A Chicago-area man whose federal life sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama has been charged with multiple attempted murder charges, according to law enforcement officials.
Illinois State Police announced that it had arrested and charged 54-year-old Alton D. Mills of Evergreen Park with three counts of Attempted Murder in connection with a shooting last week.
Police responded to an expressway shooting on May 14 on Interstate 57 and discovered that multiple rounds had been fired from the suspect’s vehicle striking the victim’s vehicle.
“The back-seat passenger in the victim vehicle was struck by gun fire and was transported to an area hospital with life-threatening injuries,” police said in a statement. “On May 16. 2023, after an extensive investigation the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office approved three counts of Attempted Murder.”
Mills is being held without bond. Police said no further information will be released.
Mills was arrested in 1993 on federal charges for conspiracy “to possess with intent to distribute and distribution of cocaine base and cocaine and conspiracy to use communication facilities in the commission of drug trafficking offenses; use of communication facility to possess with intent to distribute cocaine base (two counts); [and] possession with intent to distribute cocaine base,” Obama’s Department of Justice said in a statement in 2015.
Due to previous drug convictions, Mills was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Many top Democrats in Washington, D.C., including Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), championed Alton at the time. Durbin went as far as to give a speech about him on the Senate floor.
“An overlooked casualty in our ‘war on drugs’ are the men and women who have been convicted under disproportionately harsh mandatory minimum sentencing laws,” Durbin said. “One such man is Alton Mills, who served more than two decades of a mandatory life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense, a punishment even the sentencing judge disagreed with.”