina on Dec. 14, according to bureau spokesperson Donald Murphy. Murphy declined to disclose any details of Kaczynski’s medical condition or the reason for his transfer.

Kaczynski is serving life without the possibility of parole following his 1996 arrest at the primitive cabin where Kaczynski was living in western Montana. He pleaded guilty to setting 16 explosions that killed three people and injured 23 others in various parts of the country between 1978 and 1995.

The Federal Medical Center Butner, in North Carolina’s Granville County just northeast of Durham, offers medical services for prisoners including oncology, surgery, neurodiagnostics and dialysis, according to the Bureau of Prisons. It opened an advanced care unit and a hospice unit in 2010.

FMC Butner has 771 inmates, according to the prison bureau, and has been home to some notable offenders. They include John Hinckley Jr., who was evaluated there after shooting President Ronald Reagan, and Bernard Madoff, the infamous architect of a massive Ponzi scheme who died at the North Carolina facility earlier this year.

The deadly homemade bombs that Kaczynski sent by mail — including an altitude-triggered explosion that went off as planned on an American Airlines flight — changed the way Americans sent packages and boarded airplanes.

The Harvard-trained mathematician had railed against the effects of advanced technology and led authorities on the nation’s longest and costliest manhunt. The FBI dubbed him the Unabomber because his early targets seemed to be universities and airlines.

He forced The Washington Post in September 1995 to publish his anti-technology manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future.” The treatise led his brother David to recognize his writing and turn him in to the FBI.

In fact, Larry Hoover Sr., the co-founder of Chicago’s Gangster Disciples street gang, likely won’t even see a video clip. That’s because he is incarcerated in the notorious ADX federal prison, also known as Super Max, in Florence. There, Hoover spends 23 hours a day in a 6-foot by 8-foot concrete cell with very little contact with the outside world.

But Kanye West, who recently changed his name to Ye, and Drake are holding the “Free Larry Hoover Benefit Concert” to raise awareness about Hoover’s incarceration and his family’s ongoing efforts to free him under the 2018 “First Step Act,” a law signed by President Donald Trump that gives federal prisoners convicted of drug crimes an opportunity to have reduced sentences.

Proceeds from the show, which will be , will benefit non-profits that work toward prison reform. The show is gaining massive attention because the two artists are setting aside their differences and because it will be Ye’s first headlining show in five years and Drake’s first show since the Astroworld Festival in November in Houston where 10 people died and more than 300 were injured.

Hoover’s wife, Winndye Hoover, and his son, Larry Hoover Jr., said they hope the show raises awareness about his case and puts public pressure on prosecutors and a federal judge to relent the next time they petition the court for relief.

“Is there’s such a thing as a redemption,” Hoover Jr. said. “Can my father please have a second chance?”

West championed Hoover’s cause when he met with Trump at the White House. And when West released his album “Donda” in August, Hoover Jr. was featured on two songs, “Jesus Lord” and “Jesus Lord Pt. 2.”

“After 25 years of bein’ locked down, 23 and 1
My father has not called any shots
From one of the most secure and segregated prisons in the world
And will not, once released
Call any of the shots for the Gangster Disciples,” Larry Hoover Jr. says over West’s beats on “Jesus Lord.”

Hoover Jr. will attend the concert with his mother, but he’s not sure whether he will join Ye on stage to perform “Jesus Lord.”

“It’s a great thing they’ve done for our family to help promote and push for the release of Larry Hoover Sr.,” Wenndye Hoover said. “He’s got people who love him just like other people do.

“We couldn’t repay them for what they’re doing. This is monumental.”

A federal jury convicted Hoover in May 1997 on 40 counts related to his gang leadership and found that he ran a criminal enterprise that trafficked illegal drugs, including crack cocaine, between 1970 and 1995. Hoover already was serving a sentence in the Illinois Department of Corrections for ordering a murder in 1973, but prosecutors said he ran the Gangster Disciples drug organizations from his prison cell.

Hoover was sentenced to the ADX supermax once convicted of federal crimes. The prison is home to some of the most infamous criminals in American history, including Mexican cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman; Terry McNichols, an Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator; Unabomber Ted Kaczynski; and Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent convicted of espionage for passing classified material to the former Soviet Union and Russia for 20 years.

In arguments against Hoover’s request for reprieve under the First Step Act, prosecutors said he still tries to appoint leaders of the gang from ADX and they attempt to communicate with him there, according to an order written in July by a judge in U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois.

But Hoover’s legal team and his family say that the 71-year-old who has been locked in ADX for 24 years has no influence over street gang members who are 50 years younger. They also say he has no interest in returning to a criminal life but instead wants to use his experience to influence people for the better.

“He’s a 71 year old man. Why would he live 24 years in 23-and-one and do something that would send him back to that hell hole?” Hoover Jr. said.

