David DePape, the intruder who broke into the home of former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi two years ago and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer, was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The sentencing by a San Francisco judge in state court brings to an end the legal cases against DePape, whose attack on the Pelosi household days before the 2022 US midterm elections raised fears of political violence and underscored the toxic nature of politics in a polarised country. DePape had, in the years before the attack, become immersed in the darker corners of the internet and embraced conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and QAnon.
DePape (44) is already serving a 30-year sentence in prison after being convicted of two federal crimes last year: attempted kidnapping of a federal officer and assault on an immediate family member of a federal official. In June, DePape was convicted of several crimes in state court, including aggravated kidnapping, false imprisonment of an elder by violence or menace; and first-degree burglary.
DePape’s state sentence will be served concurrently with his federal sentence, and he will be held in a state prison, according to the San Francisco district attorney’s office.
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“We cannot allow political violence to become normalised and we must take swift action to ensure there are serious consequences for those who will utilise violence to intimidate or stifle our elected leaders for doing what they have been elected to do,” Brooke Jenkins, the district attorney of San Francisco, said in a statement after the sentence was issued.
At the sentencing hearing, DePape made a rambling statement that lasted more than 45 minutes in which he promoted conspiracy theories about September 11th and spoke of “evil murder magic rituals” in the United States, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.
The crime occurred in the early morning hours of October 28th, 2022. Investigators said that DePape broke into the Pelosi home with a hammer and repeatedly asked “Where’s Nancy?” She was in Washington DC, at the time, but DePape found her husband, Paul Pelosi, then 82, asleep in the couple’s bedroom.
By the time the police arrived, Mr Pelosi and DePape were standing in the entryway of the home, struggling over the hammer. Just then, DePape took control of the weapon and struck Pelosi, who was left lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood.
Mr Pelosi underwent surgery for two skull fractures. At the state and federal trials of DePape, Mr Pelosi testified that he suffered from the lingering effects of his injuries. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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