11/06/2023 05:00 AM ESTSAN FRANCISCO — The Northern District of California courthouse where David DePape will stand trial this week is unfriendly territory.
It also represents the latest challenge for the nation’s legal system that is facing increasing scrutiny amidst other highly politicized cases including the four criminal prosecutions of former President Donald Trump. DePape’s attorneys tried to move the case to Eureka, a small city nearly 300 miles north of San Francisco. U.S.District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley rejected that request this past summer.
Jodi Linker, a public defender representing DePape, has argued that pervasive media attention, as well as Pelosi’s popularity in San Francisco, will deprive him of a fair trial in the city. In a police interview last year, DePape told investigators that he intended to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and was “going to break her calves” if she didn’t recant what he called falsehoods about Trump. DePape repeated Trump’s false claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election.motion, said that potential jurors in Eureka were likely also exposed to coverage of a “notorious national case.
“Our legal standard is not whether you know the parties,” she said. “The legal standard is whether you can be fair in the proceedings.”