Federal prosecutors are recommending a 40-year prison sentence for the man convicted of trying to kidnap former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assaulting her husband with a hammer after breaking into the couple’s San Francisco home in 2022.
In a sentencing memorandum filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, prosecutors said David DePape failed to take responsibility for his crimes and showed no remorse. They also argued that his sentence should include an anti-terrorism sanction.
Prosecutors called DePape’s crimes “an attack on our democracy and fundamental values.”
“At a time when extremism has led to attacks on public officials and elected officials, this case provides a moment to speak to others with ideologically motivated violent dreams and plans,” prosecutors wrote.
DePape’s lawyers, federal public defenders Jodi Linker and Angela Chuang, requested a 14-year prison sentence, citing their client’s “long-term, abusive relationship with a partner who exploited his innate vulnerabilities and immersed in a world of extreme beliefs where reality is not reality.
“His influence began at a formative and critical period in his life and extended well beyond the end of their relationship, leaving him completely distraught in the years leading up to the offense, when he further radicalized through his obsessive consumption of media amplifying his extreme beliefs,” DePape’s lawyers wrote in their sentencing memo.
They also argued that DePape had shown remorse for his actions, citing his trial testimony “during which he explained that he was ‘really afraid for (Mr. Pelosi)’s life.’
Sentencing is scheduled for Friday.
During DePape’s trial last year, Assistant U.S. Attys. Laura Vartain Horn and Helen Gilbert exposed details of DePape’s “violent plan” the night he traveled from his East Bay residence to Pelosis home in Pacific Heights in October 2022.
DePape broke into the couple’s home around 2 a.m. on Oct. 28, planning to take Pelosi hostage and break her kneecaps if she lied to him, prosecutors said in their memo. Pelosi was not home, but her husband, Paul, was and called 911.
When police arrived, Pelosi opened the door and DePape then violently punched Pelosi three times, including twice in the head, before police were able to subdue him, prosecutors said.
In court, prosecutors showed jurors the graphic police body camera video showing DePape bludgeoning Pelosi, fracturing the then-body.–The skull of an 82-year-old man was seriously injured in his right arm and left hand.
“This is the moment when Paul Pelosi found himself attacked in the middle of the night in his own home, lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood,” Gilbert said in his closing argument as a still image of the moment before the attack . was displayed on courtroom screens.
Jurors heard excerpts from a police interview in which DePape said he considered Speaker Pelosi the “leader of the Democrats” and said he would “break her kneecaps” if she didn’t did not admit corruption and other unfounded allegations of human trafficking and child abuse by public figures. He told the officer that Pelosi should go to Congress, where other lawmakers could see the “f…consequence of being the nastiest f…people on the planet.”
DePape’s lawyers argued that their client was inspired by elaborate, baseless conspiracy theories that might seem “false” but were nonetheless his deeply held beliefs.
Pelosis house was just the first step in a transnational plan to target other powerful people in America who he believed were involved in conspiracy theories of QAnon-style criminal activity, Chuang said. Its goal was to “root out the corruption of the ruling class, the cabal, end the abuse of children and expose the truth to everyone.”
The jury spent a day deliberating the two federal charges before finding DePape guilty of attempted kidnapping of a federal agent or employee and assault of an immediate family member of a federal official.
In letters to the judge, DePape’s mother, Shirley Jean Lawrence, asked him to have pity on her son, saying he had “messed up a lot.”
” How did we get here ? This is not the child I raised. He’s not my David,” she wrote. “I love my son very much and in my heart I know who he really is…he’s not a monster.”
Times Staff Writer Hannah Wiley contributed to this report.
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