IDOC inmate convicted of murdering his cellmate

December 1

JOLIET – Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow announced that a jury late Thursday found a former Stateville Correctional Center inmate guilty of murdering his cellmate in 1998.

John Allison, 38, is currently serving a 26-year sentence for a murder he committed in Cook County. Allison is eligible for parole in 2016 for the Cook County murder.

But the conviction secured Thursday by Assistant State’s Attorneys Michael Fitzgerald and Chris Koch will guarantee that Allison spends the rest of his life in prison. The sentence is mandatory life in prison for a person who is convicted of committing a second murder.

“John Allison is so volatile and violent that he poses a lethal menace even to his fellow prison inmates,” Glasgow said. “He is a pathological killer who has forever forfeited any right to walk free on our streets. Thursday’s conviction ensures that he never will.”

Allison strangled Michael Hampton to death overnight on Aug. 19, 1998 in the cell they shared at Stateville. Correctional officers found Hampton dead on the floor when they were making the morning rounds.

Allison initially refused to make a statement regarding Hampton’s death. But eventually, he told a corrections investigator that he had done something to his cellmate.

Prosecutors had to wait seven years for Allison to be deemed mentally fit before they could take the murder case to trial.

Allison currently is serving his sentence for the Cook County murder at Dixon Correctional Center.

He is scheduled to be sentenced by Circuit Judge Richard Schoenstedt for the Stateville murder on Feb. 7.