Life imprisonment for a man who tried to assassinate Trump on a Florida golf course

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — A man convicted of trying to assassinate President Donald Trump on a Florida golf course in 2024 was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison.

U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon announced Ryan Roth’s fate in the same Fort Pierce courtroom where chaos erupted in September when he tried to stab himself shortly after jurors found him guilty of all charges.

Read more: A jury convicts Ryan Roth of attempting to assassinate Trump at his golf course in Florida

Prosecutors asked for life in prison without parole, saying Roth was unrepentant and had never apologized. The defense attorney brought in for sentencing asked for 27 years, noting that Roth was already 60 years old.

Roth also received a consecutive seven-year prison sentence for his firearm conviction.

Roth was initially scheduled to be sentenced in December, but Cannon agreed to postpone the date after Roth decided to hire an attorney during the sentencing phase rather than represent himself as he did for most of the trial.

Roth has not yet accepted any responsibility and must spend the rest of his life in prison, according to federal sentencing guidelines, prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum. He was convicted of attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, using a firearm in furtherance of a crime, assaulting a federal officer, possession of a firearm as a felon, and using a gun with a defaced serial number.

“Roth remains unrepentant for his crimes, has never apologized for the lives he put in danger, and his life demonstrates an almost complete disregard for the law,” the memo said.

Ruth’s new defense attorney, Martin L. Roth, in a change from sentencing guidelines: 20 years in prison plus a mandatory seven-year sentence for one of the gun-related convictions.

“The defendant is only two weeks away from turning 60,” Roth wrote in his filing. “A just sentence would provide a sentence long enough to impose an adequate but not excessive sentence, and allow the defendant to experience freedom again rather than die in prison.”

Prosecutors said Roth spent weeks planning to kill Trump before aiming his gun through the bushes while the Republican presidential candidate was playing golf on Sept. 15, 2024, at his country club in West Palm Beach.

At Roth’s trial, a Secret Service agent helping protect Trump on the golf course testified that he spotted Roth before Trump showed up. Roth pointed his gun at the agent, who opened fire, prompting Roth to drop his weapon and run away without firing a shot.

In the motion asking for a lawyer, Roth offered to trade his life for a prisoner exchange with people unjustly detained in other countries, and said the offer still stands for Trump to “take his frustrations out of my face.”

“Just a quarter of an inch back and we wouldn’t all have to deal with all this mess going forward, but I always fail at everything (par for the course),” Roth wrote.

In her decision to give Roth a lawyer, Cannon criticized the “disrespectful charade” of Roth’s proposal, saying she had made a mockery of the process. But the judge nominated by Trump in 2020 said she wanted to err on the side of legal representation.

Cannon signed last summer at Roth’s request to represent himself at trial. The United States Supreme Court has held that those accused of criminal offenses have the right to represent themselves in court proceedings, as long as they can show a judge that they are competent to waive their right to be represented by an attorney.

Roth’s former federal public defenders served as standby attorneys and were present during the trial.

Roth had several prior felony convictions, including for possession of stolen goods, and a large online footprint showing his disdain for Trump. In a self-published book, he encouraged Iran to assassinate him, writing at one point that as a Trump voter, he should bear some of the blame for his election.