Ryan Routh, a man convicted of attempting to assassinate President Trump, has appealed his life sentence. His attorney filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
“Notice is hereby given that Ryan Routh, defendant in the above named case, hereby appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from the final judgment and sentence, D.E. 397, entered on February 5, 2026,” the filing reads.
The life sentence was announced earlier this month. Routh’s attorney, Martin Roth, previously asked for 20 years in prison on top of a seven-year sentence for a gun conviction. “The defendant is two weeks short of being sixty years old,” Roth wrote in the filing, reported by PBS News. “A just punishment would provide a sentence long enough to impose sufficient but not excessive punishment, and to allow defendant to experience freedom again as opposed to dying in prison.”
Federal prosecutors argued in January that Routh “plotted painstakingly to kill President Trump, and took significant steps toward making that happen.” It added that he “was only thwarted in his assassination attempt by a Secret Service agent who noticed and disrupted Routh before Routh could fire a shot.”
Routh’s crimes “undeniably warrant a life sentence,” the filing read, saying he “took steps over the course of months to assassinate a major Presidential candidate, demonstrated the will to kill anybody in the way, and has since expressed neither regret nor remorse to his victims.”
After Routh was found to be guilty on all counts in September, he attempted to stab himself with a pen. He was restrained by U.S. Marshals.
