By Jan Wolfe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors on Friday asked a judge to sentence the person who attempted to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022 to at least 30 years in prison.
The request from Justice Department lawyers, submitted in a court filing, came as the defendant’s lawyers indicated their client now uses female pronouns and goes by Sophie Roske, rather than her birth name of Nicholas Roske.
On June 7 2022, Roske traveled from her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley to Maryland to Kavanaugh’s residence. She called police after seeing U.S. marshals outside his house, telling the dispatcher she was suicidal and intended to kill Kavanaugh, according to court filings.
The filing stated that Roske, who pleaded guilty earlier this year and will be sentenced next month, “made a concerted and focused attempt to undermine and subvert the United States government.”
It asserted that Roske had also spoken of assassinating other sitting Supreme Court justices, who were not identified.
“This attempt against the life of a Supreme Court Justice was an attack on the entire judicial system that cannot go unpunished,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in statement. “This Department of Justice condemns political violence and our prosecutors will ensure that this disturbed individual faces severe consequences for his deranged actions.”
In a separate court filing on Friday, Roske’s lawyers countered that their client should not receive a sentence of more than 96 months because she had called 911 to turn herself in and cooperated at every stage of the investigation.
Roske, who was 26 at the time of the attempted assassination, has been held at a Maryland jail since the 2022 arrest and would get credit for time served.
Authorities said at the time that Roske was dismayed at expected Supreme Court opinions ending the national right to abortion and rolling back gun regulations. The incident happened about a month after a leaked draft opinion indicated the court was poised to overturn its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe in Washington; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
