The person who was sentenced to 30 years in federal jail for attacking the husband of Nancy Pelosi with a hammer of their California house was sentenced on Tuesday to life in jail with out the opportunity of parole following a separate state trial.
A San Francisco jury in June discovered David DePape responsible of prices together with aggravated kidnapping, first-degree housebreaking and false imprisonment of an elder.
Earlier than issuing the sentence, Choose Harry Dorfman dismissed arguments from DePape’s attorneys that he be granted a brand new trial for the 2022 assault in opposition to Paul Pelosi, who was 82 years outdated on the time.
“It’s my intention that Mr DePape won’t ever get out of jail, he can by no means be paroled,” Dorfman mentioned whereas handing out the punishment.
One of many protection attorneys, Adam Lipson, requested Dorfman earlier than the sentence was handed down to think about DePape’s psychological well being and isolation that made him inclined to on-line propaganda.
“This can be a man who has at all times been a peaceable, law-abiding individual up till his activation,” Lipson mentioned.
When given the prospect to handle the courtroom earlier than his sentencing, DePape, wearing jail orange and together with his brown hair in a ponytail, spoke at size about September 11 being an inside job, his ex-wife being changed by a physique double, and his government-provided attorneys conspiring in opposition to him.
“I’m a psychic,” DePape advised the courtroom, studying from sheets of paper. “The extra I meditate, the extra psychic I get.”
In a letter learn in courtroom by the sufferer’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, Paul Pelosi referred to as for the utmost sentence, saying the “final peaceable sleep” he had ended abruptly “when the defendant violently broke into my house, burst into my bed room and stood over my mattress with a hammer and zip ties demanding to see my spouse, yelling: ‘The place’s Nancy?’”
He mentioned the assault had left him with bumps on his head, a steel plate in it, dizziness and nerve harm in his left hand. Sleeping alone at house evokes reminiscences of the assault, he mentioned.
Beforehand, a federal jury convicted DePape of assaulting a federal official’s member of the family and making an attempt to kidnap a federal official. In Could, he was sentenced to 30 years in federal jail throughout an uncommon resentencing listening to that resulted from judicial error. The punishment within the state trial will run concurrently with the federal sentence.
DePape’s attorneys have mentioned the state trial amounted to double jeopardy following his federal conviction. Although the legal counts weren’t precisely the identical, the 2 instances stem from the identical act, they argued. The choose did dismiss a few of the state prices however stored others that weren’t coated by the federal case.
The 28 October 2022 assault on Paul Pelosi was captured on police body-camera video simply days earlier than the midterm elections and shocked the political world. He suffered head wounds, together with a cranium fracture that was mended with plates and screws. His proper arm and hand had been additionally injured.
DePape, a Canadian citizen who has been residing within the US for years, admitted throughout his federal trial that he had deliberate to carry the previous Home speaker, Nancy Pelosi, hostage, report his interrogation of her, and “break her kneecaps” if she didn’t admit to the lies he mentioned she advised about “Russiagate”, a reference to the investigation into Russian interference within the 2016 presidential marketing campaign.
Supply hyperlink
