Federal prosecutors are recommending a 40-year sentence for the person convicted of trying 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 stated that David DePape has didn’t take duty for his crimes and has not proven regret. Additionally they argued that his sentencing ought to embrace a terrorism enhancement.
Prosecutors referred to DePape’s crimes as “an assault on our democracy and elementary 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 goals 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 demanding interval in his life and prolonged far past the top of their relationship leaving him fully unmoored within the years main as much as the offense, when he was additional radicalized by 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 12 months, 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 stated 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 pinnacle, earlier than the police have been in a position to subdue him, prosecutors stated.
In court docket, prosecutors confirmed jurors the graphic police body-camera video of DePape bludgeoning Pelosi, fracturing the then–82-year-old man’s cranium and significantly injuring his proper arm and left hand.
“That is the second the place Paul Pelosi finally ends up attacked in the dark in his own residence, mendacity on the ground in a pool of his personal blood,” Gilbert stated 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 during which DePape stated he thought of Speaker Pelosi the Democrats’ “chief of the pack,” and stated he would “break her kneecaps” if she didn’t admit to corruption and different unfounded claims of human trafficking and youngster abuse by public figures. He informed the officer that Pelosi must wheel herself into Congress, the place different lawmakers might 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 felony exercise, Chuang stated. His aim was to “root out the corruption of the ruling class, the cabal, to cease the molestation of kids and expose the reality to everybody.”
The jury spent a day deliberating the 2 federal prices 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 huge time.”
“How did it come to this. This isn’t the kid that I raised. This isn’t my David,” she wrote. “I like my son dearly and in my coronary heart I do know who he actually is … he’s not a monster.”
Occasions workers author Hannah Wiley contributed to this report.
