The person who was sentenced to 30 years in federal jail for attacking the husband of former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a hammer of their California dwelling was sentenced 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 costs together with aggravated kidnapping, first-degree housebreaking and false imprisonment of an elder.
Earlier than issuing the sentence, Decide 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 previous on the time.
“It is my intention that Mr. DePape won’t ever get out of jail, he can by no means be paroled,” Dorfman stated.
DePape is a Canadian citizen who grew up in Powell River, B.C., however has been residing within the U.S. for years.
Earlier than the sentence was handed down, defence legal professional Adam Lipson requested Dorfman to contemplate DePape’s psychological well being and isolation that made him prone 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 stated.
DePape instructed courtroom he’s ‘psychic’
When given the possibility to handle the courtroom previous to his sentencing, DePape, wearing jail orange and together with his brown hair in a ponytail, spoke at size about Sept. 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 am a psychic,” DePape instructed 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 known as for the utmost sentence, saying the “final peaceable sleep” he had ended abruptly “when the defendant violently broke into my dwelling, 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 stated the assault left him with bumps on his head, a steel plate in it, dizziness and nerve injury in his left hand. Sleeping alone at dwelling evokes reminiscences of the assault, he stated.
Beforehand, a federal jury convicted DePape of assaulting a federal official’s member of the family and trying to kidnap a federal official. In Might, 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 stated the state trial amounted to double jeopardy following his federal conviction. Regardless that the felony counts weren’t precisely the identical, the 2 circumstances stem from the identical act, they argued.
The choose did dismiss a few of the state costs however saved others that weren’t coated by the federal case.
The Oct. 28, 2022, assault on Paul Pelosi was captured on police physique digital 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 have been additionally injured.
DePape admitted throughout his federal trial that he deliberate to carry Nancy Pelosi hostage, document his interrogation of her, and “break her kneecaps” if she didn’t admit to the lies he stated she instructed about “Russiagate,” a reference to the investigation into Russian interference within the 2016 presidential marketing campaign.
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