By Janie Har | Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — The man who was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for attacking the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a hammer in their California home was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole following a separate state trial.
A San Francisco jury in June found David DePape guilty of charges including aggravated kidnapping, first-degree burglary and false imprisonment of an elder.
Before issuing the sentence, Judge Harry Dorfman dismissed arguments from DePape’s attorneys that he be granted a new trial for the 2022 attack against Paul Pelosi, who was 82 years old at the time.
“It’s my intention that Mr. DePape will never get out of prison, he can never be paroled,” Dorfman said while handing out the punishment.
One of the defense attorneys, Adam Lipson, asked Dorfman before the sentence was handed down to consider DePape’s mental health and isolation that 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.
When given the chance 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 Sept. 11 being an inside job, his ex-wife being replaced by a body double, and his government-provided attorneys conspiring against him.
“I’m a psychic,” DePape told the court, reading from sheets of paper. “The more I meditate, the more psychic I get.”
In a letter read in court by the victim’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, Paul Pelosi called for the maximum sentence, saying the “last peaceful sleep” he had ended abruptly “when the defendant violently broke into my home, burst into my bedroom and stood over my bed with a hammer and zip ties demanding to see my wife, yelling ‘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 evokes memories of the attack, he said.
Previously, a federal jury convicted DePape of assaulting a federal official’s family member and attempting to kidnap a federal official. In May, he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison during an unusual resentencing hearing that resulted from judicial error. The punishment in the state trial will run concurrently with the federal sentence.
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Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
