A 44-year-old Berkeley man has been sentenced in state court to life in prison for attacking the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2022, according to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.
A San Francisco Superior Court jury in June convicted David DePape of charges including aggravated kidnapping, first-degree residential burglary, false imprisonment of an elder, threatening the life of a family member of a public official and dissuading a witness by force or threat for attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer at the Pelosis’ San Francisco home on Oct. 28, 2022.
DePape was sentenced earlier this year in federal court to 20 years for attempted kidnapping of a federal official and 30 years for assaulting a member of a public official’s family, prosecutors said. The federal sentences will run concurrently, so his federal sentence will last 30 years before he is transferred to state custody.
Early on the morning of the attack, DePape arrived at the Pelosis’ home, broke in through a glass door, woke up Paul Pelosi and told him he was “looking for Nancy,” prosecutors said.
Paul Pelosi told DePape that she was in Washington, D.C., but he refused to leave. Pelosi then sought to call the police without provoking an attack and when officers arrived, they found the two struggling over a hammer.
“Recognizing the seriousness of his crimes and the danger to democracy that Mr. DePape posed, he is now being held accountable and will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.”
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins
DePape gained control of the hammer and struck Pelosi in the head, fracturing his skull and causing serious injuries to his right arm and hands.
DePape’s attorney in the state case, San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Adam Lipson, said following his conviction in June that charging him with the kidnapping count that carried the life sentence without the possibility of parole on top of his federal sentence was “a textbook case of vindictive prosecution.”
However, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a statement Tuesday that DePape being convicted both federally and locally is “reflecting the public’s unanimous condemnation” of the attack.
“Recognizing the seriousness of his crimes and the danger to democracy that Mr. DePape posed, he is now being held accountable and will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole. We cannot allow political violence to become normalized and 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,” Jenkins said.
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