Ryan Routh was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday following his conviction for attempting to assassinate President Trump in 2024.
Routh also received an additional seven years for a firearm offense.
His attorney, appointed by the court to help him prepare for his sentencing hearing, had asked for leniency, requesting a term of 20 years plus the mandatory seven for the gun conviction.
“The defendant is two weeks short of being 60 years old,” read a court 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.”
After representing himself during the trial, Routh, 59, was convicted last year of trying to kill the then-presidential candidate at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach in September 2024.
Following his conviction, Routh tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen before he was restrained by U.S. marshals and dragged out of the courtroom. Routh was uninjured by the pen, designed to be flexible to prevent people in custody from using it as a weapon.
Arguing for a life sentence, federal prosecutors said Routh spent months plotting to kill Trump and “remains totally unrepentant” for his actions.
“The heinous nature of this assassination attempt — his selfish, violent decision to prevent the American voters from electing President Trump by killing him first — that warrants severe criminal punishment,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.
“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,” they said.
The would-be assassin’s rifle barrel was spotted in the shrubbery by a Secret Service agent as Routh was waiting for Trump, who was golfing at the time, to enter his line of fire. The agent shot at Routh, who was rousted from his hiding place and tried to escape before he was apprehended.
A handwritten letter that stated “this was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump” was among the evidence found after Routh’s capture.
The failed assassination was the second attempt on Trump’s life in a matter of months. A gunman, later identified as 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, opened fire on Trump during a Pennsylvania rally in July 2024, killing a bystander while wounding Trump and others.
With News Wire Services
