A little over a year after winning election to district attorney against an opponent backed by some of the most powerful figures in the state Democratic Party, 40-year-old Chesa Boudin, the Jewish former public defender and now chief prosecutor of San Francisco, spoke to J. about his accomplishments and some of the challenges faced since he came to office.
The son of left-wing radicals who were incarcerated when he was a toddler, Boudin, who went on to earn a Rhodes Scholarship and a law degree from Yale before joining the public defender’s office in San Francisco, has faced criticism since the day he announced his candidacy in January 2019. But after two high-profile tragedies this year, which critics of his progressive policies have laid at his feet, public opposition has intensified, accompanied by a recall effort led by a former mayoral candidate who accuses Boudin of “dismantling the criminal justice system” in the city.
Skip to main content
Currently Reading
Man accused of killing mother in Sacramento was arrested weeks before in an S.F. robbery but D.A. Chesa Boudin did not charge him
FacebookTwitterEmail
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin said the robbery “was not provable or chargeable.”Paul Chinn / The Chronicle
A man accused of shooting and killing his mother in Sacramento was arrested and booked in a strong-arm robbery case weeks earlier in San Francisco, but the district attorney did not charge him.
Records show that instead of charging Ali Mustafa Hudson, 42, for allegedly stealing a phone from a passenger on a Muni bus on Dec. 20, District Attorney Chesa Boudin had him transported to Solano County, where Hudson had a $5,000 misdemeanor warrant for drug possession and driving without a valid driver’s license.