How parents’ incarceration shaped Boudin

In some of his earliest memories as a child, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin recalls the soundproof plexiglass that separated him from his jailed father.

There was no hugging, no physical contact at all — just two plastic telephones and a wire to connect a father with his toddler son.

Boudin was about 3 years old when the plexiglass came down. He was too young to understand it was the result of a lawsuit on jail conditions waged by his parents, then both behind bars for their role in a fatal robbery, but desperate to maintain a bond with their only child.

But he knew the visits got better. After the lawsuit, Boudin was able to have human contact with both his mother and father, and the phones that were once the only means of

communication with them lent themselves as toys.

“I have a memory of ... turning those phones into a game, as a way to have fun in the confines of otherwise really dark and depressing space,” Boudin said Wednesday in an interview.

Two days after Boudin’s father, David Gilbert, was granted clemency by outgoing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Boudin spoke to The Chronicle about how his personal history with imprisoned parents shaped his philosophies as San Francisco’s top prosecutor, and how his parents’ candor with him, even as a child, has fortified the relationship they maintain to this day.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that my parents were part of causing tremendous harm not just to families, but to an entire community,” Boudin said.

“And that was a conversation that, in many ways, has been a continuous thread in my life, and in my relationship with both of my parents.”

Gilbert, along with Chesa Boudin’s mother, Kathy Boudin, were members of the radical leftist organization Weather Underground. On Oct. 20, 1981, the pair dropped off their 14-month-old son with a babysitter and joined members of the Black Liberation Army in a plan to rob a Brink’s armored truck in New York.

The robbery turned violent, with other members of the group shooting and killing Brink’s guard Peter Paige and two Nyack police officers, Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady. Gilbert and Kathy Boudin were unarmed getaway drivers, Gilbert at the wheel, and Kathy Boudin in the passenger’s seat. They were charged and convicted under

New York’s felony murder law.

Gilbert is serving a sentence of 75 years to life, while Kathy Boudin spent 22 years in prison and was paroled in 2003.

After nearly 40 years behind bars, Gilbert’s commutation provides his first real shot at freedom, with an anticipated hearing with the parole board about six weeks away. Growing up, Boudin remembers asking his parents the same line of questioning over and over: “Why did you do it?” “What made you think it was not going to result in people getting hurt? What made you think it was not going to jeopardize your relationship with

me as your kid?”

The answers grew more nuanced and complex the older Boudin became, but the district attorney said his parents were always honest with him about their roles in the crime.

“I’ve watched many families lie to their children, and tell them that they weren’t going into a prison, but that they were going into a high-security hospital or university,” said Boudin, a former public defender.

“Of course, in the process of lying or hiding or obfuscating, many of these families are teaching stigma,” Boudin said. “And I was lucky that my family

didn’t do that.

“If they didn’t own that harm, if they didn’t recognize and take seriously the damage that they’ve done, the responsibility that they bore for it, I wouldn’t be able to have the strong relationships that we have today.”

Now as the city’s top law enforcement officer, Boudin said his personal history is a constant reminder of the need to prevent crimes before they occur, and that the process of meting out punishment has often produced new victims, who bore no responsibility for the crime that occurred.

This is why, Boudin said, he’s

focused on rehabilitation policies over incarceration, and why he has worked to expand the victim services area of his department, he said.

Now, just days away from the birth of he and his wife’s first child, Boudin is looking forward to what he’s sure “will be the happiest day of my life,” he said. “And it will be all the sweeter because there is now a chance our child won’t have to go through prison gates to know grandpa.”

Provided by Chesa Boudin Chesa Boudin as a child with his father, David Gilbert, who was granted clemency recently in a 1981 Brink’s truck heist.