Illinois Parole Board Releases Elderly Chicago Man Convicted in 1968 Gang Killing

The Illinois Prisoner Review Board voted 9-3 on Thursday to grant parole to Namor Smith, a 74-year-old man convicted in a gang-related fatal shooting on Chicago's South Side in 1968. Years earlier, Smith had told the same board, in crude terms, that it could "take this parole thing and shove it."

Smith, a former member of the Blackstone Rangers gang, was convicted in the killing of Sterling Burnett, 21. Authorities say Smith and other gang members confronted Burnett because he did not belong to their group. Prosecutors say one of them punched Burnett, who was then dragged into an alley in the 4600 block of South Langley Avenue and shot.

Officials say Smith once told the board that he ordered Burnett's killing, saying Burnett was in a rival gang. In a 2019 interview with a board member, however, Smith changed his account and said he arrived after the shooting. He also said he gave up his gang membership in the 1980s.

Smith was serving 50 to 100 years for murder, plus an additional eight years for wounding another inmate with a homemade knife in 1987. His prison record includes more than 200 disciplinary incidents, among them 15 assaults on prison staff. One of his co-defendants in the Burnett case was paroled in 2001, while the other served 20 to 30 years.

His projected parole date had been June 20, 2023. Smith was previously paroled in 2004 but was returned to prison in 2007 to finish his sentence after violating parole conditions, including failing to stay at his assigned residence. In 2019, the board voted 3-10 against releasing him, saying he was likely to violate parole again and that release would "deprecate the serious nature of the offense."

The Cook County state's attorney's office had opposed Smith's release at every hearing until this one. State's Attorney Kim Foxx stopped making parole recommendations a year ago, and Smith's last prior hearing was in 2019. The board denied parole to six other inmates on Thursday, four of them from the Chicago area.

The decision came as Illinois Republicans continued to criticize the board's parole decisions under Gov. J.B. Pritzker's administration. State Sen. Jason Plummer, R-Edwardsville, who sits on the Senate executive appointments committee, noted that four board members have served more than three years without confirmation by that committee: Aurthur Mae Perkins, Joseph Ruggiero, Oreal James and Eleanor Wilson.

"How long are Gov. Pritzker and his legislative allies going to allow members of the Prisoner Review Board to make decisions to release violent criminals without going through the constitutionally required process?" Plummer said. He accused the governor of shielding the members from public scrutiny to hide recent controversial releases.

A Pritzker spokeswoman, Jordan Abudayyeh, dismissed the objections as "political grandstanding." She said, "The members' appointments and votes are transparent, and their meetings are open to the public."