Person who admitted to trying to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh is sentenced to more than 8 years in prison

By Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — The person who admitted to trying to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the wake of the Supreme Court’s leaked decision overturning of Roe v. Wade was sentenced to just over 8 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release – far less than the 30 years sought by the Justice Department.

The Californian, who identifies as a woman by the name Sophie Roske, called the police on herself on a street nearby the Justice’s house in the summer of 2022. She told the 911 operator she needed psychiatric help and had intended to hurt Kavanaugh and herself.

During the call, the 26-year-old Roske told the operator she had flown from California to Kavanaugh’s home with a bag full of guns and other weapons.

Roske, addressing the court Friday after her mother’s tearful testimony, apologized to Kavanaugh, his family, and hers.

“I sincerely apologize to the justice and his family,” Roske said in court, adding that she should have been aware how “poor” her mental health had gotten at the time of the crime.

“I have been portrayed as a monster and this tragic mistake will follow me for the rest of my life,” she said.

Roske pleaded guilty in April to attempting to kill a Supreme Court justice, which comes with a sentence of up to life in prison. The Justice Department had asked Judge Deborah L. Boardman to sentence Roske to at least 30 years.

Roske’s parents, sister, and her sister’s fiancé attended her sentencing. Kavanaugh’s wife, Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, and his mother also attended the hearing, as well as several members of the Supreme Court police force, a court spokesperson said. They did not testify.

“I just want to acknowledge the real harm that was caused to Justice Kavanaugh and his family,” Boardman said. “He and his family should never have to face a fear of threat because he does his job.”

In arguing for a sentence of 30 years, prosecutor Coreen Mao told Boardman that “individuals who answer the call to public service” make many sacrifices.

In court filings ahead of the hearing, Roske’s attorneys detailed how, for years, Roske struggled with depression and attempted to commit suicide in the past, admitting herself to hospitals on several occasions.

“Deeply depressed and acutely suicidal, she reasoned that she could give her life some meaning if she were able to stop the Supreme Court from overturning Roe v. Wade,” Roske’s attorneys wrote in court filings, “a decision she felt certain would result in pain and suffering to others.”

In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, ruling Americans no longer had a constitutionally protected right to an abortion.

During Friday’s hearing, Mao said Roske’s sentence should also serve to deter others. She told the judge that Kavanaugh received mail in April that referred to Roske and how Kavanaugh “should die” from a bullet shot through his head.

“Life imprisonment is warranted,” she told the judge.

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday criticized the sentencing decision, calling it “insufficient.”

“The attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a disgusting attack against our entire judicial system by a profoundly disturbed individual. @TheJusticeDept will be appealing the woefully insufficient sentence imposed by the district court, which does not reflect the horrific facts of this case,” Bondi said in a post on X.

Judge spoke for 2 hours

Boardman spoke for 2 hours to explain her sentence, saying that the recommendation for 30 years in prison “was not reasonable” and that it didn’t consider all of the factors in the case.

The judge found that Roske’s mental health crisis at the time, as well as an improper mixing of certain medications and the significant fact that Roske turned herself in, weighed heavily in favor of a hefty but not overly punitive sentence.

“If she had not called 9-11, law enforcement would have never known about Sophie Roske and her plot to kill a Supreme Court justice,” Boardman said.

In arguing for a lesser sentence of 96 months, one month less than what the judge went with, Roske’s attorneys went into great depth around their client’s mental health struggles, including the constant inability to reveal her gender identity to her parents.

After one attempt to take her own life, Roske’s attorneys wrote, a prayer group from her church concluded “that Sophie’s attempt had been driven by satanic forces, organized a house call during which they removed items they deemed suspicious (like foreign souvenirs) from Sophie’s room and prayed together for her salvation.”

“I should have operated so much differently but I didn’t know how,” Roske’s mother, Colleen, told the judge through a tearful reflection Friday of her daughter’s severe mental health struggles. “We were trusting the mental health experts.”

“What I see now is that we should have listened more,” Colleen said, adding that she and her husband “have been able to learn and grow” and have learned things about their daughter they never before new, including her gender identity.

Prosecutors say Roske had planned to assassinate up to three Supreme Court Justices following the leak of the opinion and, in private chats online, ignored messages from others telling her that killing Kavanaugh “would not achieve the defendant’s intended ends.”

According to prosecutors, Roske had researched the address of several Supreme Court justices and conducted online reconnaissance about the justices “over 60 times” as well as purchased “the instrumentalities needed to break into a home and commit murder.”

Roske, prosecutors wrote in recent court filings, “repeatedly sought to learn how to ‘avoid leaving evidence,’ the ‘insanity defense,’ and ‘how are mass murderers treated in prison.’”

“In other words, the defendant’s conduct shows that the defendant was more than capable of independently planning for, and executing, the assassination mission,” prosecutors argued in their sentencing memo.

The night of the arrest in the summer of 2022, Roske had travelled to Kavanaugh’s home and walked past a US Marshal vehicle outside the home with a rolling bag containing a firearm and burglary tools, court records say.

After texting her sister that she loved her, Roske’s sister called her and convinced her to call 911.

In a letter from prison, cited by her attorneys, Roske recently wrote that she had “become so focused on the effects policy has on people that I forgot the judges and politicians making policy are real people too. That became immediately clear to me and I wanted to leave.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s John Fritze and Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.

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