California’s Supreme Court refused to restore an attempted-murder charge against David DePape for the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, leaving prosecutors’ kill-intent count permanently blocked while his life sentence stands.
The state’s highest court on Wednesday denied review of prosecutors’ bid to revive the dropped charge, making final a June 30 appeals ruling that barred the count on double-jeopardy grounds. DePape still faces life in prison without parole for aggravated kidnapping of the 82-year-old husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, after the October 2022 break-in at their San Francisco home.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the denial left intact the 1st District Court of Appeal’s 2-1 decision. That panel agreed with San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman that the attempted-murder charge, along with elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon, could not proceed because they rested on the same physical acts already used in DePape’s federal assault conviction.
Prosecutors from District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’ office had argued jurors should still have been allowed to decide whether DePape meant to kill Paul Pelosi. The Supreme Court rejection, over a dissent from Justice Carol Corrigan, ends that effort.
In the early morning hours of October 2022, DePape entered the Pelosi home, woke Paul Pelosi, and shouted “Where’s Nancy?” Pelosi said she was in Washington and called police. Officers arrived and saw DePape strike him in the head with a hammer, knocking him unconscious with a fractured skull.
Federal prosecutors went first. A jury convicted DePape of assault and attempted kidnapping. He received a 30-year federal sentence. Then came eight state felony charges in San Francisco Superior Court. Judge Dorfman dismissed three of them, attempted murder, elder abuse, and assault with a deadly weapon, citing the constitutional ban on being punished twice for the same offense. Prosecutors still won five felony convictions, including aggravated kidnapping, the forcible seizure of a person to commit other crimes. In October 2024, Dorfman imposed life without the possibility of parole.
Readers tracking the Pelosi family in the news may also recall separate coverage of Paul Pelosi charged with hit-and-run in Napa County, a different legal episode that kept his name in headlines long after the attack.
On June 30, Presiding Justice Therese Stewart, joined by Justice Marla Miller, wrote for the appeals majority. Both are appointees of former Gov. Jerry Brown. They held that the physical acts overlapped completely with the federal case.
"The physical conduct required to prove the charged attempted murder, striking Pelosi’s head with the hammer, was the same physical conduct required to prove the federal assault charge."
Stewart also wrote:
"One hammer strike in the head is enough to show attempted murder."
Justice Tara Desautels, appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, dissented. She argued the state charge demanded proof of willfulness, premeditation, and deliberation that the federal assault case never required, so the counts were not the same offense.
Lawyers and prosecutors alike described DePape as a delusional conspiracy theorist. In court proceedings he claimed the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center was an “inside job” and said the United States was beset with “evil murder magic rituals.”
Acquaintances later told the New York Post that DePape had “fried his brain” with drugs and shifted from earlier liberal views into Pizzagate, stolen-election claims, and QAnon. One said, “When I met him he was more of a liberal early on... but it became the whole thing, Hillary Clinton, Pizzagate, the election was stolen, QAnon.”
That same period saw intense public interest in the evidence itself. A California judge ordered release of the home-security video of the attack after prosecutors played it and 911 audio at a preliminary hearing, then resisted media requests. Fox News reported that San Francisco Superior Court Judge Stephen Murphy rejected the district attorney’s office argument that conspiracy theories justified withholding the footage, with one lawyer noting the public right of access does not vanish over those concerns. The Oct. 28, 2022, attack date was confirmed in that coverage as DePape faced charges.
Separate American Tribune reporting has followed other chapters in Paul Pelosi’s public record, including when Paul Pelosi faces a misdemeanor hit-and-run charge after a Napa County incident, material that sits outside the hammer-attack case but keeps the same name in the legal news cycle.
Even with the attempted-murder count gone, DePape remains locked into the life-without-parole term Judge Dorfman handed down for aggravated kidnapping. His lawyer, David Kaiser, has asked the appeals court to overturn that life sentence and declined to comment on the Supreme Court’s latest move.
The practical result is clear. A man who broke into a private home, hunted for a political figure, and smashed an elderly victim’s skull with a hammer will not face a state jury on whether he intended to kill. The federal assault conviction and the state kidnapping conviction carry the weight instead. Jenkins’ office wanted the attempted-murder charge so jurors could make that intent finding. The courts said the Constitution’s double-jeopardy rule closed the door.
For readers who have followed related Pelosi-family legal coverage, earlier pieces detailed Paul Pelosi’s long trail of traffic violations after the Napa crash, another thread in the public record that has nothing to do with DePape yet shows how often the family name surfaces in California court stories.
The Supreme Court’s refusal does not free DePape. It does lock in a gap: the most direct state charge for trying to end Paul Pelosi’s life will never go to a California jury. The victim lived. The attacker got life for kidnapping. The kill-intent count died on a technical match between federal and state acts.
When process blocks the charge that matches the blow to the head, accountability gets thinner than the injury itself.