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.
You definitely have some good ideas about an alternative system, but you also have some nonsense in that first paragraph.
The idea of someone deserving punishment is inherently dehumanizing. It’s not possible to punish someone unless they are beneath you. Thinking another human is lesser than you defines them as less than human.
Hard lines of behavior? That’s just what laws are, like we currently have. Yes, look at where we are now with the centuries long mentality of people deserving punishment. The rich and powerful are not subjected to the law in the same way because, to use your words, “authoritarian systems especially are prone to being taken over by groups with special interests, whoch not only guts their effectiveness but completely revrses their intended goals if they were noble ones.” Seriously though, “hard lines of behavior” is an extremely authoritarian phrase.
There are no “evil people” there are only evil actions. Every single person has the capacity for evil. We’re going to be stuck where we’re at until we collectively recognize that truth.