The trial of Ryan Wesley Routh came to a dramatic end Tuesday when he tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen after a Florida jury found him guilty of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump last year on a golf course.
“Dad, don’t hurt yourself,” Routh’s daughter, Sara, screamed as the bailiffs struggled to restrain Routh and rushed him out of the courtroom.
A short time later, Routh was returned to the courtroom to complete the proceedings. This time, he was wearing handcuffs, but there was no blood visible on his white shirt, and he did not appear to have succeeded in harming himself.
“We love you, Dad,” Routh’s son, Adam, said after he was escorted out of the courtroom again.
Routh appeared to wink at his kids as he was being led away.
It took the jury just 2½ hours of deliberating to also find Routh guilty of assaulting the Secret Service agent who rousted him from his hiding place and guilty of three federal gun charges stemming from the Sept. 15, 2024, incident.
Routh, who had pleaded not guilty to all the charges, faces life in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 18.
Trump called the verdict on Truth Social “A very big moment for JUSTICE IN AMERICA!”
“Congratulations to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and the entire DOJ team on the conviction, in Florida, of the person who attempted an assassination on my life,” Trump wrote. “The trial was meticulously handled, and I would like to thank the Judge and Jury for their time, professionalism, and patience. This was an evil man with an evil intention, and they caught him.”
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon presided over the trial. Trump appointed her to the bench, and she dismissed the charges against him after he was accused of mishandling classified documents at his home at Mar-a-Lago.
Bondi called the attempted assassination “an affront to our very nation itself.”
“Today’s guilty verdict against would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh illustrates the Department of Justice’s commitment to punishing those who engage in political violence,” she said in a statement.
The verdict came two days after Trump spoke at a memorial service for the popular but polarizing conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whose murder on a Utah college campus this month has ratcheted up anxieties about political violence in the United States.
Routh, 59, a former Trump supporter, is a resident of Hawaii and originally from North Carolina. He is not a lawyer.
But during the two-week trial, Routh served as his own attorney. And before the panel of seven women and five men reached its verdict, he delivered a brief and disjointed closing argument during which he tried to argue that there was no crime because he never fired a shot at Trump.
Just 12 minutes into Routh’s monologue, Cannon interrupted him and scolded him for ignoring her order to “stay within the bounds of the case” after he started complaining that he wasn’t allowed to put more witnesses on the stand.
With the jury out of earshot, Routh then asked Cannon whether the public defenders who initially represented him, Kristy Militello and Renee Michelle Sihvola, could wrap up his closing argument if Cannon interrupted him again.
Cannon said no, and when the jury returned, Routh argued that “to merely have a weapon in the presence of another does not mean intent.”
But after Routh brought up the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill and began talking about Ukraine, Founding Father Patrick Henry and the “common man,” Cannon put a halt to his argument. In total, he spoke for about 42 minutes.
The government delivered its closing argument first, with prosecutor Christopher Browne telling the court that Routh had planned to kill Trump “for a long, long time.”
“It is not every case where the defendant writes his intent down on a piece of paper,” Browne said in his closing statement.
Browne was referring to note Routh wrote before he was arrested and left in a box at a friend’s home in North Carolina. It was addressed “To the World” and stated plainly, “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.”
“This is not a whodunit,” Browne told jurors.
Starting with the pretrial hearings and throughout the trial, Cannon admonished Routh repeatedly for disrupting the proceedings and asking witnesses questions she deemed outside the scope of the case or irrelevant.
Routh was arrested after Secret Service Agent Robert Fercano spotted him hiding in the shrubbery near the fifth hole of Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach and, according to prosecutors, waiting for Trump to get into his line of fire.
Routh asked Cannon at a hearing in July for permission to represent himself after he clashed with his court-appointed attorneys, saying they were “a million miles apart.”
Cannon reluctantly agreed, calling it a “bad idea,” but she ordered the public defenders to stay in the courtroom on standby and ordered Routh not to approach the witnesses.
Federal prosecutors called 38 witnesses over seven days. They placed Routh at the scene and testified that he could have killed Trump had he not been caught.
Routh called three witnesses and was done presenting his case before lunchtime Monday.
Source: NBC
--Agencies