Even before Hoover went to prison for life he was changing the streets for the better, Hoover Jr. said. His father registered people to vote and led protests in neighborhoods when the city tried to close schools and medical centers that served impoverished people. He said his father also wrote “The Blueprint,” a book to encourage Gangster Disciples to become a positive force in their communities.

In his order, U.S. District Judge Larry Leinenweber wrote that Hoover qualifies for a reduced sentence under the law but the judge would use his discretion to deny the request. Leinenweber also left the door open for Hoover to try again. If Hoover wins freedom from ADX, he would be transferred to the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections because of his state murder conviction. The family then would appeal to the Illinois governor for his release.

“Let’s follow the law and let him go before he dies in there or he loses his mind,” Hoover Jr. said of his father’s incarceration at ADX.

The incident at the complex in Fremont County — home to the Supermax prison — was one of two “inappropriate and dangerous” training episodes that prompted the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General to recommend the Federal Bureau of Prisons suspend some of its special operations training until better safeguards could be put in place, according to a June 2020 memo released by the office, which provides oversight to federal agencies.

“We believe that staff members at the Bureau of Prisons abused their coworkers in a way that undermines, or should undermine, the faith of the public in the ability to do their jobs,” said attorney Ed Aro, who is representing four current and former Bureau of Prison employees who say they were injured and traumatized by the training.

Scott Taylor, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons, declined to comment on the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado and seeks unspecified damages.

The complex in Fremont county includes ADX Florence — the so-called Supermax prison that houses 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, among other convicted terrorists — as well as two other high- and medium-security prisons.

The July 20, 2019, incident at the complex took place during a mock scenario training for the special operations response team, known as SORT, according to the lawsuit. The SORT team functions similarly to a SWAT team, and members were required to go through training on weapons proficiency, building entry and munitions, according to the memo from the Office of Inspector General.

On this day, the SORT team conducted an unannounced mock scenario training exercise that simulated a hostage situation in an administrative building at the prison complex.

Then-Bureau of Prison employees Jose Arroyo, Heather Boehm, Samuel Cordo and Amber Miller were all working in a business office when the scenario began. Realizing a training scenario was underway, the four locked themselves into a small cashier’s cage with three others in the office, according to the lawsuit.

“This is because BOP policy for responding to hostage situations requires employees to establish a safe haven, if possible, and to remain in the safe haven until an ‘all clear’ announcement,” the lawsuit reads.

The group went into the small cashier’s cage around 8:30 a.m., according to the lawsuit. One woman was in the first trimester of a high-risk pregnancy, and another was on crutches. They hid for the next two hours. The employees barricaded the door with filing cabinets, and turned off the lights when they heard movement outside their room just before 11 a.m., according to the lawsuit.

Several SORT team members came into the office and told the employees in the cashier’s cage to come out, but the employees refused, because leaving a safe spot without an “all clear” or confirmation that the training scenario was over would be a violation of policy, the lawsuit says. The employees were concerned that the officers may have been “compromised” in the training scenario and intended to take them “hostage.”

The SORT team members became “increasingly angry” when the group refused to emerge, according to the lawsuit, and attempted to break down the door to the cashier’s room while shouting and cursing at the employees to come out. They used a crowbar to try to pry open the cage and then fired what appeared to be a pepper ball into the room through a mail slot, the lawsuit says.

Those inside the room “grew more and more afraid,” according to the lawsuit. One woman shouted at the officers to stop and said they were “out of role,” a phrase that was supposed to indicate they were no longer participating in the training scenario. Another employee started sobbing, the lawsuit says.

As the standoff continued, the SORT members fired pepper spray into the room through the mail slot opening. At least one SORT member also fired 9 mm Simunition rounds — essentially plastic bullets — into the room, according to the lawsuit.

As the small cashier’s cage filled with pepper spray, the employees agreed to come out, unlocked the door and removed the barricade. The SORT team rushed in, pointed guns at them and yelled for them to get on the ground. One officer punched an employee in the face, another woman was pushed off her crutches, according to the lawsuit. One SORT member fired a Simunition round into another employee’s chest, and the plastic bullet “burned through (his) shirt and left a bruise on his chest,” the lawsuit says.

“In an attempt to snap the Defendants out of their rage, the plaintiffs continuously shouted, ‘Out of role!’” the lawsuit reads.

After a few moments, the officers left and the rest of the employees came out. Two were taken to hospitals in ambulances.

One SORT member told the employees that they “should have just opened the door,” according to the lawsuit.

The Office of Inspector General later found that the Bureau of Prisons did not have adequate guidelines or oversight for mock exercises, and recommended that all SORT members and their trainers “receive remedial training on SORT policy and use of force” during training exercises. The agency also instructed the bureau to develop more robust policies and oversight for mock scenarios.

The Office of Inspector General also investigated a separate 2019 training incident at an unspecified prison in which a SORT team deployed two “flash-bang” munitions during a mock scenario, according to the report. One flash-bang hit a staff member who was role-playing and exploded, causing “significant injury” that required surgery and ongoing treatment.