Jesse Jackson’s Brother Noah Robinson Jr.: El Rukns and Release

Noah Robinson Jr. is the half-brother of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, an Ivy League-educated Chicago businessman who was convicted of racketeering, drug conspiracy, and murder-for-hire for his partnership with the El Rukn street gang. He spent nearly 33 years in federal custody before a judge granted him compassionate release in October 2022, at the age of 80, under the First Step Act.¹

A South Side Businessman Before the Fall

Before prison, Robinson was a prominent South Side Chicago entrepreneur. He owned six Wendy’s hamburger franchises and pursued food-service contracts with the City Colleges of Chicago.² Press accounts at the time described him as an Ivy League-educated millionaire whose legitimate business reach gave him access to the city contracts and personal connections that would later tie him to one of Chicago’s most feared criminal organizations.¹

Partnership With Jeff Fort and the El Rukns

Robinson’s ties to the El Rukn street gang began in 1983, when he contributed roughly $10,000 to a bond fund for the gang’s imprisoned leader, Jeff Fort.³ The El Rukns, formerly known as the Black P Stone Nation, controlled large portions of South Side drug trafficking in the 1970s and 1980s through murder and intimidation.⁴

Prosecutors said Robinson and Fort ran a secret 50/50 business partnership and that Robinson used his legitimate businesses and city contracts to launder the gang’s drug money. Robinson introduced El Rukn members to Thomas Allen “Blue” Burnside, a childhood friend who ran a major cocaine and heroin distribution network along the East Coast. According to prosecutors, Robinson told the gang that if they wanted to “make some real money,” he could put them together with Burnside, and the introduction opened up substantial new drug profits for the El Rukns.¹

In return, Robinson shared in the drug proceeds, let his home and business be used for gang operations, and had the gang’s muscle available to settle his own disputes.³

The Murder of Leroy Barber

The killing at the center of the federal case took place on January 2, 1986, in Greenville, South Carolina. Leroy “Hambone” Barber, a former employee and childhood friend of Robinson’s, was lured from a bar inside a small commercial complex Robinson owned to a nearby pay phone, where he was told a call was waiting for him. He was shot in the head.⁵

Authorities said five El Rukn members traveled from Chicago to carry out the hit, with two doing the actual shooting. Federal informants said Jeff Fort ordered the murder after Robinson complained that Barber was “bothering” him. Robinson and Barber had been in a physical altercation at the complex about a month earlier.⁵

Robinson also ordered a hit on Janice Denise Rosemond, who had witnessed Barber’s killing. Rosemond survived but was severely injured. A third contract, on Robinson’s former business partner Robert Aulston, was ordered but never carried out.³

Convictions and Sentences

Robinson was prosecuted in three separate cases.

South Carolina, 1989

In January 1989, a Greenville jury found Robinson guilty of being an accessory after the fact of assault and battery with intent to kill Rosemond. State Circuit Court Judge James Moore handed down the maximum 10-year sentence.⁶ The same jury deadlocked on the murder and conspiracy counts tied to Barber’s death, and the judge declared a mistrial on those charges.⁷

Wendy’s Fraud, 1990

In December 1990, a federal judge sentenced Robinson to six years for defrauding the IRS, the State of Illinois, and Wendy’s International by skimming about $630,000 from his six restaurants. Employees were told to turn off the registers during early-morning hours and calculate sales by hand so the income went unreported. U.S. District Judge George Marovich also fined him $125,000 and ordered the sentence to run consecutively with the South Carolina term.² His brother John “Tony” Robinson, a co-defendant in the fraud case, was convicted of racketeering and conspiracy and sentenced to 46 months. John Robinson was not related to Jesse Jackson.⁸

Federal El Rukn Racketeering Case

The most serious prosecution came on October 27, 1989, when Robinson was indicted alongside 64 El Rukn members and associates on charges that included racketeering, conspiracy, murder, attempted murder, and witness intimidation.⁹ He was convicted with six co-defendants in 1991, but Judge Marvin Aspen later threw those convictions out after finding that prosecutors had withheld evidence of perjury, drug use, and favors given to government witnesses.⁴

The retrial was held in 1996 before U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel. After a two-month trial and three and a half days of deliberation, the jury convicted Robinson on all seven counts, including racketeering, narcotics conspiracy, and murder-for-hire.⁴ On October 22, 1997, Judge Zagel imposed three concurrent life terms for RICO conspiracy, narcotics conspiracy, and interstate travel to commit murder, along with concurrent terms of 10 years for witness retaliation, 20 years for witness tampering, and additional terms of 5 and 20 years for two other interstate-travel-to-commit-murder counts.³ The Seventh Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentences in 2000.¹⁰

The Jesse Jackson Connection

Robinson and Jesse Jackson share a biological father, Noah Louis Robinson, a former professional boxer who lived next door to Jackson’s mother in Greenville, South Carolina.¹¹ Robinson’s arrest in 1988 for allegedly hiring an attack on a witness landed in the middle of Jackson’s run for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. Jackson refused to comment on the case at the time.¹²

Jackson later said he had promised their father on his deathbed that he would do his best to help Robinson, and in 2001 he formally asked President Bill Clinton to pardon his half-brother. Clinton refused.¹

Release Under the First Step Act

The First Step Act, signed in December 2018, let federal prisoners petition courts directly for sentence reductions after exhausting administrative remedies with the Bureau of Prisons. Courts may grant relief when they find “extraordinary and compelling reasons.”¹³

Robinson filed his petition in 2020. One of his life sentences, imposed under an older sentencing statute, became moot after he was granted parole on that count in 2021, leaving two “new law” life terms for U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to address. His medical records showed coronary artery disease, hypertension, angina, obstructive sleep apnea, hypertensive retinopathy, and a history of bleeding peptic ulcers, along with reports of chest pains, dizziness, frequent falls, emergency room visits, forgetfulness, and disorientation.³

On October 27, 2022, Judge Pallmeyer granted the motion over federal prosecutors’ objection. She cited Robinson’s age of 80, his declining health, and the risks posed by COVID-19 in the prison system, finding that after nearly 33 years in custody his sentence had served its purpose “for punishment and general deterrence.” She commuted his remaining life sentences to time served.¹ Robinson was released to live in Chicago with one of his two daughters, who agreed to oversee his medical and personal care.¹⁴

1
Chicago Sun-Times. Jesse Jackson’s Half-Brother Freed From Life Prison Sentence
2
Chicago Tribune. Noah Robinson Gets 6 Years for $630,000 Fraud
3
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois. United States v. Robinson, 89 CR 908-31
4
Chicago Tribune. Noah Robinson Is Found Guilty Again in Retrial
5
Chicago Tribune. Noah Robinson Seized in Employee’s Slaying
6
The New York Times. Mixed Verdict Is Given in S. Carolina Slaying
7
The Washington Post. Jackson’s Half-Brother Gets 10-Year Sentence
8
UPI. Noah Robinson Sentenced to Six Years in Prison
9
Chicago Tribune. Robinson Is Denied Bond in Rukn Case
10
FindLaw. United States v. Boyd
11
SC Encyclopedia. Jackson, Jesse Louis
12
Media Burn. Jesse Jackson Post-Presidential Campaign 1988
13
U.S. Sentencing Commission. Compassionate Release: The Impact of the First Step Act
14
Fox 32 Chicago. Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Half-Brother Noah Robinson Jr. Freed From Life Sentence