The man who attacked Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with a hammer at their San Francisco residence was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Friday.
DePape’s defense attorneys urged U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley to consider a 14-year sentence, citing his lack of prior criminal record and the difficult time he had been experiencing at the time of the crime.
Government prosecutors, however, had been pushing for the maximum term of 40 years.
Corley met them in the middle after the San Francisco lawmaker requested a “very long” sentence as penance for the “great fear and deep pain” she experienced from the attack.
“A violent man broke into our home, threatened to kidnap me and – in his own words – made my husband Paul ‘take the punishment’ in my absence with a near-fatal attack with a hammer,” the California congresswoman penned in a letter to the court.
Pelosi also mentioned that she and her husband have not ever spoken about his assault.
“Paul and I have not discussed the events of that horrible night,” she wrote.
“Paul doesn’t want to undergo revisiting it, and the doctors’ advice is that discussing the vicious assault would only renew his trauma.”
In his own letter, Paul Pelosi revealed that he continues to suffer from dizziness, headaches, balance issues, nerve pain, and difficulty walking after being struck by DePape with a hammer in the October 2022 home invasion.
“For months, sleeping alone in my home was very difficult because I kept remembering the defendant breaking into my house,” he explained.
“The defendant severely damaged the nerves in my left hand,” Paul added. “My forehand was ‘de-gloved’ exposing raw nerves and blood vessels.”
He said that while his skin is “mostly healed,” the nerves of his left hand are pinched and completing basic tasks is “more difficult” than it used to be.
On November 16, federal jurors found DePape guilty of attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on a member of a federal official’s immediate family.
Judge Corley sentenced him to 20 years for one count and 30 years for the other charge, with the sentences running concurrently. He was credited for the 18 months he has already spent in custody.
DePape admitting to breaking into the Pelosi residence with the intention of using Nancy and Paul Pelosi as part of a totally nonsensical fantasy to bait an area queer studies professor, Gayle Rubin.
He also claimed to have been studying up on right-wing conspiracy theories for hours a day before executing his plot.
Before the trial, DePape admitted to investigators that he planned to break the former House Speaker’s kneecaps if she did not give transparent answers to his questions.
An confession he tried to walk back while testifying by claiming the plot he had confessed to was a “mischaracterization.”
When Paul Pelosi took the stand, he testified that “a very large man” armed with a hammer and zip ties woke him up with demands of “Where’s Nancy?”
After Pelosi informed his attacker that his wife was in Washington, D.C., DePape allegedly said he would tie Pelosi up and wait for her return.
Pelosi was able to dial 911 when DePape was preoccupied, but was attacked by the hammer-wielding villain when the police ordered him to drop the weapon after they arrived on scene.
Officers quickly subdued and arrested DePape, but Pelosi was rushed to the hospital with a fractured skull.
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Ismail J. Ramsey said that Friday’s sentencing reflected DePape’s “lack of remorse and contrition for violently assaulting” Pelosi.
Despite the lengthy federal sentence, DePape still faces state charges, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, residential burglary, false imprisonment, and threatening the life or serious bodily harm to a public official.
Jury selection for the state case is scheduled for Wednesday.
