State charges included kidnapping, first-degree burglary and false imprisonment of husband of Nancy Pelosi

State charges included kidnapping, first-degree burglary and false imprisonment of husband of Nancy Pelosi

The man who was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for attacking the husband of Nancy Pelosi with a hammer in their California home was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole following a separate state trial.

A San Francisco jury in June found David DePape guilty of charges including aggravated kidnapping, first-degree burglary and false imprisonment of an elder.

Before issuing the sentence, Judge Harry Dorfman dismissed arguments from DePape’s attorneys that he be granted a new trial for the 2022 attack against Paul Pelosi, who was 82 years old at the time.

“It’s my intention that Mr DePape will never get out of prison, he can never be paroled,” Dorfman said while handing out the punishment.

  • Todd Bonzalez
    -10•26 days ago

    I also despise the prison industrial complex and prefer rehabilitation over punishment

    Uh huh. Sure. Let’s find out how much.

    but there’s a point where losses need to be cut.

    Ah, the answer was “not at all”.

    He doesn’t seem remorseful, and he’s not going to seek help when he believes he is justified in beating an elderly man with a hammer.

    Okay.

    At that point, what options are left?

    Rehabilitation? Mental health care? All of the things that European countries do better than us?

    it’s immoral to involuntarily institutionalize and forcibly medicate individuals

    But somehow in your book it’s perfectly moral to lock them in a cage until they die? I’d take medication and institutionalization over being tortured to death any day.

    and even if it wasn’t, that’s a slippery slope you don’t want to go down.

    Ah yes, the slippery slope of not throwing people away like pieces of trash. Would hate to fall down that one… /s

    • @pivot_root@lemmy.world
      6•26 days ago

      Rehabilitation and mental health care are only effective when the individual is receptive to it. This guy is brainwashed, but let’s imagine that’s just the tip of the iceberg: what if it’s just a symptom of a greater issue like psychopathy, and he just doesn’t want to be rehabilitated.

      What, then? Let him have the chance to convince others going through their own rehabilitation to join the q-ult? Keep dragging him to appointments where he does nothing but reinforce his own delusions of grandeur? Forcefully sedate him? Put him in a straightjacket and padded cell, causing maddening isolation? Give him a fucking lobotomy against his will?

      The world isn’t sunshine and rainbows. Prison is a shit option, but it’s a hell of a lot better than being rehabilitated by firing squad or 1940s quack medical procedures.