Featured Image Credit: Saul Loeb / Nicolas Garcia / Getty Images
Topics: Crime, US News, Donald Trump
Phoebe Tonks
Topics: Crime, US News, Donald Trump
Ryan Routh has been sentenced to life in prison for attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump while playing golf back in 2024.
Routh, 59, was arrested after security spotted a rifle sticking out of bushes at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course in Florida, on September 15, 2024.
The terrifying incident came just weeks after Trump was left with a grazed ear when a bullet narrowly missed him during another assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
During his trial last September, Routh pleaded not guilty to all five charges against him and chose to represent himself in court, where he was found guilty on every count.
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After a jury found him guilty, Routh attempted to stab himself in the neck with a pen before US marshals quickly escorted him out of the courtroom to a place of safety.
For the last four months, Routh, who is originally from North Carolina and lived in Hawaii before his arrest, has been detained in custody, yet it was only on Wednesday (February 4) that his sentence was revealed, when a judge handed down a life sentence for the severity of his crime.
In a sentencing memorandum, Judge Aileen Cannon said Routh's crimes 'undeniably warrant a life sentence'.
"[H]e 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," she wrote.
It is understood he will be appealing his conviction.
While a life sentence is one of the harshest sentences that authorities in Florida can hand down, it is not the most severe option at the court’s disposal, as the state still actively supports the death penalty.
According to the BBC, Routh’s behaviour during his trial was increasingly erratic, which included challenging Trump to a game of golf despite having attempted to kill him, as well as making multiple references to Adolf Hitler and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
He also repeatedly went off on baffling tangents and spoke in the third person while touching on a wide variety of unrelated topics, including US history, the Russia-Ukraine war and his intention to buy a boat.
During the trial, it was also revealed that Routh was not believed to have had a clear line of sight to Trump at any point during the incident; however, Secret Service agents did recover a semiautomatic rifle with a scope and an extended magazine near where he had been hiding, shortly after his arrest.
He will now face the rest of his life behind bars.