The Canadian man who was caught intruding in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s residence and attacking her husband with a hammer will never see freedom again in his lifetime.
44-year-old David DePape, aged 44, received a life sentence without parole eligibility after being tried in San Francisco in June and found guilty of aggravated kidnapping, first-degree burglary, and the false imprisonment of an elder.
This was DePape’s second trial stemming from the same incident at Pelosi’s home, where he attacked her husband Paul, then 82, with a hammer while being filmed by police body cameras.
A federal jury had already convicted him of assaulting a family member of a federal official and attempting to abduct a federal official, which he was sentenced for in May.
In the federal trial, DePape received a 30 year sentence, which will run concurrently to his new life sentence handed down by the state of California.
DePape’s defense argued that the state trial was essentially double jeopardy after his federal conviction, suggesting that although the charges weren’t identical, they arose from the same incident.
Despite some state charges being dropped, others remained that weren’t addressed in the federal case.
Judge Harry Dorfman rejected the defense’s request for a new trial regarding the 2022 attack, stating, “It’s my intention that Mr. DePape will never get out of prison; he can never be paroled.”
Defense attorney Adam Lipson urged the judge to consider DePape’s mental health issues and his vulnerability to online conspiracy theories.
“This is a man who has always been a peaceful, law-abiding person up until his activation,” Lipson commented.
During the trial, he confessed to planning to capture Nancy Pelosi and “break her kneecaps,” but redirected his aggression towards her husband when she wasn’t present.
“I wanted to ask her a question about Russiagate and film it and post it online,” he testified. DePape added he intended to wear a unicorn costume during the act, expecting Pelosi to cooperate.
Court records highlighted items he purchased from Amazon before the attack, such as a camping backpack, computer cables, body cameras, crayons, and two of the aforementioned unicorn costumes.
After striking Pelosi, DePape expressed remorse, “When he was on the ground, bleeding, I was really scared for his life. I felt really bad for him because we had a really good rapport until like the last second.
He said that he attacked Pelosi because his “plan was basically ruined” at that point, despite the lawmaker’s husband never being his “target.”
During the trial, DePape testified that he was “psychic” and talked extensively about theories like September 11 being an inside job, his ex-wife was replaced by a double, and that his court-appointed lawyers were plotting against him.
