David DePape, who was convicted of federal crimes for breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s residence two years ago and beating her husband with a hammer, apologized Tuesday for the attack and expressed remorse, as a judge briefly considered a more lenient prison sentence.
“I should have left the house when I learned Nancy Pelosi wasn’t there,” he said. “I will never do anything violent like that again.”
Mr. DePape made his comments in a federal courtroom in San Francisco, where the judge in the case reopened sentencing proceedings, two weeks after initially sentencing Mr. DePape to 30 years in federal prison.
Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley realized after handing down the sentence that she had made a mistake without first asking Mr. DePape if he wanted to make a statement. Judge Corley brought the parties back to court on Tuesday to give Mr. DePape a chance to speak.
The judge appeared indifferent to Mr. DePape’s apology. After hearing him on Tuesday, he once again sentenced Mr. DePape to 30 years, the maximum allowed by law.
Mr. DePape was convicted in November of two federal crimes: attempted kidnapping of a federal officer and assault on an immediate family member of a federal officer.
Mr. DePape said he was in a dark place when he committed the crimes, but that his mental state had since improved. “I was able to reconnect with my mother and other family members, which allowed me to move forward,” he told the court.
Tuesday’s hearing was held during a break in DePape’s state criminal trial, which began last week with jury selection. In state court, Mr. DePape faces several criminal charges related to the attack, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and elder abuse. Opening statements are expected to begin Wednesday morning. If convicted at that trial, Mr. DePape faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
As he did during the first sentencing hearing, Judge Corley said Tuesday that his sentence reflects both the seriousness of the crime and the need to deter politically motivated violence. He said he wanted to make sure “there are no imitators.”
“The message needs to get out that this is absolutely unacceptable to our democracy,” Judge Corley said.
After Mr. DePape was initially sentenced on May 17, his federal public defenders quickly appealed and objected to the judge’s reopening of his sentencing hearing. They argued that the case should have been immediately taken to an appeals court and that, if a new ruling went forward, it should have been handled by a different judge, “to preserve the appearance of justice.”
“The court cannot reasonably be expected to set aside its previously expressed findings to express fair and appropriate resentencing of Mr. DePape,” they wrote in a legal filing.
The attack on the Pelosis’ home in San Francisco occurred in the early morning hours of October 22, less than three weeks before the midterm elections, and raised fears of politically motivated violence at a particularly divisive time in America.
Mr. DePape, who was 42 at the time, broke into the house through a back door looking for Mrs. Pelosi, who was then the speaker of the House and second in line to the presidency. After entering the house, Mr. DePape repeatedly shouted, “Where’s Nancy?”
Mrs. Pelosi was in Washington, D.C., and Mr. DePape instead met with Paul Pelosi, asleep in the couple’s bedroom. At his trial last year, Mr. Pelosi, who was 82 at the time of the attack, said he managed to surreptitiously call 911 from his bathroom. When police officers arrived, they found Mr. Pelosi and Mr. DePape standing in the lobby, each holding a large hammer that Mr. DePape had brought with him.
It was then, according to trial testimony and footage from police body-worn cameras, that Mr. DePape gained control of the hammer and struck Mr. Pelosi in the head, leaving him on the ground, bloodied. Mr. Pelosi underwent surgery for two skull fractures and spent six days in hospital.
A spokesman for Mrs. Pelosi on Tuesday declined to comment on the new ruling, saying her office would wait until the verdict in the state trial to provide another response.
Mr. DePape was a solitary figure, living on the fringes of society in the San Francisco Bay Area. For a time I slept under a tree in a park in Berkeley, California. In the years leading up to the attack, I spent a lot of time immersed in online conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and QAnon.
Before announcing the sentence on Tuesday, Judge Corley acknowledged that Mr. DePape had no criminal or violent history before breaking into the Pelosis’ home. The judge told him that he was “particularly vulnerable” to what he heard from the media.
