A California man is planning to plead guilty two years after he was charged in an alleged plot to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his lawyers said Wednesday.
Attorneys for Nicholas Roske, who was 26 when he was arrested, said in a letter to a judge that their client is prepared to plead guilty to the single charge he faces, attempting to assassinate a justice, next week. He was scheduled to go on trial in June.
Roske, wearing all black and armed with a handgun, knife and zip ties, flew across the country and took a taxi to Kavanaugh’s Maryland home late at night in June, 2022, authorities say.
Roske turned around when he saw Kavanaugh’s detail, court documents say. He then spoke to his sister over the phone, and she convinced him to call 911 instead of carrying out the attack.
The arrest sparked mass concern about the justices’ security. Roske allegedly told investigators after his arrest that the assassination attempt was in part motivated by the high court’s draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade and their potential expansion of gun rights.
“I’ve been suicidal for a long time,” Roske told authorities after his arrest, a transcript of the interview shows. “And when I saw that the leaked draft, it made me upset and then it made me want to – I don’t know … I was under the delusion that I could make the world a better place by killing him.”
Roske’s attorneys have said in court filings that when he was arrested, he was “acutely suicidal, visibly exhausted, and had repeatedly expressed his need for psychiatric care.”
Should his guilty plea be accepted by the Maryland judge overseeing the case, Roske faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
CNN has reached out to the Supreme Court and Justice Department for comment.
The-CNN-Wire
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