Man Who Attacked Paul Pelosi Is Sentenced to Life in Prison
The New York Times
David DePape broke into the San Francisco home of Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, in 2022 and beat her husband with a hammer.
David DePape, the intruder who broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi two years ago and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer, was sentenced on 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 Mr. DePape, whose attack on the Pelosi household days before the 2022 midterm elections raised fears of political violence and underscored the toxic nature of politics in a polarized country. Mr. 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.
Mr. 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, Mr. 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.
Mr. 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.
“We cannot allow political violence to become normalized and we 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,” Brooke Jenkins, the district attorney of San Francisco, said in a statement after the sentence was issued.
