Dave DePape, serving 30 years for attacking Nancy Pelosi's husband, gets a life term on state charges
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.
DePape's attorneys have said the state trial amounted to double jeopardy following his federal conviction. Even though the criminal counts were not exactly the same, the two cases stem from the same act, they argued. The judge did dismiss some of the state charges but kept others that were not covered by the federal case.
The Oct. 28, 2022, attack on Paul Pelosi was captured on police body camera video just days before the midterm elections and shocked the political world . He suffered head wounds, including a skull fracture that was mended with plates and screws. His right arm and hand were also injured.
"Recognizing the seriousness of his crimes and the danger to democracy that Mr. DePape posed he is now being held accountable and will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole," San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a statement. "We can not allow political violence to become normalized and must take swift action to ensure there are serious consequences for those who will utilize violence to intimidate or stifle our elected leaders for doing what they have been elected to do."
DePape, a Canadian citizen who has been living in the U.S. for years, admitted during his federal trial that he planned to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage, record his interrogation of her, and "break her kneecaps" if she did not admit to the lies he said she told about "Russiagate," a reference to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.