Federal prosecutors are recommending a 40-year sentence for the person convicted of making an attempt to kidnap former U.S. Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assaulting her husband with a hammer after he broke into the couple’s San Francisco dwelling in 2022.
In a sentencing memorandum filed in U.S. District Court docket in San Francisco, prosecutors mentioned that David DePape has did not take duty for his crimes and has not proven regret. Additionally they argued that his sentencing ought to embody a terrorism enhancement.
Prosecutors referred to DePape’s crimes as “an assault on our democracy and basic values.”
“At a time when extremism has led to assaults on public and elected officers, this case presents a second to talk to others harboring ideologically motivated violent desires and plans,” prosecutors wrote.
DePape’s attorneys, federal public defenders Jodi Linker and Angela Chuang, have requested a 14-year jail sentence, citing their consumer’s “abusive, long-term relationship with a associate who exploited his innate vulnerabilities and immersed him in a world of utmost beliefs the place actuality isn’t actuality.”
“Her affect started at a formative and significant interval in his life and prolonged far past the tip of their relationship leaving him fully unmoored within the years main as much as the offense, when he was additional radicalized by way of his obsessive consumption of media amplifying excessive beliefs,” DePape’s attorneys wrote of their sentencing memo.
Additionally they argued DePape has proven regret for his actions, citing his trial testimony “throughout which he defined that he felt ‘actually scared for [Mr. Pelosi’s] life.’”
Sentencing is scheduled for Friday.
Throughout DePape’s trial final yr, assistant U.S. Attys. Laura Vartain Horn and Helen Gilbert laid out particulars of DePape’s “violent plan” on the evening he traveled from his East Bay residence to the Pelosis’ Pacific Heights dwelling in October 2022.
DePape broke into the couple’s dwelling round 2 a.m. on Oct. 28, planning to carry Pelosi hostage and break her kneecaps if she lied to him, prosecutors mentioned of their memo. Pelosi wasn’t dwelling, however her husband, Paul, was and known as 911.
When the police arrived, Pelosi opened the door, and DePape then violently hit Pelosi thrice, twice on the top, earlier than the police have been capable of subdue him, prosecutors mentioned.
In courtroom, prosecutors confirmed jurors the graphic police body-camera video of DePape bludgeoning Pelosi, fracturing the then–82-year-old man’s cranium and critically injuring his proper arm and left hand.
“That is the second the place Paul Pelosi finally ends up attacked at nighttime in his own residence, mendacity on the ground in a pool of his personal blood,” Gilbert mentioned in her closing argument as a nonetheless body of the second earlier than the assault was displayed on courtroom screens.
Jurors heard parts of a police interview by which DePape mentioned he thought of Speaker Pelosi the Democrats’ “chief of the pack,” and mentioned he would “break her kneecaps” if she didn’t admit to corruption and different unfounded claims of human trafficking and baby abuse by public figures. He informed the officer that Pelosi must wheel herself into Congress, the place different lawmakers may see the “f— consequence to being probably the most evil f— folks on the planet.”
DePape’s attorneys argued that their consumer was impressed by elaborate and baseless conspiracy theories which will have appeared “bogus” however have been nonetheless his deeply held beliefs.
The Pelosis’ dwelling was solely the primary cease in a cross-country plan to focus on different highly effective folks in America he believed have been concerned in QAnon-like conspiracy theories of legal exercise, Chuang mentioned. His aim was to “root out the corruption of the ruling class, the cabal, to cease the molestation of youngsters and expose the reality to everybody.”
The jury spent a day deliberating the 2 federal expenses earlier than discovering DePape responsible of tried kidnapping of a federal officer or worker and assault on the speedy member of the family of a federal official.
In letters to the choose, DePape’s mom, Shirley Jean Lawrence, requested him to have mercy on her son, stating that he’d “tousled large time.”
“How did it come to this. This isn’t the kid that I raised. This isn’t my David,” she wrote. “I really like my son dearly and in my coronary heart I do know who he actually is … he’s not a monster.”
Instances workers author Hannah Wiley contributed to this report.
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