David Gilbert, a left-wing activist who spent four decades behind bars for his role in the infamous robbery of an armored truck that left two police officers and a guard dead, will be released from prison.
The 77-year-old appeared before New York's parole board on October 19th, according to a spokesperson for the state corrections department. He will be freed from the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Hudson Valley by next month.
In 1981, Gilbert served as a getaway driver in the $1.6 million Brink's truck robbery, which was planned by militant members of the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground as an “expropriation” for the creation of a theoretical state known as the Republic of New Afrika.
After declining to show remorse during his sentencing, and instead denouncing U.S. imperialism, Gilbert was sentenced to a minimum of 75 years in prison in 1983.
But he became eligible parole after Governor Andrew Cuomo, in one of his final acts in office, commuted his sentence, citing the prisoner's “significant contributions to AIDS education and prevention programs," along with his work as a tutor and teacher's aide.
Supporters of Gilbert, including his son, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, had long campaigned for his release. In a statement, Jose Saldana, the director of the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign, described Gilbert as an "unparalleled positive influence on the lives of countless incarcerated people."
"The purpose of parole is to evaluate people for release based on who they are today, not to extend sentences into perpetuity," Saldana added.
Though Gilbert did not fire a weapon, the robbery, and subsequent high-speed chase, led to the fatal shootings of Sergeant Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly Brown of the Nyack Police Department, as well as Brink's guard Peter Paige.
Law enforcement groups and politicians in Rockland County immediately condemned the parole board's decision. County Executive Ed Day called Gilbert's release "a cruel and unjust slap in the face to the families" of the victims.
"Today’s decision diminishes respect for victims and their families in our criminal justice system and weakens," Rockland County Sheriff Louis Falco III added in a separate statement.
Several other defendants in the Brink's robbery case have already been released, including Kathy Boudin, the mother of Chesa Boudin, who now teaches at Columbia University.
The sentence of Judith Clark, another defendant who drove a getaway car, was also commuted in 2016 by Governor Cuomo, who praised her "exceptional strides in self-development." She was granted parole in 2019.
