SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A person sentenced to 30 years in federal jail within the assault towards former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was convicted Friday of aggravated kidnapping, a conviction that mandates life behind bars with out the potential for parole.
A San Francisco jury discovered David DePape additionally responsible of first-degree housebreaking, false imprisonment of an elder, threatening a member of the family of a public official and dissuading a witness.
The convictions on the extra expenses within the state trial come weeks after a federal choose sentenced DePape, 44, for the 2022 assault towards Paul Pelosi.
“Speaker Pelosi and her family remain in awe of their Pop’s bravery, which shone through again on the witness stand in this trial just as it did when he saved his own life on the night of the attack,” Pelosi’s workplace wrote in an emailed assertion Friday. “For nearly 20 grueling months, Mr. Pelosi has demonstrated extraordinary courage and fortitude every day of his recovery.”
DePape’s public defender Adam Lipson mentioned he was dissatisfied with the decision and plans to attraction it. He known as the prosecutors’ choice to file a kidnapping for ransom cost “vindictive.”
“It’s really unfortunate that it was charged this way. It was sort of a textbook vindictive prosecution,” Lipson mentioned. “As soon as they found that the attempted murder charge was going to be dismissed, they added this charge.”
San Francisco District Lawyer Brooke Jenkins mentioned at a information convention Friday that every one expenses her workplace filed towards DePape had been based mostly on the identical proof.
The jury was “able to find that he was guilty and so there’s no need for any accusations of vindictive prosecution,” she mentioned. “We’re simply trying to do our jobs to make sure that he was held accountable for every act that occurred that night that was criminal.”
Lipson earlier argued that the state trial represents double jeopardy following the federal conviction. Despite the fact that the felony counts should not the identical, the 2 instances stem from the identical act, he instructed the choose.
San Francisco Superior Courtroom Choose Harry Dorfman agreed and dismissed the state expenses of tried homicide, elder abuse and assault with a lethal weapon. One other choose upheld the choice on attraction.
Lipson mentioned that the decision implies that after DePape serves 30 years in federal jail, he will probably be transferred to California “to spend the rest of his life in a California prison.”
Beforehand, a federal jury convicted DePape of assaulting a federal official’s member of the family and making an attempt to kidnap a federal official. On Might 28, he was sentenced to 30 years in federal jail throughout an uncommon resentencing listening to that resulted from judicial error.
Lipson centered his closing arguments on explaining to the jury that prosecutors didn’t show DePape kidnapped Paul Pelosi, who was 82 on the time, with the intent “to exact from another person money or something valuable,” which is integral to the cost.
Assistant District Lawyer Phoebe Maffei instructed the jury in her closing arguments that DePape had deliberate to file a video of his interrogation of Nancy Pelosi.
Lipson argued the video didn’t exist and if it did, it wouldn’t have had any worth.
“When he broke into the Pelosis’ home his intent was to confront and potentially hurt and assault Nancy Pelosi. That was his intent at that time, that has nothing to do with Mr. Pelosi,” he mentioned.
In her rebuttal, Maffei identified DePape instructed a detective and testified in federal court docket that he deliberate to get a video of Nancy Pelosi confessing to what he believed to be crimes and submit it on the web.
“There is inherent value in a video of the Speaker of the House confessing to crimes in her own home,” Maffei mentioned.
The Oct. 28, 2022, assault on Paul Pelosi was captured on police physique digicam video simply days earlier than the midterm elections and shocked the political world. He suffered two head wounds together with a cranium fracture that was mended with plates and screws he could have for the remainder of his life. His proper arm and hand had been additionally injured.
DePape admitted throughout his federal trial testimony that he deliberate to carry Nancy Pelosi hostage, file his interrogation of her, and “break her kneecaps” if she didn’t admit to the lies he mentioned she instructed about “Russiagate,” a reference to the investigation into Russian interference within the 2016 presidential marketing campaign.
Lipson instructed the jury throughout closing arguments that earlier than the assault, DePape was residing an remoted, lonely life and “went down the rabbit hole of propaganda and conspiracy theories.”
This week the choose expelled DePape’s former associate from the general public gallery and the second ground of the San Francisco courthouse as a result of the choose mentioned she was making an attempt to tamper with the jury.
On Monday and Tuesday, Gypsy Taub, a widely known activist within the Bay Space, handed out items of paper outdoors the courtroom with the tackle of an internet site she runs that promotes conspiracy theories. The playing cards had been additionally present in a ladies’s rest room close to the courtroom, the place the web site’s tackle was scrawled in marker on a wall.
DePape’s federal public defender Angela Chaung mentioned throughout his federal sentencing that DePape was first uncovered to excessive beliefs by Taub, who has two sons with DePape.
Taub met DePape in Hawaii when he was 20 years previous and she or he was in her 30s and pregnant, DePape’s twin sister, Joanne Robinson, mentioned in a letter to the federal choose looking for leniency.
Robinson wrote that Taub remoted DePape from his household and inflicted “extreme psychological damage” on her brother.
