Ryan Routh, a man convicted of attempting to assassinate President Trump, was sentenced to life in prison.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon announced the sentence. Routh also received a seven-year sentence for a gun conviction.
Routh’s attorney, Martin Roth, previously asked for 20 years in prison on top of the seven-year sentence. “The defendant is two weeks short of being sixty years old,” Roth wrote in the filing. “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,” PBS News reports.
Roth further argued that Routh “asserts that the jury was misled by his inability to effectively confront witnesses, use exhibits or affirmatively introduce impeachment evidence designed to prove his lack of intent to cause injury to anyone,” CBS News notes.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department argued in court filings that Routh’s crimes “undeniably warrant a life sentence—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.”
Last year, Routh requested to be imprisoned in a state allowing assisted suicide. The practice is legal in eleven states: California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, as well as Washington, D.C.
Routh was found guilty in September on all counts for attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at his West Palm Beach golf course in 2024.
