Federal prosecutors and defense attorneys made closing arguments Wednesday in the trial of David DePape, the man facing life in prison for attempting to kidnap former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assaulting her husband, Paul Pelosi, last year.
The jury began deliberating late Wednesday morning.
The four-day trial in a San Francisco courtroom focused on DePape’s failed plan to kidnap Nancy Pelosi by breaking into her San Francisco home early in the morning on Oct. 28, 2022. He found the former speaker of the House was not home, which he said was not part of his plan. He held Paul Pelosi hostage until police officers arrived, then bludgeoned him in the head with a hammer in front of them.
“It was not a very well thought out plan,” DePape’s attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Angela Chuang told the jury in her closing argument.
DePape’s defense attorneys do not dispute that he hit Paul Pelosi with a hammer, or that he planned to capture Nancy Pelosi. Rather, the defense argued that he was motivated by outlandish conspiracy theories, not Pelosi’s official position at the time as House speaker.
That’s a key distinction in considering both of the federal charges against DePape, which require that the suspect had the “intent to impede, intimidate, or interfere” with a federal official’s duties, or “on account of” those duties.
That strategy echos ones used by attorneys defending Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists earlier this year, including arguments that focused on...
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