SAN FRANCISCO– The man sentenced to 30 years in prison for attacking the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a hammer in their California home was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole on Tuesday after a separate state trial.
A San Francisco jury found David DePape guilty in June of charges including aggravated kidnapping, first-degree burglary and false imprisonment of an elderly person.
Before sentencing DePape to life in prison on the kidnapping conviction, Judge Harry Dorfman rejected defense attorneys’ arguments that he should be granted a new trial on the kidnapping charges. 2022 attack against Paul Pelosiwho was then 82 years old.
“It is my intention that Mr. DePape never gets out of prison, he can never be released on parole,” Dorfman said as he handed down the sentence. He later said: “I don’t feel any sympathy for you. I feel compassion for the victim in this case, who is lucky to be alive.”
Adam Lipson, a San Francisco deputy public defender, had asked Dorfman to consider DePape’s mental health and isolation, which made him susceptible to online propaganda.
“This is a man who has always been a peaceful, law-abiding person up until his activation,” Lipson said before the sentence was handed down.
When given the opportunity to address the court prior to his sentencing, DePape, dressed in prison orange and with his brown hair in a ponytail, spoke at length about September 11 as an inside job, replacing his ex-wife with a body double. and his government-provided lawyers who conspired against him.
“I’m psychic,” DePape told the court as he read from sheets of paper. “The more I meditate, the clearer I become.”
The judge interrupted DePape several times to ask if he would comment on the jury’s verdict or his behavior the night of the attack, but DePape ignored the offer.
In a letter read in court by the victim’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, Paul Pelosi called for the maximum sentence, saying he had abruptly ended the “last peaceful sleep” “when the defendant forcibly entered my home, burst into my bedroom and stood prone. my bed with a hammer and zip ties demanding my wife and shouting ‘Where’s Nancy?’
He said the attack left him with bumps on his head, a metal plate in it, dizziness and nerve damage in his left hand. Sleeping alone at home brings back memories of the attack, he said.
In a statement after Tuesday’s sentencing, the Pelosi family said that after a grueling two years, “justice has been served.”
“Today’s sentence of life in prison without parole provides our father with a measure of legal justice and, we hope, a message to others that political violence against elected officials or their family members will not be tolerated, minimized or tolerated,” the statement said . we must all do our part to build a peaceful democracy.”
Previously, a federal jury convicted DePape of assaulting a family member of a federal official and attempting to kidnap a federal official. He was sentenced to death in May 30 years in federal prison.
Although DePape expressed remorse for his actions at the federal sentencing, he did not do so on Tuesday. Judges in both cases said they could not ignore the severity of the attacks on elected officials.
Judge Dorfman also sentenced DePape on Tuesday to additional years on the other counts, but all sentences, including the federal one, will run concurrently. He said if an appeals court were to overturn his life sentence without parole, he would ask for the case to be sent back to his court for resentencing.
Lipson told reporters after the hearing that he will appeal the ruling. “This was a very tragic end to a tragic story,” he said.
Prosecutors, San Francisco Assistant District Attorneys Sean Connolly and Phoebe Maffei, said in a statement that the sentence reflects the severity of DePape’s conduct and the harm he caused an innocent man.
“There is no joy in such cases. There are no winners,” it says.
The defense argued that the state trial amounted to double jeopardy, saying that while the state and federal counts were not exactly the same, the two cases stem from the same act. The judge dismissed some state charges but upheld other charges not covered by the federal case.
The October 28, 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi was captured on police body camera footage just days before the midterm elections and shocked the political world. He suffered head wounds, including a skull fracture that was repaired with plates and screws.
DePape, a Canadian citizen who has lived in the US for years, admitted during his federal trial that he planned to take Nancy Pelosi hostage, record his interrogation of her and “break her kneecaps” if she did not admit to the lies . said she talked about “Russiagate,” a reference to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.